Business, Financial & Legal - Page 8

Intel and TSMC have reportedly reached a preliminary agreement for a chipmaking joint venture, where TSMC will run Intel's expanding US-based semiconductor fabs.

In a new report from The Information, we're learning that executives from Intel and TSMC reached a preliminary agreement to form a joint venture that would see TSMC running Intel's manufacturing plants. Intel and other US chipmakers will hold the majority of stock in the joint venture, which includes at least some of Intel's factories. TSMC will reportedly take a 20% stake in the new company, with both Intel and TSMC declining to comment.

It was only last month in March 2025 that we were hearing reports that TSMC had reached a joint venture foundry idea with US chip designers including NVIDIA, AMD, Broadcom, and Qualcomm.

HAPPY APRIL FOOLS!

A not-so-surprising move from Elon Musk is that the SpaceX and Tesla boss has just acquired US chipmaker Intel for a tidy $133 billion, with a new Core xAI processor that will power the next-generation Xbox AI console.

People familiar with the matter confirmed rumors from the last few months that a mystery buyer was looking at acquiring Intel as it was struggling, but Intel's freshly-minted CEO Lip-Bu Tan will work alongside Musk, and strengthen the partnership between Intel and Microsoft to provide a US-made chip for the next-gen Xbox.

AMD has officially closed its $4.9 billion acquisition of ZT Systems, a leading provider of AI infrastructure for the world's largest hyperscale computing companies.

In a new post on X, the company said: "We are excited to welcome the ZT team into the AMD family - they are the best in the industry! The ZT team brings unparalleled choice to our customers with critical systems expertise needed to deliver a full AI solution - from silicon to software to rack and cluster-level solutions".

ZT Systems is an artificial intelligence infrastructure group that will help AMD create a better AI infrastructure, helping get AMD's new Instinct MI300 series AI accelerators into data centers. ZT Systems was founded over 30 years ago, and is a private company that builds custom computing infrastructure for some of the world's biggest AI hyperscalers.

Only days after Ubisoft announced it was spawning a new subsidiary to handle all its major IPs, such as Assassin's Creed and Far Cry, the company's stock price has fallen double digits, erasing any progress it made following the announcement of the joint venture with Tencent.

Ubisoft's stock price gained 11% on Friday after it announced the new subsidiary in partnership with Ubisoft investor Tencent, and as of Monday, the stock price in the US, UK, and France has taken a double-digit point hit, falling by 11.80%. As for the UK specifically, Ubisoft opened at €12.15 and is now trading at €11.19, while in France, the stock price for the company fell by 12.06% to €11.16.

The decline in stock price has completely erased any value that was gained on Friday following the announcement of the new subsidiary. As for the new deal with Tencent, Ubisoft anticipates the closure of the deal will happen before the end of 2025, and once completed, Ubisoft will retain 75% control of the new company that will manage the following Ubisoft IPs: Assassin's Creed, Rainbow Six, and Far Cry.

The US government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on its CHIPS Act under the Biden administration, but under the Trump administration -- along with Elon Musk and DOGE -- the CHIPS Act looks to be shelved, and 80% of its staffers have been purged.

President Trump isn't a fan of the CHIPS Act and has referred to customers getting "Biden money" but in a new report from Korean media, over 120 employees out of the 150 from the US Commerce Department's Chip Program Office (CPO) have either been laid off, or resigned from their positions.

One of the largest names being laid off is former VP of SK hynix that joined CPO as the Chief Economist, Dan Kim, with his departure suggesting that the CHIPS Act won't be focusing on South Korean companies like SK hynix and Samsung (makers of HBM for AI GPUs).

Intel has confirmed that its next-generation Panther Lake CPUs made on its next-gen in-house Intel 18A process node will be released in 2025, with its next-gen Nova Lake CPU platform launching in 2026.

During its recent annual report to stockholders, there was a letter from Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan who said: "This is strengthening our position as the CPU of choice in a valuable growth market. We will further enhance our position in the second half of this year with the launch of Panther Lake, our lead product on Intel 18A, followed by Nova Lake in 2026".

However, the freshly-minted Intel CEO didn't mention a single word about GPUs... with the company remaining silent on its graphics division since the whisper-quiet launch of Battlemage. We have no idea what the future of graphics is from the company, with the CEO not elaborating on it further.

TSMC at one point wouldn't make any of its advanced chips on US soil, but appears that this could be changing... with the Taiwan giant to make bleeding-edge (A16) 1.6nm chips in Arizona.

Now that President Trump is in office, TSMC's ambitions in the US can grow exponentially and have advanced semiconductor production in the United States. TSMC VP for Global Policy, Peter Cleveland, recently said that TSMC plans to produce chips at its upcoming third semiconductor fab soon under construction in Arizona, to sustain the United States' AI leadership.

TSMC has invested $65 billion into its Arizona semiconductor fabs so far, with plans to have 3 facilities in total, with the first fab responsible for making 4nm chips according to reports. TSMC plans to make higher-end chips including 3nm, 2nm, and possibly its bleeding-edge A16 (1.6nm) chips.

