Business, Financial & Legal - Page 30

TSMC has just celebrated a "topping out" milestone event at its Phoenix, Arizona fabrication facility by placing the last steel beam on its construction project.

The company posted on its official LinkedIn, explaining that TSMC had also recently achieved the topping milestone for its second fab's auxiliary buildings, which will be supplying the required utility infrastructure to the second fab clean room.

TSMC's post on LinkedIn explained: "TSMC Arizona celebrated a "topping out" milestone today - signifying the last steel beam being raised into place on a construction project - for our second semiconductor fab in Phoenix, Arizona. We also recently achieved the topping milestone on our second fab's auxiliary buildings, which will supply the necessary utilities infrastructure to the second fab clean room. We also continue to make significant progress completing our first fab which remains on track to begin production in the first half of 2025".

Reddit has officially filed paperwork for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), where we'll see the RDDT as the ticker symbol, and longtime users of Reddit will be able to buy RDDT shares.

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said that many longtime Reddit users feel a "deep sense of ownership" over their communities on the platform, continuing: "We want this sense of ownership to be reflected in real ownership-for our users to be our owners. With this in mind, we are excited to invite the users and moderators who have contributed to Reddit to buy shares in our IPO, alongside our investors".

Reddit's filing said: "Our users have a deep sense of ownership over the communities they create on Reddit. This sense of ownership often extends to all of Reddit. We see this in our users' passion for their communities, their desire for Reddit to be as amazing as possible, and in their disapproval when we let them down. We want this sense of ownership to be reflected in real ownership - for our users to be our owners. Becoming a public company makes this possible. With this in mind, we are excited to invite the users and moderators who have contributed to Reddit to buy shares in our IPO, alongside our investors".

Intel hosted its first-ever Intel Foundry Direct Connect event, where the company added its new Intel 14A node to its extended process technology roadmap.

On the subject of AI, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said at the event: "AI is proudly transforming the world and how we think about technology and the silicon that powers it. This is creating an unprecedented opportunity for the world's most innovative chip designers and for Intel Foundry, the world's first systems foundry for the AI era. Together, we can create new markets and revolutionize how the world uses technology to improve people's lives".

Intel provided new details on how it plans to push into the lead ahead of TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) into 2026 and beyond. Intel wants to retake the mantle of making the world's fastest chips away from TSMC later this year with its upcoming Intel 18A process node, and then in 2026, it says it will push further into the lead with its next-gen Intel 14A process node.

NVIDIA has just posted its Q4 FY24 financial report, blowing everyone out of the water with $22 billion in revenue thanks to the AI GPU dominance the company has been firing on all cylinders with. Check it out:

Before the release, analysts were predicting $20.6 billion in revenue, but NVIDIA beat that with $22.1 billion for the three-month period. NVIDIA beat its own profit and revenue records here, where you can see in the chart NVIDIA posted above that its Data Center business is raking in all the cash.

Back in Q1 FY23, the company made $3.75 billion in revenue from its Data Center business, but now that has absolutely skyrocketed by 409% annually, whereas in Q4 FY24, the Data Center business did an absolutely incredible $18.4 billion in revenue.

Tesla has won a trademark dispute with a chicken shop owner located in Northern England after a year of back-and-forth arguments.

The chicken shop owner, Amanj Ali, has his takeaway store located in Bury, Greater Manchester, and in May 2022, Ali filed a trademark for the name of the store. Ali's store was called Tesla Chicken & Pizza, and when he filed the trademark, he cited Nikola Tesla as the inspiration of the name. However, in November 2023, Ali was ordered to pay £4,000, or $5,053 to Tesla for violation of its trademark, which the UK's Intellectual Property Office agreed with.

Despite Tesla originally not objecting to the newly filed trademark by Ali, the chicken shop owner was informed in November 2021 that Tesla had requested international protection for trademarks in the United Kingdom under the food and drink category. Ali opposed the request, and after a year of legal disputes where Tesla claimed Ali's trademark was taking advantage of Tesla's established reputation, the ruling was found in Tesla's favor.

