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In its short 14-year history, GlobalFoundries has risen to become the world’s third-largest chip foundry. Based in upstate New York, GlobalFoundries isn’t a household name because it’s manufacturing semiconductors that are designed and sold by other companies.

But it’s quietly helping power nearly every connected device. 

“Look at every electronic device in your house, and I would bet you money that every one of those devices has at least one GlobalFoundries chip in it,” Thomas Caulfield, GlobalFoundries CEO, told CNBC.

GlobalFoundries chips are inside everything from smartphones and cars to smart speakers and Bluetooth-enabled dishwashers. They’re also in the servers running generative artificial intelligence models, a market that’s booming so quickly that chipmaker Nvidia has surpassed a $1 trillion market cap and is forecasting 170% sales growth this quarter.

Within generative AI, GlobalFoundries isn’t focused on making the powerful graphics processing units (GPUs) used to train large language models like ChatGPT. Instead, the company is manufacturing chips that perform functions like power management, connecting to displays, or enabling wireless connections.

Caulfield says AI is “the catalyst for our industry to double in the next eight years and GF will have its fair share, if not more, of that opportunity.”

Five years ago, GlobalFoundries made a bold move away from leading-edge chips, exiting a race that was won by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company

Now, as tensions with China raise concerns over the world’s reliance on TSMC, and the U.S. and China play technological tug-of-war with export controls, GlobalFoundries finds itself positioned well outside the geopolitical crosshairs. The company has spent about $7 billion to expand production in Singapore, Germany, France and upstate New York.

CNBC went to Malta, New York, for a firsthand look at the fabrication plant where GlobalFoundries is adding 800 acres, to ask how the company plans to stay ahead while developing the older chips still essential for everyday devices.

‘It worked out for everybody’

The story began in 2009, when Advanced Micro Devices decided to break off its manufacturing operations into a separate company and focus entirely on designing chips. The newly formed GlobalFoundries took over AMD’s chip fabrication plant, or fab, in Dresden, Germany. At the time, it was a joint venture between AMD and the government of Abu Dhabi’s tech investment arm. Moorhead was working at AMD.

“Our founder, Jerry Sanders, at AMD said, ‘real men have fabs.’ So the thought of spinning out the fab from AMD into its own company was a really big deal,” Moorhead said. AMD “had to do it,” he added, because “the expenses for a leading edge fab were doubling every two or three years. And right now we’re looking at investments of campuses upwards of $100 billion.”

For the first few years, AMD was GlobalFoundries’ only major customer. AMD has since grown to become Nvidia’s main rival for designing GPUs.

“I think it worked out for everybody,” Moorhead said.

GlobalFoundries started building its new fab, and future headquarters, in Malta in 2009. The next year, it expanded into Singapore with the purchase of Chartered Semiconductor. By 2015, it had acquired IBM‘s in-house semiconductor division, taking over production sites in Vermont and New York. By 2018, GlobalFoundries was a $6 billion business.

“Unfortunately, it had a strategy that was not able to produce profitability or free cash flow,” said Caulfield. “So in 2018, when I became the CEO of GlobalFoundries, we decided to make a strategic pivot to focus all our energy, all our R&D, all of our capital deployment to go be the very best at these essential chips. And that began a journey to turning our company around to profitability.”

To this day, GlobalFoundries only makes 12-nanometer chips and above, or what it calls “essential” chips. 

GlobalFoundries CEO Thomas Caulfield shows a 300mm wafer to CNBC’s Katie Tarasov at Fab 8 in Malta, New York, on September 5, 2023.

Carlos Waters

“If you do secure pay transactions, whether it’s on your credit card or on your smart mobile device, we make the chip that does that,” Caulfield said. “Do you like the photographs your camera takes? Well, we make image sensor processors that drive that camera. Do you like the battery life on your phone? We make the PMICs, the power management ICs that make sure that power is managed on these devices.”

During the 2021 chip shortage, GlobalFoundries told CNBC it sold out entirely. That same year, the company went public on the Nasdaq.

“Ultimately, we really need these chips,” said Daniel Newman, CEO of research firm Futurum Group. “We found that out because we had parking lots full of pickup trucks that couldn’t be shipped because they couldn’t put the ECU in or they couldn’t install power seats. So GlobalFoundries had a really strong market requirement.”

