Gina Raimondo, US secretary of commerce, speaks at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Washington, DC, on Thursday, Feb. 23, 2023.
Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Standing against conservative critiques of the Biden administration’s conditions on computer chip-manufacturing funding, the tech industry group Chamber of Progress urged the government to maintain its requirements, which include providing child care for workers.
The group counts Apple, Amazon, Google and Meta among its corporate backers. Though they are not the target audience to receive the funding created by the CHIPS and Science Act, Chamber of Progress spokesperson Chris MacKenzie said it’s important to the group that the program run both effectively and on time, since chip manufacturing is important to the entire tech economy in the U.S.
In the letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo shared exclusively with CNBC, Chamber of Progress and the National Asian/Pacific Islander American Chamber of Commerce and Entrepreneurship wrote that competitive benefits and fair labor practices are necessary to achieve the CHIPS Act’s “grand scope” both on time and on budget.
MacKenzie said the group aimed to push back on GOP attacks on so-called wokeness in business. In the letter, they argue that incentivizing child care is good business. It will encourage more women and people from underrepresented racial backgrounds to enter or remain in the chip manufacturing field, they wrote, an essential step for the industry to maintain a robust workforce.
Firms like Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) are among those hoping to take advantage of the funding for their plans to build major chipmaking facilities in the U.S. Both companies have already announcedmassive projects to build up U.S. chip-manufacturing capacity. But the strings attached to the government money have raised concerns among the industry and conservatives.
Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported that TSMC was worried about rules involving profit-sharing of surplus gains and providing details about operations. Chairman Mark Liu called some of the conditions “unacceptable” at an industry event in Taiwan last month, according to the Journal, adding they “aim to mitigate any negative impact from these and will continue discussions with the U.S. government.”
Some Republicans have also railed against the rules.
“What President Biden is doing by jamming woke and green agenda items into legislation we pass is making it harder for him to ever get legislation passed again,” said Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who supported the law’s passage, according to The Associated Press.
But the Commerce Department has maintained that the rules are necessary to protect taxpayer dollars and ensure a stable workforce.
“We simply will not be successful in achieving the national security goals of the CHIPS initiative unless we invest in our workforce, period. Full stop,” Raimondo told CNN in an interview published in late February. “For decades, we’ve taken our eye off the ball with manufacturing, which means the worker supply of people with the skills to do super technical manufacturing has withered. And so, we need to be honest about that, but also embrace it as an opportunity to come up with creative solutions.”
The $52 billion law was designed to strengthen the chip-manufacturing industry in the U.S., limiting dependence on other countries and shoring up the supply chain for an important component used in computers, cars and medical equipment.
In their letter Monday, the chambers also argued that wage and labor contract requirements serve an important business purpose for controlling costs and timeline. They applauded stipulations that would bar companies that accept government money from pursuing stock buybacks for five years. And they supported a policy to require those companies to share a portion of the surplus returns they receive after accepting CHIPS Act funding with the U.S. government, beyond what they projected in their proposals.
“To ensure continued political and public support for the program, implementing strong transparency measures and safeguards now is the best path forward,” the groups wrote.
Alphabet can no longer be ignored. It is going back into our Bullpen list of stocks to watch after our unfortunate exit from the Google parent back in March. We got out of the name due to concerns that Google’s Gemini was not advancing quickly enough to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and because the Justice Department was seeking to force a spin-off of Google’s Chrome browser and prohibit Google from paying Club name Apple a hefty sum to be the default search engine in the iPhone maker’s Safari browser Since then, however, Google has launched Gemini 3 — which, in addition to instantly becoming the new standard for all other large language models to beat, was developed and runs entirely on custom silicon developed by Google, in partnership with Club holding Broadcom . The market also started to appreciate that the custom silicon used to run the model with extreme efficiency may very well represent a new revenue stream, with Google beginning to see more interest in the chips from other companies. Also, following our exit, the ruling from the courts came down in favor of Alphabet, stating that it did not need to spin off Chrome and that the long-time, mutually beneficial partnership between Google and Apple could continue. It was especially important given Apple’s clear intention to leverage third-party technology for its highly anticipated Siri AI upgrade, which goes beyond the option to have OpenAI’s ChatGPT answer complex queries to a full-blown conversational digital assistant. Jim Cramer has said that Google would likely be a better AI partner for Apple’s new Siri due to the search arrangement already in place. Plus, OpenAI is approaching a $1 trillion valuation, based on the numbers being discussed in its latest funding round. Jim has been cautious about OpenAI’s ability to pay for some $1.4 trillion worth of commitments to fund data centers and buy AI chips. Considering OpenAI’s massive spending promises and its extreme cash burn, Gemini, inside the cash machine that is Google, should be worth a lot more. Bottom line While it was clearly a mistake to get out of the name, hindsight is 20/20, and allowing that poor decision to keep us from potential gains in the future, when the facts have so drastically changed, would be a sin. It’s not about where stock is coming from but where it’s going. We can’t allow a regrettable sale cloud what needs to be an objective analysis of Alphabet’s future earnings potential. (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long AAPL, AVGO. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
Firefly’s CEO Jason Kim reacts during the company’s IPO at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York City, U.S., August 7, 2025.
Jeenah Moon | Reuters
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Last week’s liftoff also coincided with President Donald Trump‘s “space superiority” executive order, signed on Friday, that aims to create a permanent U.S. base on the moon.
Investors have also gained more clarity on the future of NASA following a whirlwind drama since Trump won the election.
Google parent Alphabet on Monday announced it will acquire Intersect, a data center and energy infrastructure company, for $4.75 billion in cash in addition to the assumption of debt.
Alphabet said Intersect’s operations will remain independent, but that the acquisition will help bring more data center and generation capacity online faster.
In recent years, Google has been embroiled in a fierce competition with artificial intelligence rivals, namely OpenAI, which kick-started the generative AI boom with the launch of its ChatGPT chatbot in 2022. OpenAI has made more than $1.4 trillion of infrastructure commitments to build out the data centers it needs to meet growing demand for its technology.
With its acquisition of Intersect, Google is looking to keep up.
“Intersect will help us expand capacity, operate more nimbly in building new power generation in lockstep with new data center load, and reimagine energy solutions to drive US innovation and leadership,” Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, said in a statement.
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Google already had a minority stake in Intersect from a funding round that was announced last December. In a release at the time, Intersect said its strategic partnership with Google and TPG Rise Climate aimed to develop gigawatts of data center capacity across the U.S., including a $20 billion investment in renewable power infrastructure by the end of the decade.
Alphabet said Monday that Intersect will work closely with Google’s technical infrastructure team, including on the companies’ co-located power site and data center in Haskell County, Texas. Google previously announced a $40 billion investment in Texas through 2027, which includes new data center campuses in the state’s Haskell and Armstrong counties.
Intersect’s operating and in-development assets in California and its existing operating assets in Texas are not part of the acquisition, Alphabet said. Intersect’s existing investors including TPG Rise Climate, Climate Adaptive Infrastructure and Greenbelt Capital Partners will support those assets, and they will continue to operate as an independent company.
Alphabet’s acquisition of Intersect is expected to close in the first half of 2026, but it is still subject to customary closing conditions.