Business, Financial & Legal - Page 22

TSMC has just completed its first wave of purchases plans for ASML's bleeding-edge High-NA EUV lithography machines, which TSMC will use for its next-gen A14 process in Q3 2027, and A14P process node expected in 2028.

The news is coming from DigiTimes which reports that with the large-scale procurement plan established, TSMC continues to be ASML's largest customer. TSMC is also "the key" to ASML's future operational growth momentum as the development of the Chiense market continues to be suppressed.

Intel announced in April 2024 that its R&D team at its R&D base in Hillsboro, Oregon, USA, that it had completed the industry's first High-NA EUV assembly. If you didn't already know, Intel is TSMC's number one main rival... and Intel had ASML's first High-NA EUV machines installed.

According to new reports, AMD has inked a deal to build a new research and development (R&D) center in Taiwan.

In a new article by CNA in Taiwan, we're hearing that Qiu Qiuhui, the Director of Industrial Technology of the Ministry of Economic Affairrs, confirmed the "secret of the operation" that AMD's GPU and AI software platforms are open architectures, listing 33 manufactures in Taiwan to participate in R&D.

It's expected that an estimated 15 billion yuan (around $2 billion USD or so) in new investment, with over 1000 new AI staffers employed every year in Taiwan. Twiwan has the advantage of being home to the biggest semiconductor industry cluster, with major AI chip companies like AMD and NVIDIA applying to set up new R&D centers in Taiwan. This is on top of TSMC making the most advanced chips for the biggest companies on the planet.

SK hynix announced that its board has approved its Yongin Semiconductor Cluster investment plan, which will be home to the "world's largest mega fab complex". Check it out:

The South Korean memory giant has approved 9.4 trillion won in building the first fab and business facilities at its new Yongin Semiconductor Cluster, with SK hynix designs to start construction of its first fab to be built in the Yongin cluster in March 2025, and have it complete by May 2027.

SK hynix says it will make every effort to build the fab to lay the foundation for the company's future growth and respond to the rapidly increasing demand for AI memory semiconductors. The new Yongin Semiconductor Cluster will be built on a huge 4.15 million square meter site in Wonsam-myeon, Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, and is currently under site preparation and infrastructure construction.

Elon Musk says the "woke mind virus" killed his son, Xavier Alexander Musk, after transitioning genders in June 2021, which was one of the driving reasons why the SpaceX and Tesla founder purchased Twitter and renamed it, X, recently.

This isn't the first time that Musk has talked about the "woke mind virus" but had plenty of say during an interview with Jordan Petersen and DW.

Musk criticized the use of puberty blockers, saying that they act as sterilization drugs. Puberty blocker medications are used to stop the onset of puberty, where they prevent the production of estrogen and testosterone, the hormones that cause the body to go through puberty-related changes naturally.

A former Samsung Display engineer is now facing 6 years in prison for leaking 340 billion won (around $24.5 million USD or so) worth of OLED technology to China.

The South Korean lower court found the former senior engineer from Samsung Display guilty of violating the Unfair Competition Prevention and Trade Secret Protection Act. The researcher had been on trial but was allowed out on bail, pending the expiration of their arrest in March 2024, and was recently taken into custody and sentenced on Thursday.

Back in October 2023, the former Samsung Display researcher was indicted on charges of illegally obtaining optical systems for excimer laser annealing (ELA) technology used in the production of Samsung's OLED displays a well as technology used for OCR injects -- which are used to attach outer cover glass on OLED panels -- to sell to Chinese companies between 2018 and 2020.

President Trump has said that in his new administration, should he win the election later this year, the United States might not defend Taiwan if China invades, that is, unless Taiwan starts paying for US protection.

This has caused chip stocks in Taiwan to tumble, reports Reuters, with semiconductor investors factoring in the continued risk of lost sales to China over US export restrictions. However, President Trump's new comments about Taiwan are a basket of issues for investors and the world.

Throughout my time in the tech industry (close to 23 years now), Taiwan has become a major hub for virtually every technology product and brand. Apple, AMD, Intel, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Amazon, Google, Samsung, Sony, and countless others have their chips fabbed at TSMC in Taiwan.

It was only a few days ago that Microsoft's new Game Pass pricing was brought up by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in a recent filing

The FTC filed a document with the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that claims Microsoft's decision to increase the price of Game Pass was a strategy that demonstrated it "exercising market power" after its acquisition of Activision-Blizzard. The FTC document went as far as to claim Microsoft's Game Pass price increase is evidence of "product degradation," which is tied to the company's "reduced investments in output and product quality via employee layoffs."

Both of these points represent Microsoft exerting its power on the market, according to the FTC document. Now, Microsoft has responded to the FTC filing, saying, "It is wrong to call this a 'degraded' version of the discontinued Game Pass for Console offering." The Redmond company cited the lack of multiplayer functionality with the discontinued Game Pass tier, and that gamers wanting multiplayer access would need to spend an additional $9.99, making the total cost $20.98.

