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GlobalFoundries campus in Malta, N.Y.
Mary Thompson | CNBC

Semiconductor manufacturer GlobalFoundries debuted on the Nasdaq this week, valued at over $25 billion, as it became increasingly evident that a global chip shortage could persist through 2023 or later.

Now GlobalFoundries needs to convince public market investors that the company is riding a wave of increased demand for all sorts of microchips, that won’t fizzle out after pandemic-related supply issues abate, and that it can increase profitability even as it spends billions on a capital intensive business.

“I think for the better part of the next five to 10 years, we’re going to be chasing supply not demand,” GlobalFoundries CEO Tom Caulfield said in an interview with CNBC. GlobalFoundries’ clients include Qualcomm, MediaTek, NXP Semiconductors and Qorvo.

Automotive companies and home appliance makers have been struggling for months to obtain enough chips for building products, and now the problem is spreading to electronics manufacturers and their suppliers. Apple, for example, said it will miss out on more than $6 billion in sales this holiday season because of chip shortages. Intel likewise blamed its lower CPU sales on shortages in power supply and networking chips.

But the shortages aren’t for the most advanced chips that use the latest manufacturing methods. Instead, the shortages are for what are often called “legacy nodes,” or semiconductors that use older technology to perform functions like power management, connecting to displays or enabling wireless connections.

Those are the kinds of chips that GlobalFoundries, a third-party silicon-wafer foundry, specializes in manufacturing for its clients, Caulfield explained.

“That’s where the bigger part of the shortage is, because there’s been underinvestment in that,” Caulfield said. “For me, we’re happy to let the bigger companies kind of serve that single-digit nanometer market, and we will be the very best in our differentiated technology.”

Profitability in the foundry business is linked to utilization, or the rate that the foundry’s factories are running around the clock. GlobalFoundries had a utilization rate of 84% in 2020, but Caulfield said that was related to slowdowns at the start of the pandemic.

“I would say, since August of 2020, we can’t make enough. Every day, we try to squeeze out as much as we can. I would say we’re over 100%,” Caulfield said, adding that the company’s wafer capacity was sold out through the end of 2023.

Caulfield said that GlobalFoundries made a strategic decision in 2018 to stop developing the bleeding edge chip manufacturing technologies foundries like TSMC and Samsung are investing in, and instead focus on less advanced but still-essential semiconductors for its clients.

Foundries have low-margin business models and face high labor, equipment and raw materials costs. In its prospectus, GlobalFoundries said it recorded a gross margin of close to 11% in the first half of 2021.

Of the $2.6 billion GlobalFoundries raised on the public markets, $1.5 billion will be spent on capital expenditures to increase capacity to fill demand, Caulfield said. It operates plants in the U.S., Germany and Singapore.

GlobalFoundries stock closed 1.3% lower on Thursday, under its debut price of $47, before rising over 5% on Friday to close at $48.74.

The company is still over 85% owned by Mubadala, the United Arab Emirates state investment fund. Mubadala took control of the company when AMD spun off its manufacturing arm, which became GlobalFoundries, and focused on chip design in 2008.

Caulfield said that Mubadala will reduce its ownership stake in GlobalFoundries in the coming years but will still continue to support the manufacturer.

“Over the next, call it five to six years, in a very orderly and transparent way, [Mubadala will] take some of their ownership out to get more balanced,” Caulfield said.

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Texas Instruments’ stock falls on weak forecast

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Texas Instruments' stock falls on weak forecast

The Texas Instruments headquarters in Dallas, Texas, on Jan. 21, 2024.

N. Johnson | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Texas Instruments reported second-quarter results on Tuesday that beat analysts’ expectations for revenue and earnings. But the stock fell in extended trading due to a third-quarter forecast that missed estimates.

Here’s how the chipmaker did versus LSEG consensus estimates:

  • Earnings per share: $1.41 vs. $1.35 expected
  • Revenue: $4.45 billion vs. $4.36 billion expected

Texas Instruments said it expects current-quarter earnings between $1.36 and $1.60 per share, while analysts were looking for $1.50 per share. The company forecast revenue of $4.45 billion to $4.8 billion, for a midpoint of $4.625 billion. Analysts were expecting revenue of $4.59 billion.

Revenue increased 16% in the second quarter from $3.82 billion in the same period a year earlier. Sales in the company’s analog chip business, its largest, rose 18% to $3.5 billion, surpassing the StreetAccount estimate of $3.39 billion for the segment.

Net income rose 15% to $1.3 billion, or $1.41 per share, from $1.13 billion, or $1.22 per share, a year ago.