The former co-chief operating officer (co-COO) of TSMC, Chiang Shang-yi, has had some fighting words against US chipmaker Intel... and how much he looks down on the company.

Chiang has a position of authority as he worked at TSMC until 2013, and even when he left, he was one of the company's core team members who helped cement the Taiwanese company to become a global contract chip manufacturing leader. Chiang recently attended a book launch in Taiwan this week, meeting with the dean of Taiwan's National Tsing Hua University, and boy he didn't hold back any punches towards Intel.

TSMC's former executive said Intel should get more into mature chip manufacturing processes -- and not bleeding-edge process nodes -- as Intel was too far away from catching up with TSMC. He also added that Intel was the former "king" of the chip industry, but was still a "nobody".

Elon Musk has announced his AI startup company xAi has officially merged with X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter in an all-stock transaction that puts the value of the social platform at $33 billion.

Musk announced the news via his personal X account, where he said the merger values the social media platform, or as he describes the digital town square for the world, at $33 billion ($45B less $12B debt), slightly less than the $44 billion he paid for it in 2022.

Additionally, the merger has valued xAI at $80 billion, with Musk saying the future of both companies is "intertwined," and now that the merger has taken place, "We officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent."

A new report has claimed NVIDIA is eyeing a potential acquisition of Lepton AI, a company that rents out servers that are powered by NVIDIA's AI hardware.

The report comes from The Information, which writes the green semiconductor giant is currently engaging in talks to move into the server rental market with the acquisition of Lepton AI in a deal worth several hundred million dollars. If true and the deal was inked, it would give NVIDIA a stronger foothold in the cloud-based AI computing market and the greater artificial intelligence sector.

As for the AI server rental market, reports indicate that it's an extremely fast-growing sector. Lepton AI was founded two years ago but secured an $11 million seed funding round from investors CRV and Fusion Fund. Lepton AI has positioned itself well in the emerging market as companies are looking for cost-effective ways of accessing high-performance AI computing hardware without having to fork out hundreds of thousands or potentially millions of dollars in AI server infrastructure, hence it attracting attention from NVIDIA for a potential acquisition.

Intel's freshly-minted CEO Lip-Bu Tan will provide an opening keynote at the company's upcoming Intel Vision 2025 event on March 31.

Intel Vision 2025 is being hosted on March 31 in Las Vegas, where the company will be on the ground with executives and partners from around the world. We should expect to hear about its US semiconductor business with Intel Foundry Services and its upcoming Intel 18A process node, next-gen consumer and server CPUs, AI, AI, AI, and a vision of what's ahead for the company that has had many hard years.

On its website, the company explains: "Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan will deliver an opening keynote at Intel Vision 2025 on March 31 in Las Vegas. The two-day event brings together Intel customers and partners from around the world to discuss opportunities to innovate across the compute continuum and foster collaboration that will shape the future of the industry".

The Financial Times has admitted it made a lapse in judgment when it posted the article "$1.4bn is a lot to fall through the cracks, even for Tesla," which highlighted a purported gap between the company's capital investment and asset values.

The author of the article, Dan McCrum, has posted a follow-up article titled "Filling in that Tesla 'crack'" where the first line of that article is "Mea culpa," which is a Latin phrase that translates to "my fault" or "through my fault." McCrum goes on to explain the purported discrepancy that he reported "may have a benign explanation," which seems to be gathered from an expert who got in touch with FT to explain how to look at Tesla's books correctly.

McCrum attempted to highlight the discrepancy between Tesla's $6.3 billion capital investment in the second half of last year and the smaller $4.9 billion rise in the value of gross assets the company reported, claiming Tesla seemingly lost the difference somewhere in the books. That simply isn't the case, or at least according to McCrum, who has now been informed about two explanations that can reconcile the figures: "payments for assets already purchased, and the possible disposal of depreciated property."

UBS analyst Timothy Arcuri says that Intel's freshly-minted CEO Lip-Bu Tan will most likely refocus on chip design in the short term, while securing big customers to strengthen its foundry business.

In his note to investors, Arcuri said that Intel is also reportedly working to finalize commitments from NVIDIA or Broadcom to use its semiconductor foundry business, while also advancing its new 18A manufacturing process. Intel is working on a new lower-power version of that 18A process node called 18AP, and should be appealing to chip companies.

Intel Foundry Services (IFS) is looking to compete directly against TSMC in the semiconductor space, with improvements to its advanced packaging technologies like its Embedded Multi-Die Interconnect Bridge platform that would compete against TSMC's CoWoS-L advanced packaging for HPC customers like NVIDIA and others.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has published a new filing against Google that reaffirms its position that Google currently holds a monopoly over the search engine market and demands the company begin selling off Chrome.

The DOJ hasn't held back in these claims, with the regulatory body stating in the filing that a part of its "Revised Proposed Final Judgement" (RPF) is calling for Google to be prohibited from making search-related payments to Apple and non-Apple search distribution partners to make Google the default search engine on iPhone.

Google is also called for to be prohibited from making "exclusive agreements with content publishers" that include bundling, typing, or commingling its general search engine or search access point with any other Google product, along with the prohibition of Google entering into agreements that are related to the distribution of general search services. And the big one, Google Chrome to be sold.

