Chips

$30M Raised to Redo the CPU (opens tendrils.co)

Tendrils announces a $30M raise on its own blog to rethink the CPU.

AMD introduces Epyc 6 processors for AI agent workloads (opens siliconangle.com)

Ten Zen 6 server CPUs in two groups; Tom's Hardware's benchmarks say a dual 9996 is up to 93% faster than a dual Zen 5 9965.

Staera launches with $4.6M to develop an optical interconnect for chiplets (opens siliconangle.com)

Optical interconnects for chiplets; Singapore's Openspace Capital led the pre-seed.

Nvidia board hires ex-prosecutor Joon Kim to investigate Jensen Huang (opens thenextweb.com)

Nvidia's independent directors retained Wachtell Lipton and former acting US Attorney Joon Kim to investigate the CEO after the spy-scandal reports.

Nodus Compute | Get more AI from the GPUs that already exist (opens ycombinator.com)

The AI buildout runs on debt. The fix isn't more GPUs. It's getting more AI out of the ones that already exist.

ArchGen Labs | Building skyscrapers for semiconductor chips (opens ycombinator.com)

AI-powered chip design tools for the next generation of 3D semiconductors.

Jensen Huang's affair shines a spotlight on Nvidia's weak board and opaque succession planning (opens semafor.com)

Jensen Huang's affair shines a spotlight on Nvidia's weak board and opaque succession planning at what has become the world's most important company — Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's spy scandal shines a spotlight on thin corporate governance and opaque succession planning at what has become the world's…

Google advances agentic AI custom silicon expanding TPU family with 8tx and 8i Max (opens siliconangle.com)

Google LLC today introduced two new specialized silicon chips for artificial intelligence to its eighth-generation Tensor Processing Unit architecture family, aimed at higher compute density and secure inference.

Commerce halted its Megaspeed probe after Nvidia stepped in, NYT reports (opens thenextweb.com)

The Commerce Department stopped its investigation into Megaspeed after Nvidia’s general counsel contacted the agents running it, Ana Swanson and Devlin Barrett reported for The New York Times. The case moved to the Justice Department.

Nvidia Board of Directors Is Investigating Jensen Huang (opens nvidianews.nvidia.com)

Nvidia's board says it is launching an independent investigation into whether CEO Jensen Huang was targeted by a foreign spy plot, after Huang admitted an affair in a memo to staff.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's letter to staff about affair (opens axios.com)

Huang's email to staff admits the affair, takes full responsibility and says he fell short of his duties to Nvidia's board, shareholders and employees.

The US let Nvidia sell chips to an empty office in China (opens theverge.com)

Concerns are being raised that neither the Commerce Department nor Nvidia are doing their due diligence when it comes to vetting Chinese firms cleared to handle the company's H200 AI chips.

Megaspeed exec was recruited to spy on Nvidia CEO, according to US intelligence memo (opens techcrunch.com)

A memo circulated earlier this year reportedly claimed that China’s Ministry of State Security recruited a female technology executive to spy on Nvidia's CEO.

Filing: Google spent roughly $548M to buy around 3M shares of Qualcomm (opens theinformation.com)

Filing: Google spent roughly $548M to buy around 3M shares of Qualcomm, which is pushing into serving the AI data center market — Google's investment arm Google Ventures has acquired nearly 3 million shares of the chip maker Qualcomm, as a result of Qualcomm's purchase of chip software startup…

TSMC is weighing a move into AI memory chips at Nvidia’s request (opens thenextweb.com)

TSMC is considering making advanced memory chips and has begun drafting plans for 3D DRAM at Nvidia’s request, The Information reports. It would put TSMC up against Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron as AI demand keeps memory scarce.

The Nasdaq 100 drops 6%, losing a record $2.3T in value, and the Philadelphia chip index plunges 12%, on concerns over the AI trade after Democrats won Congress (opens bloomberg.com)

Tech stocks fell the most since 2020 as investors exited the AI trade after the election.

Sources: Goldman Sachs and Apollo are in talks with investors to sell portions of SpaceX's ~$40B chip financing, asking some for up to $500M before syndication (opens bloomberg.com)

Sources: Goldman Sachs and Apollo are in talks with investors to sell portions of SpaceX's ~$40B chip financing, asking some for up to $500M before syndication — Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Apollo Global Management Inc. are in talks with Wall Street investors to start selling portions …

Qualcomm is betting big on data centers as smartphone sales sink (opens theverge.com)

With smartphone sales tanking by around 20 percent compared to 2025, Qualcomm is looking to data centers to help boost its bottom line. During its Q4 2026 earnings call, the company laid out its plans to make a splash in the AI data center business, through partnerships with companies like Amazon…

How Nvidia uses soft power to influence customers and shape US chip policy; sources: OpenAI took no public stance on China chip exports to avoid angering Nvidia (opens theinformation.com)

How Nvidia uses soft power to influence customers and shape US chip policy; sources: OpenAI took no public stance on China chip exports to avoid angering Nvidia — Last month, OpenAI Senior Research Scientist Noam Brown posted a link in a company Slack channel to a news story …

AMD reports Q3 revenue up 45% YoY to $13.38B, vs. $13.09B est., Data Center revenue up 97% to $8.5B, forecasts Q4 revenue above est. (opens cnbc.com)

Lisa Su called it AMD's largest and most profitable quarter, and the company forecasts another record of $17 billion next quarter.

