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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has looked to woo American semiconductor firms to invest in his country.

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Chief executives of some of the U.S.’s top semiconductor firms poured praise on India’s technology sector at an event on Friday attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the world’s fifth-largest economy looks to position itself as a global chip powerhouse.

The CEOs of Micron and Cadence and senior executives at Applied Materials and AMD were on stage at SemiconIndia alongside Modi, speaking about their investments in India’s chip market. Ajit Manocha, the CEO of U.S.-based industry body SEMI, was also in attendance.

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“For the first time in India’s history, geopolitics, domestic policies and private sector capacity are aligned in India’s favor to become a player in semiconductor production,” Manocha said during a keynote speech.

“We will look back in the year 2023 … as a milestone year in which things began to take shape.”

The event with some of the world’s biggest chip firms highlights India’s ambitions to become a major hub for semiconductors alongside the likes of the U.S., Taiwan and South Korea.

India’s chip strategy

India’s chip strategy consists of two major parts. The first is luring in foreign firms to set up operations and invest in the country while the second is on forming alliances with other key semiconductor nations like the U.S.

New Delhi has introduced supportive policies for the semiconductor sector. In December, the government greenlit a $10 billion incentive plan for the semiconductor industry. This is open to foreign firms too.

And last month, Modi visited the U.S. where he said India would work with America on semiconductors and other areas.

At SemiconIndia, the American chip firms in attendance spoke about their investments in India and announced new ones, highlighting India’s focus on attracting foreign companies.

AMD said it plans to invest around $400 million in India over the next five years. This includes a new campus in Bangalore that will be the company’s largest design center.

“India teams will be pivotal in advancing AI machine learning and both hardware and software capabilities,” Mark Papermaster, CTO of AMD, said during a keynote speech on Friday.

Last month, Micron announced plans to set up a semiconductor assembly and testing facility in the state of Gujarat in India. Micron’s investment will total up to $825 million.

“We are hopeful that this investment will help catalyze other investments in the sector, strengthen indigenous manufacturing capability, encourage innovation and support broader job creation,” Sanjay Mehrotra, CEO of Micron, said on Friday.

India’s IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said Friday that construction on this plant would start “soon.”

Foxconn’s India setback

One other notable attendee was Young Liu, chairman of Foxconn, which is the Taiwanese company that assembles Apple’s iPhones. Over the past couple years, Foxconn has made a push into semiconductors.

It’s biggest effort came last year when Foxconn agreed with Indian metals-to-oil conglomerate Vedanta to set up a semiconductor and display production plant in India as part of a $19.5 billion joint venture. However, Foxconn pulled out of the venture this month, dealing a blow to both the company and India’s ambitions.

Still, it hasn’t seemed to deter both companies. Liu’s presence at the event signals Foxconn’s ambition to invest in India. Liu told CNBC-TV18 on Friday that Foxconn is looking to invest $2 billion in India over the next five years.

Vedanta Group Chair Anil Agarwal said on Friday at SemiconIndia that the company has “identified world class partners for technology and are in the process of tying up with them” in semiconductors.

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Tether reportedly seeks lofty $500 billion valuation in capital raise

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Tether reportedly seeks lofty 0 billion valuation in capital raise

Venezuelan Bolivar and U.S. Dollar banknotes and representations of cryptocurrency Tether are seen in this illustration taken Sept. 8, 2025.

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Tether, the issuer of the largest stablecoin, is planning to raise as much as $20 billion in a deal that could put the crypto company’s value on par with OpenAI, according to a report from Bloomberg News.

The crypto company is looking to raise between $15 billion and $20 billion in exchange for a roughly 3% stake through a private placement, the report said, citing two individuals familiar with the matter. The transaction would involve new equity rather than existing investors selling their stakes, the people told the news service.

The report said that one person close to the matter warned that the talks are in an early stage, which means that the eventual details, including the size of the offering, could change.

However, the deal could ultimately value Tether at around $500 billion, according to the report. That would mean the crypto giant’s valuation would rival some of the world’s biggest private companies, including SpaceX and OpenAI. OpenAI’s fundraising round earlier this year valued the tech company at $300 billion.