Texas Instruments is a key supplier of legacy semiconductors for automotive and industrial uses.

As of Tuesday’s close, Texas Instruments shares were up 15% for the year on broader market optimism for chips. In June, the company said it would spend $60 billion to expand chipmaking factories in Texas and Utah, a move that was praised by the Trump administration in its push to bring more technology manufacturing to the U.S.

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Trump met with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos at the White House last week, sources say

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Trump met with Amazon's Jeff Bezos at the White House last week, sources say

Jeff Bezos, founder and executive chairman of Amazon, takes the stage during The New York Times’ annual DealBook Summit, at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City on Dec. 4, 2024.

Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images

President Donald Trump met with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos at the White House last week, CNBC has learned.

The meeting between Trump and Bezos, one of the world’s richest men, lasted for more than an hour, according to two people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the conversation was private.

Amazon declined to comment on the meeting. A spokesperson for Bezos didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The nature and exact timing of the visit couldn’t be learned.

A Gulfstream G700 private jet linked to Bezos landed in Dulles, Virginia, outside Washington, on July 14 before taking off the next day, according to Jack Sweeney, a programmer who tracks flight data from jets owned by Elon Musk, Bill Gates and others.

Bezos, who also owns rocket company Blue Origin, has cozied up to Trump during his second term in the White House. Trump frequently hurled insults at Bezos during his first term, largely because of the Amazon founder’s ownership of The Washington Post.

Read more CNBC Amazon coverage

Bezos joined a swath of tech CEOs on stage at Trump’s inauguration in January after donating $1 million to his inaugural fund.

The Trump administration praised Bezos for his decision to revamp the Post’s editorial pages to focus on “personal liberties and free markets.”

In April, Trump said Bezos, who stepped down as Amazon’s CEO in 2021, was “terrific” and “a good guy” after the billionaire assured Trump that the e-commerce giant had no plans to display tariff-related surcharges on its website.

More recently, Bezos has reportedly sought to capitalize on the dramatic falling-out between Trump and Musk, who spent more than $250 million to help Trump win a second White House term and previously led the government-slashing initiative called the Department of Government Efficiency.

Bezos competes with Musk, who is the CEO of SpaceX, through Blue Origin and Project Kuiper, Amazon’s low-Earth orbit satellite internet venture.

After Trump and Musk’s relationship soured, Bezos spoke with Trump on several occasions, while Blue Origin CEO Dave Limp traveled to the White House, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The conversations centered in part on government contracts, according to the Journal.

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Amazon to buy AI company Bee that makes wearable listening device

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Amazon to buy AI company Bee that makes wearable listening device

Amazon logo on a brick building exterior in San Francisco on Aug. 20, 2024.

Smith Collection | Gado | Archive Photos | Getty Images

Amazon plans to acquire wearables startup Bee AI, the company confirmed, in the latest example of tech giants doubling down on generative artificial intelligence.

Bee, based in San Francisco, makes a $49.99 wristband that appears similar to a Fitbit smartwatch. The device is equipped with AI and microphones that can listen to and analyze conversations to provide summaries, to-do lists and reminders for everyday tasks.

Bee CEO Maria de Lourdes Zollo announced in a LinkedIn post on Tuesday that the company will join Amazon.

“When we started Bee, we imagined a world where AI is truly personal, where your life is understood and enhanced by technology that learns with you,” Zollo wrote. “What began as a dream with an incredible team and community now finds a new home at Amazon.”

Amazon spokesperson Alexandra Miller confirmed the company’s plans to acquire Bee. The company declined to comment on the terms of the deal.

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Amazon has introduced a flurry of AI products, including its own set of Nova models, Trainium chips, a shopping chatbot and a marketplace for third-party models called Bedrock.

The company has also overhauled its Alexa voice assistant, released more than a decade ago, with AI capabilities as Amazon looks to chip away at the success of rivals such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini.

Ring, the smart home security company owned by Amazon, has also looked to introduce generative AI in some of its products.

Amazon previously experimented in the wearables space through a health and fitness-focused product called Halo. It sunset the Halo in 2023 as part of a broader cost-cutting review.

Other tech companies have launched AI-infused consumer hardware with mixed success.

There’s the Rabbit R1, a small square gadget that costs $199 and uses an OpenAI model to answer questions, as well as the AI pin developed by Humane, which later sold to HP.

Meta‘s Ray-Ban smart glasses have grown in popularity since the first version was released in 2021.

OpenAI in May acquired Jony Ive‘s AI devices startup io for roughly $6.4 billion. The company reportedly plans to develop a screen-free device.

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