Toyo Keizai published its annual 'Top 300 Richest Japanese Companies' list this week, looking at the country's various businesses and ranking them regarding cash flow and debt. Nintendo is Topping the list, still riding high on the immense financial success of the Nintendo Switch console and the smash hit Super Mario Bros. Movie.

Games-wise, Super Mario Bros. Wonder has sold over 12 million copies, with other notable 2023 releases like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Pikmin 4 has sold up to 30 million copies collectively.

Although Nintendo Switch sales have slowed as the console reaches the tail-end of its lifecycle, as a company, Nintendo is entirely debt-free and sitting on a Scrooge McDuck pile of money - over $11 billion USD or 1.7186 trillion Yen.

NVIDIA will have its earnings release tomorrow, but ahead of that, Wall Street is increasing its future NVIDIA share price expectations; now we've got Baird increasing its target price for NVIDIA stock from $750 to $1050.

Baird's new predictions on NVIDIA shares are very, very favorable for the AI GPU leader, representing a 44% hike from their historic highs already. Baird isn't the only financial firm to do this, last week saw Goldman Sachs increasing their NVIDIA share price target by 28%.

Baird analysts explained: "Per our Asia field trip, demand for NVIDIA's AI solutions remains unabated, with momentum from enterprise customers now rapidly building. Upcoming Blackwell architecture will drive another significant step up in performance, while ASPs will increase as well. TSMC remains on track for a doubling of CoWoS capacity this year which should help supply notably in 2H. GH200 performance is a magnitude higher than x86+H100, driving engagements with hyperscalers and HPC ODMs. CUDA ecosystem remains a major competitive advantage. Raising our estimates and price target on NVIDIA, Outperform rated".

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".

Tucker Carlson has had some gigantic interviews and hundreds of millions of views on interviews with world leaders (and many others) since his exit from Fox News... but nothing compares to his latest interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Tucker flew out to Moscow, Russia to meet with Vladimir Putin, with the new interview between Tucker Carlson and Vladimir Putin not live yet, but it's coming very soon, with Tucker releasing a "trailer" to his news ahead of the interview release. Patrick Webb got an early look at the interview, where he has some choice quotes from Putin early.

Tucker asked who Putin thinks runs the United States, to which the Russian President replied: "The same forces which have always run it. You may change presidents but you do not change those in real power. That is who we have to deal with. Joe Biden is just a facade for this power structure".

ASUS has just announced it's made Fortune's list of 2024 World's Most Admired Companies, which is the 9th time ASUS has received this honor.

The company was recognized for its extraordinary achievements in areas including global competitiveness, social responsibility, product service quality, and more. ASUS continues its technological innovation, maintaining its global leadership in areas like motherboards, computers, monitors, graphics cards, peripherals, routers, and more.

The company also has collaborations with strategic partners like AMD, Intel, NVIDIA and others, which has continued to strengthen its presence in gaming, commercial, and industrial markets. The new AI market has also been a huge push for ASUS, which has rapidly advanced its AI applications, integrating cloud services, efficient computing power, and big-data platforms, as well as expanding into diverse fields such as smart healthcare, smart transportation, smart manufacturing, smart education, smart cloud, and smart retail.

Joe Rogan signed on for an exclusive deal over at Spotify in 2020, which was reportedly worth up to $100 million, but now the world's biggest podcast will be staying over at Spotify for an undisclosed amount of time and for reportedly much more money.

"The Joe Rogan Experience" will be staying over at Spotify, but according to reports from The Wall Street Journal, the new deal will include a revenue-sharing model based on ad sales that will enable Rogan to publish his podcast on multiple platforms. Under this new deal, Spotify will be able to control ad distribution across the multiple platforms the "The Joe Rogan Experience" will appear on.

Rogan confirmed the show was returning to YouTube in an Instagram post celebrating the new deal, "In addition to being available on Spotify, the show will soon be available on additional platforms like Apple, Amazon, and YouTube." The podcast has more than 2,200 hundred episodes and has featured a wide range of guests, each chosen by Rogan himself based on his personal interest in the guest.