Global growth

GlobalFoundries is the only one of the world’s top five chip foundries based in the U.S. The other four are Semiconductor Manufacturing International in China, Samsung with fabs in South Korea and the U.S., and United Microelectronics and TSMC, which are both in Taiwan.

“Not only do we have a high concentration of semiconductor manufacturing in Taiwan between TSMC and UMC, but TSMC is twice the size of the other four companies combined,” Caulfield said.

TSMC makes more than 90% of the world’s most-advanced microchips, creating vulnerability during supply chain backlogs as well as risks tied to China’s continued threats to invade Taiwan. Like GlobalFoundries, TSMC also makes older nodes. Caulfield said GlobalFoundries is absolutely going after TSMC.

“Not only do we have aspirations, we think in certain areas we’ve won,” Caulfield said. He pointed to his company’s radio frequency chips and silicon on insulator technology.

“Silicon on insulator is a huge differentiator when it comes to power, and TSMC doesn’t use that,” Moorhead said.

At a time of geopolitical turmoil, GlobalFoundries is investing about $7 billion to add capacity in parts of the world with lower risk.

In Singapore, the company just completed a $4 billion expansion that it says makes it the country’s most-advanced fab. In June, it finalized a deal with STMicroelectronics to build a jointly owned fab in Crolles, France. 

Not all global expansion endeavors have gone smoothly, however. In 2017, GlobalFoundries made big plans for a fab in Chengdu, China. In 2020, it backed out.

“It turned out we had three relatively large facilities around the world already that were severely underloaded,” Caulfield said. “Adding more capacity at a time when we couldn’t fill our existing capacity was just going to create a bigger economic hole for us.”

The U.S. has recently enacted a series of export bans on chip companies sending advanced tech to China. By only producing older nodes, GlobalFoundries says it’s been “very minimally” impacted.

Making chips in the U.S.

Although GlobalFoundries’ chips are considered legacy nodes, the process and resources needed are still incredibly complex. Caulfield said each silicon wafer goes through at least 1,000 steps over 90 days in the Malta fab. The process requires extensive cleaning, cooling and chemical treatment, which uses a lot of water. GlobalFoundries says Fab 8 uses about 4 million gallons of water a day, reclaiming 65% of that.

“Upstate New York is a very good place for access to high-quality and abundant water,” Caulfield said.

All the heavy machinery also requires about 2 gigawatts of power per day, according to Hui Peng Koh, who heads up the Malta fab. She said it’s enough power to “run a small city.”

“I would say our lowest-cost power is in the U.S.,” Caulfield said. “A lot of our power in upstate New York, where this facility is at, comes from hydroelectric, so it’s a greener power. In both Europe and Singapore, much of that power comes off of natural gas.”

Then there’s the manpower. GlobalFoundries has 13,000 employees worldwide. About 1,500 people report to Koh in Malta. She told CNBC it’s “challenging to attract talent to this part of the world.”

GlobalFoundries recently established the first apprenticeship program that’s registered in the U.S. to help develop a semiconductor workforce in Vermont and New York. In July, TSMC blamed a shortage of skilled labor for delays to its fab being built in Arizona.

The high cost of materials and construction work also make building a fab in the U.S. more expensive than in much of Asia, so public subsidies have been key for reshoring production. GlobalFoundries said New York pitched in more than $2 billion for the Malta fab. The company also applied for funds from the $52 billion national CHIPS and Science Act. Focusing on 12-nanometer and above also helps the company keep costs down.

GlobalFoundries’ Fab 8 in Malta, New York, where Equipment Engineering Manager Chris Belfi led CNBC’s Katie Tarasov on a tour on September 5, 2023.

GlobalFoundries said it’s putting out 400,000 wafers per year from its Malta fab. While Caulfield wouldn’t put a dollar figure on the wafers, he said at any given time, there’s “about a half-billion dollars worth of inventory that’s running over those 90 days to create product.”

GlobalFoundries’ main customers for this massive output of essential chips are the world’s largest fabless chip companies, including Qualcomm, AMD, NXP and Infineon

Eventually, many of its chips end up in the auto, aerospace, and U.S. defense industries.

GlobalFoundries is known for making “specialty chips” in big, exclusive deals, like one with Lockheed Martin in June for onshoring production of certain chips, and a recent $3 billion agreement with the U.S. Department of Defense.

Newman said GlobalFoundries has around 50 such long-term agreements.

“Effectively they’re saying, ‘We will create a stable margin commitment capacity and if the market shifts, we’re going to stand by the letter of our agreement,'” he said.

