Business, Financial & Legal News - Page 9

Intel has reportedly demanded another $10 billion from the Biden administration and its CHIPS Act, which would be the largest award yet under the plan, which is bringing semiconductor manufacturing back onto US soil.

In a new report from Bloomberg, reporting from the usual "people familiar with the matter," the new package for Intel will include both loans and direct grants. Bloomberg's sources said that they didn't want to be identified because the deliberations are private -- well, not anymore -- stressing that negotiations are still in the works.

The 2022 Chips and Science Act (CHIPS) put aside $39 billion in direct grants as well as loans and loan guarantees worth $75 billion in order to lure the world's top semiconductor companies to manufacture chips in the US. CHIPS companies have invested over $230 billion in the US since Biden took office, with his administration having a goal of getting at least two leading-edge manufacturing clusters by 2030 on US soil.

Deepfake pornographic images of students took over a school and now lawmakers have been forced to come up with new laws to punish creators of the images.

The deepfake pornographic images event occurred in November last year at Issaquah High School in suburban Seattle, Washington State. A student at the school reportedly took photos of his female classmates and used AI technology to "undress" them. These photographs were then passed around the school, sparking police attention. 404 Media obtained the police report from the event, and it confirms that web-based apps designed to "nudify" or "undress" people were used to create deepfake images of underage female students.

Notably, the police report states these web apps only need one image of an individual to create a realistic nude image. Additionally, the police report states the school didn't immediately inform the authorities of the circulating images, and police were actually notified by three parents separately. Furthermore, an officer said they were surprised the school didn't contact police regarding the images as they qualify as "sexual abuse" and school administrators are "mandatory reporters".

Samsung has reportedly won a contract from a Japanese startup, building their new chips on Samsung's fresh 2nm process node... taking the 2nm battle to TSMC's doorstep in 2025 and beyond.

Japan's Preferred Networks (PFN) is a startup that specializes in research and development of deep learning for IoT applications and is often referred to as the most advanced firm in Japan through its resources and expertise in developing custom software and supplying various customers with supercomputers.

In a new report from Seoul Economic Daily, Samsung has reportedly inked a new deal with PFN that would see both companies benefitting. PFN gets its hands on the latest chip technology that allows it to have an advantage over its competitors, while Samsung gets to talk up its foundry business pumping out 2nm chips against TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company).

NVIDIA blasted past a $1 trillion market cap last year, but now it's sitting on an incredible $1.78 trillion market cap... that's a $780 billion (yeah, with a B). It hasn't even been a year... and the company hasn't even launched its beefed-up H200 AI GPU, or next-gen B100 "Blackwell" AI GPU.

NVIDIA's stock has surged an incredible 400% since the beginning of 2023, but the $700 billion+ of added market capitalization -- to put it into other terms -- makes Tesla stock look puny in comparison. Tesla has a market capitalization of $576 billion at the time of writing.

The Kobeissi Letter posted on X: "NVIDIA, $NVDA, is now the 4th most valuable public company in the world, worth $1.84 trillion. Today, NVIDIA's market cap passed both Google and Amazon for the first time in history. Since January 1st, NVIDIA has officially added $650 BILLION in market cap. That's more than the entire value of Tesla in less than 6 weeks. Truly incredible".

TSMC is reportedly securing a secret deal with South Korean memory manufacturer SK hynix, which would see the two companies teaming up to make next-gen memory products for AI, along with processors and GPUs.

HBM memory is one of the hottest parts of any AI GPU, and SK hynix has been leading the charge for a while now. But with the relationship between Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and SK hynix, we should expect the two companies to combine the best of what they do -- chip packaging and memory fabrication -- to compete, and I'm sure, hopefully, dominate South Korean rival Samsung.

The unconfirmed reports of TSMC and SK hynix teaming up together would see a change in the HBM memory market, as they're essential to AI systems and products, which have insatiable demand right now. There has been absolutely no slowdown, and no slowdown is forecasted for the years ahead when it comes to the world of AI.

Entertainment giant Disney has purchased a $1.5 billion stake in Epic Games and teamed up with the company to create something incredible.

This partnership intends to develop a new expansive, open, persistent, and social universe that will seamlessly "interoperate" with the popular game Fortnite and let fans "play, watch, shop and engage" iconic characters and stories from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, Avatar, and more.

The news was revealed during Disney's Q1 FY24 Earnings call, where it was said this new experience will be built entirely in Unreal Engine and will give players the ability to "create their own stories and experiences, express their fandom in a distinctly Disney way, and share content with each other in ways that they love."

A regional court in Germany has ruled that Intel infringed on a patent covering an integrated voltage regulator technology that belongs to R2 Semiconductor, which could see select Intel processors banned from being sold in Germany. It's not just Intel but also Dell and HP products that use the affected Intel processors in the patent dispute.

Intel has bitten back at R2 Semiconductor, accusing the Palo Alto, California-based company of using a low-quality patent and that it would appeal the decision. The regional court in Dü Dusseldorf, Germany ruled against Intel on Wednesday, issuing an injunction against sales of Intel Core series CPUs, including "Ice Lake," "Tiger Lake," "Alder Lake," and Xeon Scalable "Ice Lake Server," processors.

Intel 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" CPUs are still out in the wild, so these processors might disappear from the market if Intel isn't successful in its appeal. It doesn't mean that the 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake" CPUs will disappear from the market overnight, so there's no need to worry right now.

The creator behind the insanely popular Elonjet has now fallen into the crosshairs of Taylor Swift's lawyers as the programmer created a website dedicated to tracking the location of musicians' private jet.

The programmer is Jack Sweeney, a University of Central Florida student who quickly came into the public spotlight with his Elonjet X account that automatically posted the location of Elon Musk's private jet. The account gained so much attention that it sparked a response from Musk, who offered Sweeney $5,000 to delete the account, citing it as a security risk. Sweeney declined the offer and responded by saying, "Any chance to up that to $50k?".

Notably, the accounts Sweeney has created use public flight data available to anyone on the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) website. The programmer has received a cease and desist letter from lawyers representing Taylor Swift, with the letter labeling Sweeney's sharing of the FAA data as "stalking and harassing behavior." Furthermore, Swift's lawyers claim the musician has experienced "direct and irreparable harm, as well as emotional and physical distress" as a result of Sweeney's actions.

TSMC is a leader in semiconductor manufacturing, but now the company is the world's largest semiconductor maker by revenue, beating out the big tech titans, including Intel, NVIDIA, and Samsung in TSMC's dust.

Taiwan-based analyst Dan Nystedt, reports from compiled numbers from calendar-year revenue figures, not fiscal-year revenue. These figures also include revenue from other sources within each company and aren't just from income derived from manufacturing silicon.

TSMC Is now the world's largest semiconductor company in the world, earning $69.3 billion in 2023 which is much more than Intel earning $54.2 billion in the same year. Samsung dropped down to $50.9 billion, while NVIDIA is still doing good with over $58 billion for 2023.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has just announced plans to build a second fab in Japan, which will be run by Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing (JASM) which is a majority-owned TSMC subsidiary.

The new fab in Japan will build 6nm and 7nm-class process nodes, which when TSMC's new facility is operational in Japan, will make it the most advanced semiconductor production facility for logic chips in Japan. TSMC expects its new Japan-based fab to begin operation this year, with plans to begin operation by the end of the 2027 calendar year.

TSMC's production of 6nm and 7nm chips from its second fab in Japan will make chips for automotive, industrial, consumer, and HPC-related applications. It's expected that over 3400 high-tech professional jobs will be created from this new deal, that's expected to exceed $20 billion with "strong support from the Japanese government".