According to Tesla and Amazon's early investor James Anderson, NVIDIA could be worth an astonishing $50 trillion within the next 10 years. The unstoppable AI wave, which hasn't slowed down over the last 18 months, will help NVIDIA.

Anderson's estimates don't seem out of control, with NVIDIA already scaling the lofty heights of a $3.3 trillion+ market cap recently, driven by the insatibale demand for AI chips. NVIDIA controls an estimated 90%+ of the AI GPU market share, leaving the rest with scraps.

Anderson said: "The potential scale of NVIDIA in the most optimistic outcome is both way higher than I've ever seen before and could lead to a market cap of double-digit trillions. This isn't a prediction but a possibility if artificial intelligence works for customers and NVIDIA's lead is intact".

Following the assassination attempt on US President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled two attempts have been made on his life in the past eight months.

Musk took to his personal X account, formerly Twitter, to reply to a user requesting Musk increase his private security for his own protection, citing the event with President Trump as an example of what can happen to people in powerful public positions who have people that strongly disagree with them. Musk said there are "dangerous times ahead" and then revealed two people on separate occasions have "already tried to kill me in the past 8 months".

The Tesla CEO said these individuals were "arrested with guns about 20 mins drive from Tesla HQ in Texas". In another response, Musk joked that it was maybe time for him to "build that flying metal suit of armor," which refers to the iconic Iron Man suit of armor worn by Marvel's Tony Stark. Notably, this isn't the first time Musk has mentioned people trying to kill him, as he told Canadian professor Gad Saad during a live audio chat on X Spaces that in the past, "mentally ill" people have made attempts on his life.

An assassination attempt was just made on US President Donald Trump, at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, with the former president grabbing his face after he had been shot (grazed his ear) by an unknown shooter.

Just minutes later, SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk said: "I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery". The attempted assassination of the former president saw multiple shots heard, with screams from the crowd, and the Secret Service was quick to respond to protect the president.

There was blood on Trump's ear and face after the shot, where the former president rose up from the ground and raised a fist into the air to let everyone know he was okay. The crowd began chanting "USA, USA, USA!" while his Secret Service detail escorted him to the car.

AMD has announced a major move into the AI industry, and it appears to be undoubtedly a strategic acquisition to gain a foothold in the growing sector currently dominated by NVIDIA.

Reports indicate AMD is purchasing for $655 million Finnish start-up Silo AI, an AI software company that focuses on integrating AI solutions into already operating businesses. The transaction will grant AMD access to several prominent brands, such as Rolls-Royce, Unilever, Alliance, and Phillips. The idea behind the acquisition is AMD will be able to power and scale Silo AI's software, which includes multi-lingual large language models (LLMs).

AMD will be able to achieve this through its AI-capable chips, which, at the moment, are the types of chips that couldn't be in more demand. NVIDIA becoming the world's most valuable company is a testament to the demand of AI chips, and this acquisition by AMD is certainly a move by the Red Team to eventually steal away some of NVIDIA's market dominance.

The founder of Facebook and the CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, has been threatened with imprisonment over his alleged involvement in swaying a presidential election.

The allegations come from the former President of the United States, Donald Trump, who took to the social media platform Truth Social to remind Mark Zuckerberg of their long-time-running combative history by saying, "They have no shame! All I can say is that if I'm elected President, we will pursue Election Fraudsters at levels never seen before, and they will be sent to prison for long periods of time." Adding, "We already know who you are. DON'T DO IT! ZUCKERBUCKS, be careful!"

These comments from Trump come after a 2023 post on Truth Social that claimed the Meta CEO was swaying the presidential election, which cited a Fox News report that stated Zuckerberg's $2 million donation to a Georgia election board was being investigated. In September 2022, the Federal Election Commission unanimously voted to dismiss nonpartisan election administration grants funded by Mark Zuckerberg, clearing his name of any election swaying.

Peter Wennink, the former CEO of ASML, said he anticipates the Chip War will not be resolved anytime soon, and it could potentially persist for decades to come.

The news comes from reports by Reuters and the Commercial Times, with the former ASML CEO also stating during an interview with Dutch broadcaster BNR that the "Chip War" between the US and China "lacks factual basis and is entirely driven by ideology".

ASML is the global supplier of EUV lithography machines, making the world's largest and most advanced machines. TSMC, Samsung, and Intel use EUV machines for manufacturing. TSMC uses EUV lithography machines for its 7nm, 5nm, and 3nm processes, while Samsung's EUV lines make 7nm, 5nm, and 4nm chips, along with the 3nm GAA process.

AMD has passed Intel, Netflix, and Microsoft in brand recognition from Kantar's new BrandZ Most Valuable Global Brands 2024 report. You can see the list of the 'top risers' below:

The new BrandZ Most Valuable Global Brands 2024 report from Kantar ranks the top brands on the planet based on multiple factors, including customer sentiment and financial data on the companies. It's also a reflection of consumer sentiment towards the brand itself, showing how popular the companies are in the eyes of the average consumer.