For companies hit hardest by the chip shortage, a deal with GlobalFoundries is a hedge against it happening again. In February, General Motors set aside exclusive production capacity at the Malta fab.

“GM, their lines got held up for very low-cost components because they couldn’t get enough,” Moorhead said. “What GM decided is that this is too much supply chain risk. We’re going to go directly to GF.”

GlobalFoundries says automotive is one of its fastest-growing segments. It makes many different kinds of chips for cars: the microcontrollers for power seats, airbags and braking; the sensing chips for cameras and Lidar; and battery management chips for electric vehicles.

Meanwhile, the growth of GlobalFoundries’ smartphone business is decelerating, alongside an industrywide slowdown. GlobalFoundries laid off 800 employees in December and January, and issued weaker-than-expected revenue guidance for the third quarter.

“Smart mobile devices last year represented 46% of our revenue,” Caulfield said. “While it grew last year, it was 50% the year before. So we’ve been trying to build our other business and to get more balanced, rather than having such a high exposure to smart mobile devices.”

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Tokenization of the market, from stocks to bonds to real estate is coming, says BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, if we can solve one problem

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Tokenization of the market, from stocks to bonds to real estate is coming, says BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, if we can solve one problem

Bitwise Spot Bitcoin ETF (BITB) signage on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, US, on Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024, with trading commencing on the first US exchange-traded funds that invest directly in the biggest cryptocurrency.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

If the vision of Larry Fink — CEO of BlackRock, the world’s biggest money manager — becomes reality, all assets from stocks to bonds to real estate and more would be tradable online, on a blockchain.

“Every asset — can be tokenized,” Fink wrote in his recent annual letter to investors.

Unlike traditional paper certificates signifying financial ownership, tokens live securely on a blockchain, enabling instant buying, selling, and transfers without paperwork or waiting — “much like a digital deed,” he wrote.

Fink says it would be nothing short of a “revolution” for investing. Think 24-hour markets and a trading settlement process that can be compacted down into seconds from a process that today can still take days, with billions of dollars reinvested immediately back into the economy.

But there’s one big problem, one technology challenge that stands in the way: the lack of a coordinated digital identity verification system.

While technology experts say Fink’s idea isn’t improbable, they agree that there are cybersecurity challenges ahead in making it work.

Verifying asset owners in world of AI deep fakes

Today, it’s not easy to verify online that the person you are interacting with is that person because of the prevalence of AI deepfakes and sophisticated cybercriminals, according to Christina Hulka, executive director of the Secure Technology Alliance, an organization focused on identity, access and payments. As a result, having a unified verification system would be useful because there would be cryptographic validation that people are who they say they are.

“The [financial services] industry is focused on how to build a zero-trust framework for identification. You don’t trust anything until it’s verified,” Hulka said. “The challenge is getting everyone together about which technology to use that makes it as simple and as seamless for the consumer as possible,” she added. 

It’s hard to say precisely how a broad-based digital verification system would work but to support a fully tokenized financial structure, a system would, at a minimum, need to meet stringent security requirements, particularly those tied to financial regulations like the Know Your Customer rule and anti-money laundering rules, according to Zulfikar Ramzan, chief technology officer at Point Wild, a cybersecurity company.

At the same time, the system would need to be low friction and quick. There’s no shortage of technical tools today, especially from the field of cryptography, that can effectively bind a digital identity to a transaction, Ramzan said. “Fifteen to 20 years ago, this conversation would have been a non-starter,” he added.

There have been some successes with programs like this across the globe, according to Ramzan. India’s Aadhaar system is an example of a digital identity framework at a national scale. It enables most of the population to authenticate transactions via mobile devices, and it’s integrated across both public and private services. Estonia has an e-ID system that allows citizens to do everything from banking to voting online. Singapore and the UAE have also implemented strong national identity programs tied to mobile infrastructure and digital services. “While these systems differ in how they handle issues like privacy, they all share a key trait: centralized government leadership that drove standardization and adoption,” Ramzan said.

Centralized personal data is a big target for cybercriminals

While a centralized system solves one challenge, the storage of personally identifiable information and biometrics data is a security risk, said David Mattei, a strategic advisor in the fraud and AML practice at Datos Insights, which works with financial services, insurance and retail technology companies. 