Tether, which was once accused of being a criminal’s “go-to cryptocurrency,” has been furthering its plans to return to the U.S. in recent months, given President Donald Trump’s pro-crypto stance. The company earlier this month named a CEO for its U.S. business and launched a new token for businesses and institutions in the U.S. called USAT, which will be regulated in the U.S. under the GENIUS Act.

Stablecoin USD Tether (USDT) is pegged to the U.S. dollar with a market cap that recently surpassed $172 billion. In second place is Tether rival Circle’s USDC stablecoin, which is worth about $74 billion.

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Micron beats on earnings as company sales rise 46% on AI boom

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Micron beats on earnings as company sales rise 46% on AI boom

A person walks by a sign for Micron Technology headquarters in San Jose, California, on June 25, 2025.

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Micron reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue on Tuesday as well as a robust forecast for the current quarter.

The stock rose in extended trading.

Here’s how the company did in comparison with the LSEG consensus:

  • Earnings per share: $3.03, adjusted, vs. $2.86 expected
  • Revenue: $11.32 billion vs. $11.22 billion expected

Micron said revenue in the current period, its fiscal first quarter, will be about $12.5 billion, versus the $11.94 billion average analyst estimate per LSEG.

The company said it had $3.2 billion, or $2.83 per share in net income, versus $887 million, or 79 cents in the year-ago period.

Micron shares have nearly doubled so far in 2025. The company makes memory and storage, which are important components for computers. Micron has been one of the winners of the artificial intelligence boom. That’s because high-end AI chips like those made by Nvidia require increasing amounts of high-tech memory called high-bandwidth memory, which Micron makes.

“As the only U.S.-based memory manufacturer, Micron is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the AI opportunity ahead,” Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said in a statement.

Overall company revenue rose 46% on a year-over-year basis during the quarter.

Micron’s largest unit, which sells memory for cloud providers, reported $4.54 billion in sales during the quarter, more than tripling on a year-over-year basis.

However, the company’s core data center business unit saw sales decline 22% on an annual basis to $1.57 billion in revenue.

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YouTube to allow creators banned for Covid-19, election misinformation to apply for reinstatement

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YouTube to allow creators banned for Covid-19, election misinformation to apply for reinstatement

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Google-owned YouTube on Tuesday said it will soon allow previously banned accounts to apply for reinstatement, rolling back a policy that had treated violations as permanent.

The change applies to channels removed for posting Covid-19 or election-related misinformation, according to a letter from Alphabet lawyer Daniel Donovan to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. Previously, those types of offenses carried lifetime bans.

“Today, YouTube’s Community Guidelines allow for a wider range of content regarding Covid and elections integrity,” Donovan wrote.

YouTube wrote on X that it will be a limited pilot project open to a subset of creators as well as channels that were terminated under policies the company has since retired. YouTube also said its new reinstatement program will launch soon.

Among channels previously banned under those rules were some associated with Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It’s not yet clear whether those channels will be reinstated.

This move follows mounting Republican pressure on tech companies to reverse Biden-era speech policies on vaccine and political misinformation. In March, Rep. Jordan subpoenaed Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, alleging YouTube was a “direct participant in the federal government’s censorship regime.”

In 2021, YouTube said it would remove content that spread misinformation about all approved vaccines.

Donovan wrote that during the pandemic, senior Biden administration officials pressed the company to remove certain Covid-related videos that did not technically violate YouTube’s policies.

In the letter, Donovan said this pressure was “unacceptable and wrong.”

YouTube ended its stand-alone Covid misinformation rules in December 2024, according to Donovan’s letter.

YouTube “will not empower third-party fact-checkers” to moderate content and will continue to enable “free expression” on the platform, Donovan wrote. While Donovan writes that YouTube has not used fact-checkers, the platform has produced programs that are meant to label context on videos.

Similarly, Meta said in January that it had eliminated its fact-checking program on Facebook and Instagram.

YouTube has a feature that will display information panels with links to independent fact checks under videos. The feature says it provides more context on videos across YouTube with information from third-party sources.

In 2017, Google launched a fact-checking tool that would display labels on search and news results.

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