Kantar's new BrandZ Most Valuable Global Brands 2024 report also includes the Business Technology and Services Platform category, in which AMD rose in the ranks with a brand value of $51.86 million -- a recognition of their value, not AMD's market cap, which is much higher than that.

ZOTAC management wouldn't be having a good weekend, with the company seeing leaks of the personal information of its customers through the "mismanagement" of its RMA files. GamersNexus goes into great detail on the story below:

Our friends at Wccftech picked up the story, saying it looks like ZOTAC has been "negligent in safeguarding consumer rights and has made the personal information of multiple customers public by not securely managing RMA files". This is a massive issue for the company, putting multiple people and their private information at risk.

How did this happen? ZOTAC uploaded these important files to Google web servers, which meant they were publicly accessible to anyone who simply searched "ZOTAC RMA" or something to that effect. The RMA files won't appear on Google searches now, but the images discovered by GamersNexus show that the Google search results had B2B (business-to-business) invoices, as well as custom RMA requests and their personal information.

The US Department of Defense has been asking for a waiver from legislation that stops it from doing business with companies that use Huawei's telecommunications equipment... but with the increased tensions between the US and China, that waiver might be impossible.

Pentagon officials insist that it would be impossible to get Huawei technology out of all US Department of Defense operations, with the prohibition signed into law in 2019 under the National Defense Authorization Act. Under Section 889 of that act, US government agencies are barred from entering or renewing contracts with any country or company that uses telecommunications equipment made by China-based Huawei.

Brennan Grignon, the founder of 5M Strategies and a former Defense Department official, said: "There are certain parts of the world where you literally cannot get away from Huawei. The original legislation had very good intentions behind it, but the execution and understanding of the implications of what it would mean, I personally think that wasn't really thought through".

Did you know that AMD thought about buying NVIDIA back in the 2000s? Years, decades before NVIDIA's outright domination of the GPU market, and putting an iron-clad grip around the AI chip industry.

In a series of posts on X that were super-interesting to read, former AMD staffer Hemant Mohapatra went into great lengths explaining it all. As a technology enthusiast from the 90s, reading through all of this was pure joy, after all, my name is 'anthony256' from NVIDIA's world-first GPU -- the GeForce 256 -- but can you imagine if NVIDIA was sold to AMD? Oh boy.

One of the major reasons why the deal didn't happen, is because NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang wanted to stay on as CEO, and that couldn't happen. Mohapatra explained on X: "So now that NVIDIA has far outstripped the market cap of AMD and Intel, I thought this would be a fun story to tell. I spent 6+yrs @ AMD engg in mid to late 2000s helping design the CPU/APU/GPUs that we see today. Back then it was unimaginable for AMD to beat Intel in market-cap (we did in 2020!) and for NVIDIA to beat both!

Between 2015 and 2019, Apple decided to use butterfly switches on its MacBook laptops, and that decision has led the company to pay out $50 million in claims back to customers.

During that four-year period, Apple keyboards using the butterfly switch design were upgraded with new generations, but all had a critical failure point that led to thousands of customers reporting keys becoming sticky, repeating inputs, and becoming unresponsive. Unfortunately, when Apple launched its repair program for the issue in June 2018 for MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro models released during the aforementioned years, they were replaced with new butterfly keyboards, which eventually led to more failures.

Apple learned from its decision to place butterfly switches in its keyboard and has since swapped back to scissor-switch mechanisms. As for the payment, Apple paid $50 million to settle a class-action lawsuit over its faulty keys, and now MacBook owners who lodged a claim with the company will begin to receive their payment by August 2024. According to reports, MacBook owners who had at least two topcase replacements from Apple within four years of purchase can receive a maximum payment of $395.

NVIDIA has had its offices in France raided by the French government and is set to be charged by the French antitrust regulator for allegedly anti-competitive practices.

The news is coming from Reuters and people with "direct knowledge of the matter" that makes this the first government to fight NVIDIA over anti-competitive behavior. The French authority has a statement of objections or chart sheet, which follows previous raids into the graphics card business in September 2023, which Reuters' sources said "targeted NVIDIA". These raids were part of a "broader inquiry into cloud computing".

NVIDIA's untouched dominance of the GPU market, but more specifically -- and far more dominantly -- in the AI GPU business, has put a France-sized magnifying glass over the chipmaker. This was amplified over the last year with generative AI leader OpenAI and its ChatGPT, which Reuters reports has been "triggering regulatory scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic".

TSMC with its massive global expansion and multiple semiconductor fabs in the US, will only account for around 10% of its total production capacity.

In a new report from Taiwan TV News (TTV), TSMC's new fabs in the USA, Japan, and Germany have raised "domestic concerns" over industrial relocation from Taiwan. TSMC has been expanding its production facilities into other countries, but there are now concerns growing in Taiwan about the potential impacts on domestic industries, as TSMC is one of Taiwan's biggest companies with massive global influence.

Bonnie Glaser, director of German Marshall Fund, saying that even at full production, TSMC's various overseas semiconductor plans will continue less than 10% of its global output, according to TTV, which didn't share any exact numbers.