Notably, there have been reports of data stolen from India’s Aadhaar system. And last year, El Salvador’s government had the personal data of 80% of its citizens stolen from a centralized, government-managed citizen identity system. “A lot of security experts do not advocate having a centralized security system because it’s kind of like the pot at the end of the rainbow that every fraudster is trying to get his hands on,” Mattei said.

In the U.S., there’s a long-standing preference for decentralized systems for identity. On mobile devices, Face ID and Fingerprint ID are done not by centralizing all of that data in one spot at Apple or Google, but by storing the data in a secure module on each mobile device. “This makes it much harder, if not impossible, for fraudsters to steal that data en masse,” Mattei said.

Larry Fink, chief executive officer of BlackRock Inc., at the Berlin Global Dialogue in Berlin, Germany, on Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024. 

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Digital driver’s licenses offer a cautionary tale

It would take a significant coordinated effort to come up with a national identity system used for identity verification.

Identity systems in the U.S. today are fragmented, Ramzan said, giving the example of state departments of motor vehicles. “To move forward, we will either need a cohesive national strategy or a way to better coordinate identity across the state and federal levels,” he said.

That’s not an easy task. Take, for example, the effort many states are making to adopt digital driver’s licenses. About a quarter of states today, including Utah, Maryland, Virginia and New York, issue mobile driver’s licenses, according to mDLConnection, an online resource from the Secure Technology Alliance. Other states have pilot programs in effect, have enacted legislation or are studying the issue. But this undertaking is quite ambitious and has been underway for several years.

To implement a national identity verification system would be a “massive undertaking and would require just about every company that does business online to adopt a government standard for identity verification and authentication,” Mattei said.

Competitive forces are another issue to contend with. “There is an ecosystem of vendors who offer identity verification and authentication solutions that would not want a centralized system for fear of going out of business,” Mattei said. 

There are also significant data privacy hurdles to overcome. States and the federal government would need to coordinate to resolve governance issues, and this might prompt “big brother” concerns about the extent to which the federal government could monitor the activities of its citizens.

Many people have “a bit of an allergic reaction” when anything resembling a national ID comes up, Ramzan said.

Fink has been pushing the SEC to look at issue

The idea is not a brand new one for Fink. At Davos earlier this year, he told CNBC that he wanted the SEC “to rapidly expand the tokenization of stocks and bonds.”

There’s BlackRock self-interest at work, and potential cost savings for the firm and many others, which Fink has spoken about. In recent years, BlackRock has been dragged into political battles, and lawsuits, over its voting of a massive amount of shares held in its funds on ESG issues. “We’d never have to vote on a proxy vote anymore,” Fink told CNBC at Davos, referring to “the tax on BlackRock.”

“Every owner would be notified of a vote,” he said, adding that it would bring down the cost of ownership of stocks and bonds.

It is clear from Fink’s decision to give this issue prominent placement in his annual letter — even if it came in third in the order of issues he covered behind both the politics of protectionism and the growing role of private markets — that he isn’t letting up. And what’s needed to make this a reality, he contends, is a new digital identity verification system. The letter is short on details, and BlackRock declined to elaborate, but, at least on the surface, the solution for Fink is clear. “If we’re serious about building an efficient and accessible financial system, championing tokenization alone won’t suffice. We must solve digital verification, too,” he wrote.

Blockchain continues to evolve and people are learning to understand it better. Accordingly, there are initiatives underway to think about how the U.S. can achieve a broad-based identity verification system, Hulka said. There are technical ways to do it, but finding the right way that works for the country is more of a challenge since it has to be interoperable. “The goal is to get to a point where there is one way to verify identity across multiple services,” she said.

Eventually, there will be a tipping point for the financial services industry where it becomes a business imperative, Hulka said. “The question is when, of course.”

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink: The capex needed for AI infrastructure is only going to grow

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Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund closes $4.6 billion growth fund

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Peter Thiel's Founders Fund closes .6 billion growth fund

Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, holds hundred dollar bills as he speaks during the Bitcoin 2022 Conference at Miami Beach Convention Center on April 7, 2022 in Miami, Florida.

Marco Bello | Getty Images

Founders Fund, the venture capital firm run by billionaire Peter Thiel, has closed a $4.6 billion late-stage venture fund, according to a Friday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The fund, Founders Fund Growth III, includes capital from 270 investors, the filing said. Thiel, Napoleon Ta and Trae Stephens are the three people named as directors. A substantial amount of the capital was provided by the firm’s general partners, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Axios reported in December that Founders Fund was raising about $3 billion for the fund. The firm ended up raising more than that amount from outside investors as part of the total $4.6 billion pool, said the person, who asked not to be named because the details are confidential.

