A Chinese flag is displayed next to a “Made in China” sign seen on a printed circuit board with semiconductor chips, in this illustration picture taken February 17, 2023.
Florence Lo | Reuters
Revenue from China’s top chip equipment makers surged in the first half of the year, research released Thursday showed, as Beijing continues to aim for self-reliance for its semiconductor industry.
The top 10 domestic equipment manufacturers logged revenue of around 16.2 billion Chinese yuan ($2.2 billion) in the first half of the year, up 39% year-on-year, according to Shanghai-based CINNO Research.
Semiconductors — critical components that go into everything from smartphones to satellites — have been caught up in the broader technology battle between the U.S. and China.
Washington has sought to use export restrictions to cut off Beijing from key semiconductor equipment and technologies.
The chip supply chain is incredibly complex and made up of numerous companies, ranging from sellers for design tools for semiconductors to firms involved in manufacturing and relevant machinery.
China’s domestic semiconductor industry has previously heavily relied on foreign companies for these tools, leaving Beijing’s industry behind the likes of the U.S., South Korea and Taiwan.
Since 2019, U.S. sanctions on Chinese technology firms such as Huawei and China’s biggest chipmaker SMIC, has forced Beijing to boost its domestic industry and seek more self-reliance and wean itself off foreign technology.
That has underpinned the boost in revenues for China’s domestic chip equipment manufacturing firms.
CINNO names Naura Technology Group Co. as the top Chinese semiconductor equipment maker by revenue. The company produces tools required in the chip manufacturing process. Naura operating revenue in the first half of they ear stood at more than 7 billion yuan, up 68% year-on-year and outpacing other companies, CINNO said.
The second-largest Chinese domestic player is Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment Inc. China (AMEC), which makes machines required for the semiconductor manufacturing process. Revenue rose 28% year-on-year to 2.53 billion yuan in the first half of the year, CINNO said.
ACM Research is the third-biggest Chinese player. It makes cleaning and packaging equipment for semiconductors, with revenue surging 47% year-on-year in the first half of the year to 1.61 billion yuan.
Still, China lacks access to some of the most advanced chipmaking tools around. For example, Dutch firm ASML makes a chipmaking tool called an extreme ultraviolet lithography machine — one of the costly instruments required to make the most advanced chips around. But ASML has been restricted by the Dutch government from exporting these machines to China.
Those restrictions, in addition to concerns about further tensions with the U.S., are one reason why Beijing has turned to its domestic firms. However, it appears China’s semiconductor industry is making some progress toward more advanced chips, even in the face of U.S. sanctions.
Huawei quietly launched a new smartphone this month, which can connect to next-generation 5G mobile networks, despite U.S. sanctions that aimed to cut the Chinese tech giant off from this technology. That’s thanks to a chip that appears to be manufactured by SMIC — which has surprised because it is a more advanced piece of technology than many had thought the company could produce.
Venezuelan Bolivar and U.S. Dollar banknotes and representations of cryptocurrency Tether are seen in this illustration taken Sept. 8, 2025.
Dado Ruvic | Array
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.
A person walks by a sign for Micron Technology headquarters in San Jose, California, on June 25, 2025.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
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.
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 fromAlphabet 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.