The European Union has introduced a new set of consumer protection rules that directly address how video games handle microtransactions, virtual currencies, and in-game purchases in games like Fortnite, Call of Duty, and EA Sports FC.

The new principles, laid out by the EU's Consumer Protection Cooperation Network (CPC), aim to bring greater transparency and accountability to how these systems are presented to players. While described as "principles," they're backed by existing EU consumer law and are legally enforceable.

One of the most significant changes targets how prices are shown. Under the new rules, games must clearly display the real-world currency equivalent of any in-game item. If a skin in Fortnite costs 2,500 V-Bucks, the game must also show that this translates to $20 USD. The same applies across the board - whether it's NBA 2K's VC or Call of Duty's COD Points, players need to see exactly how much they're spending in real terms.

Since Elon Musk moved closer to the Trump administration and took up the reigns of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a new regulatory body designed to reduce fraud, waste, and operating costs in the US government, Musk's businesses have taken a sharp hit, notably Tesla.

Musk's political leanings have resulted in him becoming much more divisive, and that is being reflected in Tesla's stock price, which has seen a dramatic drop in value since December 2024, when its stock was priced at approximately $462 per share. Now, Tesla shares are valued at $236 per share, bringing them back down to September 2024 levels. However, that isn't all of Tesla's problems.

A new report from the Financial Times revealed that Tesla is missing approximately $1.4 billion from its books. The report cites an investigation into Tesla's cash flow statements and capital expenditures over the last six months of 2024. According to the FT report, the investigation found holes in the books totaling the reported missing $1.4 billion. Tesla's cashflow statements reveal the company spent $6.3 billion on "purchases of property and equipment excluding finance leases, net of sales" throughout the second half of 2024.

Elon Musk purchased X, formerly Twitter, from its shareholders in 2022 for $44 billion. Following the purchase of the social media platform, there was an exodus of advertisers, dramatically reducing the valuation of now-X. That valuation has now reached the price at which Musk purchased the platform.

Shortly after Musk purchased X, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO went on to make some major changes, such as how content appears on the timeline for users and what content is served next to ads. These changes, combined with Musk's opening up of the X content guidelines, which enabled a wider variety of content to appear on the platform, resulted in many advertisers being concerned their ads would appear next to potentially offensive content. These concerns resulted in the exodus of advertisers we saw in the months that followed the acquisition.

In response to the spiraling of advertisers propping up the social media platform, Musk proceeded to run intense cost-cutting measures, which saw approximately 90% of then-Twitter staff being let go. Twitter staff dropped from about 7,500 employees to just 1,500. According to a recent report from Bloomberg, Musk has since raised close to $1 billion in new equity from investors, which values the company at approximately $32 billion. The report states Musk himself participated in the equity raise, along with Darsana Capital Partners, which bought some of X's debt earlier this year.

Elon Musk says that the US government has "magic money computers" that print money from absolutely "nothing", something he admitted DOGE found in a new chat with Senator Ted Cruz, check it out:

When talking about DOGE's recent discoveries, SpaceX and Tesla boss Elon Musk said: "you may think that government computers talk to each other, they synchronize, they add up what funds are going somewhere, and it's coherent. The numbers that you're presented to as a Senator (talking to Senator Ted Cruz) are actually the real numbers". Cruz replies "one would think" and Elon repeats him "'one would think" but quips "they're not'.

"They're not totally wrong, but they're probably off by 5% or 10% in some cases. What we've uncovered is pretty remarkable. I call a magic money computer any computer which can just make money out of thin air. That's magic money".

Amidst the AI revolution, programmers, writers and every type of white-collar worker has been affected by the rise of the tools. However, an unexpected area has emerged in the field of sports - using AI to assist with decisions on the basketball court.

Daryl Morey, the GM of the Philadelphia 76ers, was previously known for his 'Moreyball' strategy - utilizing analytics in the construction of a roster, and essentially min-maxing in terms of applying the team's strategies on the court by prioritizing threes and layups.

At a recent conference, Morey opened up about the use of analytics in the AI era. Notably, he expanded on his use of LLMs, in particular, their widespread use within the team's decision-making.

McDonald's has been ordered to pay $800,000 in damages after serving "unreasonably" hot chicken nuggets to a four-year-old daughter.

The case dates back to 2019 and states a family visited a McDonald's in Tamarac, Florida, where their then four-year-old daughter was served "unreasonably" hot Chicken McNuggets, resulting in the daughter being burned. According to the mother of the child, a Happy Meal was purchased for herself and the daughter, and after collecting the meals at the drive-thru, she handed one of the meals to her daughter. Shortly after the handover, a chicken nugget became stuck in the child's car seat and burned the daughter's leg, resulting in second-degree burns.

In May 2023, a jury found McDonald's and the franchise owners were at fault for the incident, resulting in the jury being responsible for deciding how much in damages the family was owed. The family was requesting $15 million in damages and instead was granted $800,000 by the jury. Despite receiving much less than what she asked for, the mother of the child, Philana Holmes, said she was more than pleased with the outcome as she had "no expectations".