Marvell to acquire optical component maker Lumentum in massive $115B deal (opens siliconangle.com)

Lumentum investors would receive 4.5 Marvell shares for each Lumentum share in the $115 billion deal.

Intel stock collapse worsens as $3.5T chip rout spreads (opens finance.yahoo.com)

Apple reports Q4 revenue up 12% YoY to $114.48B, vs. $113.39B est., China revenue up 21% to $17.5B, vs. $18.9B est., in John Ternus' first earnings report (Apple) (opens businesswire.com)

Apple's own results: September-quarter records for revenue, iPhone revenue and EPS. Coverage also notes rising memory costs and hints about third-party AI app revenue.

Sam Altman says supply-constrained DRAM is better used in data centers than sitting in PCs (Tom's Hardware) (opens tomshardware.com)

When talking about local inference, Sam Altman says supply-constrained DRAM is better used in data centers than sitting in PCs and “being used 5% of the time” — With data centers full of RAM, your PC is apparently the problem. … OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has data centers full of memory …

A Samsung Galaxy A07 cost ₹8,999 in January and ₹13,499 in August. We read a year of phone price changes: 1,889 rises, 244 cuts. (opens reddit.com)

impuls8 tracks consumer markets. We read who sells, at what price, on which platform. We matched the same phone, by brand, model, RAM and storage, at five sellers: Amazon, Flipkart, Poorvika, Reliance Digital and Vijay Sales. We read a year of Poorvika's dated price changes.

Filing: Vancouver, WA-based Powerlattice, which makes a power delivery chiplet to reduce AI compute power needs by 50%+, raised $86M (opens geekwire.com)

Powerlattice makes a power delivery chiplet it says cuts AI compute power needs by more than 50%; it raised $31M in 2025.

Google’s first data center satellite is online and writing poetry (opens techcrunch.com)

The first TPU in space is running a Gemma 4 model on Google's data center satellite.

Intel’s stock crashes, knocking $12B from government’s stake (opens techcrunch.com)

Intel blames weak PC sales as the AI industry absorbs memory and other components, pushing PC prices up.

FuriosaAI raises $620m at a $2.9bn valuation for its Nvidia rival chips (opens thenextweb.com)

Seoul-based FuriosaAI, which makes AI inference chips, raised a Series D valuing it at about $2.9bn; South Korea's National Growth Fund put in $280m.

Marvell nears a deal to buy Nvidia-backed Lumentum, Bloomberg reports (opens thenextweb.com)

Bloomberg reports Marvell is in advanced talks to buy Lumentum, which makes the lasers that move data between AI chips; a deal could be announced as soon as next week.

Intel shares plummet more than 20% following weak guidance blamed on PC market slowdown (opens siliconangle.com)

Intel beat expectations but gave a weak forecast blamed on PC softness, and its stock fell more than 22% in late trading.

Seoul-based AI chip startup FuriosaAI raised a $620M Series D at a $2.9B valuation, up from $735M in 2025 (opens bloomberg.com)

South Korea's National Growth Fund contributed $280M of the round.

Sources: Marvell is in advanced talks to buy data center optics maker Lumentum, whose market value is ~$83B (opens bloomberg.com)

Sources: Marvell is in advanced talks to buy data center optics maker Lumentum, whose market value is ~$83B; the deal could be announced as soon as next week — Marvell Technology Inc.

Source: OpenAI, a major Nvidia customer, plans to buy Google's TPUs (opens theinformation.com)

Source: OpenAI, a major Nvidia customer, plans to buy Google's TPUs; a job listing shows it seeks an engineer to “lead the optimization” of its models on TPUs — OpenAI plans to buy Google's AI chips, according to a person familiar with the matter, in a boost for a rising competitor to OpenAI backer…

General Compute raises $100 million Series A, countering the neocloud disaster narrative (opens techcrunch.com)

General Compute is betting on inference chips from outside the Nvidia ecosystem.

Nvidia, AMD to buy $4B in Meta shares as part of expanded chip partnerships (opens siliconangle.com)

The chipmakers' purchase is part of Meta's planned stock sale of up to $95 billion to fund its data center buildout.

Anduril, Qualcomm launch BlueChip, a new kind of US-made laptop (opens techcrunch.com)

Anduril founder Palmer Luckey is vowing to bring computer manufacturing back to the U.S., and by that he doesn't just mean assembly, but every individual component, some of which are exclusively made in China today.

Oracle brings Google’s TPUs to its cloud, adds ChatGPT integrations (opens siliconangle.com)

It is the first time Google is supplying its TPUs to another hyperscaler.

China's Star 50 index of AI and chip leaders is down by 40% in under four months, losing ~$480B in market value (opens reuters.com)

China's Star 50 index of AI and chip leaders is down by 40% in under four months, losing ~$480B in market value; chipmaker CXMT is down ~25% in the past month — While global tech stocks teeter, in China they have already crashed as lofty valuations collapse under worries about AI demand and curbs…

Intel buys quantum software pioneer Classiq for $2.2B (opens siliconangle.com)

Intel is buying the Israeli quantum-programming software startup; SiliconANGLE puts the price at $2.2B, Bloomberg at about $2.3B.