A Founders Fund spokesperson declined to comment.

Thiel, best known for co-founding PayPal before putting the first outside money in Facebook and for funding defense software vendor Palantir, started Founders Fund in 2005. In addition to Palantir, the firm’s top investments include Airbnb, Stripe, Affirm and Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Founders Fund is also a key investor in Anduril, the defense tech company started by Palmer Luckey. CNBC reported in February that Anduril is in talks to raise funding at a $28 billion valuation.

Hefty amounts of private capital are likely to be needed for the foreseeable future as the IPO market remains virtually dormant. It was also dealt a significant blow last week after President Donald Trump’s announcement of widespread tariffs roiled tech stocks. Companies including Klarna, StubHub and Chime delayed their plans to go public as the Nasdaq sank.

President Trump walked back some of the tariffs this week, announcing a 90-day pause for most new tariffs, excluding those imposed on China, while the administration negotiates with other countries. But the uncertainty of where levies will end up is a troubling recipe for risky bets like tech IPOs.

SpaceX, Stripe and Anduril are among the most high-profile venture-backed companies that are still private. Having access to a large pool of growth capital allows Founders Fund to continue investing in follow-on rounds that are off limits to many traditional venture firms.

Thiel was a major Trump supporter during the 2016 campaign, but later had a falling out with the president and was largely on the sidelines in 2024 even as many of his tech peers rallied behind the Republican leader.

In June, Thiel said that even though he wasn’t providing money to the campaign for Trump, who was the Republican presumptive nominee at the time, he’d vote for him over Joe Biden, who had yet to drop out of the race and endorse Kamala Harris.

“If you hold a gun to my head, I’ll vote for Trump,” Thiel said in an interview on stage at the Aspen Ideas Festival. “I’m not going to give any money to his super PAC.”

WATCH: Anduril founder Palmer Luckey talks $32 billion government contract

Anduril Founder Palmer Luckey talks $22 billion government contract

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Meta adds former Trump advisor to its board

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Meta adds former Trump advisor to its board

From left, U.S. President Donald Trump, Senator Dave McCormick, his wife Dina Powell McCormick and Elon Musk watch the men’s NCAA wrestling competition at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on March 22, 2025.

Brendan Smialowski | Afp | Getty Images

Meta on Friday announced that it was expanding its board of directors with two new members, including Dina Powell McCormick, a part of President Donald Trump’s first administration.

Powell McCormick served as a deputy national security advisor to Trump from 2017 to 2018. She is also married to Sen. Dave McCormick, a Republican from Pennsylvania who took office in January.

“He’s a good man,” Trump said of McCormick in an endorsement last year, according to the Associated Press. Powell McCormick and her husband were photographed in March beside Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a current advisor to the president, at a wrestling championship match in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Additionally, Powell McCormick was assistant Secretary of State under Condoleezza Rice in President George W. Bush’s administration.

Besides her political background, Powell McCormick is vice chair, president and head of global client services at BDT & MSD Partners. That company was founded in 2023 when the merchant bank BDT combined with Michael Dell’s investment firm MSD. Powell McCormick arrived at the firm after 16 years at Goldman Sachs, where she had been a partner.

Her appointment represents another sign of Meta’s alignment with Republicans following Trump’s return to the White House.

In January, the company announced a shift away from fact-checking and said it was bringing Trump’s friend Dana White, CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship, onto the board. The changes follow Trump dubbing the company behind Facebook and Instagram “the enemy of the people” on CNBC last year.

Also on Friday, Meta said Patrick Collison, co-founder and CEO of payments startup Stripe, was also elected to the board. Stripe was valued at $65 billion in a tender offer last year.

“Patrick and Dina bring a lot of experience supporting businesses and entrepreneurs to our board,” Meta co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement.

Zuckerberg visited the White House last week, after attending Trump’s inauguration in Washington in January. Politico last week reported that the Meto CEO paid $23 million in cash for a mansion in the nation’s capital.

Powell McCormick and Collison officially become directors on April 15, Meta said.

WATCH: Mark Zuckerberg lobbies Trump to avoid Meta antitrust trial, reports say

Mark Zuckerberg lobbies Trump to avoid Meta antitrust trial, reports say

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