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Samsung logo displayed on a glass door at the company’s Seocho building in Seoul on July 7, 2022. Samsung Electronics has begun applications for tax breaks for 11 potential chip plants in Texas adding up to investments of about $192 billion, according to documents filed with Texas authorities.

Jung Yeon-je | Afp | Getty Images

Samsung Electronics on Tuesday said it has developed a new high-bandwidth memory chip that has the “highest-capacity to date” in the industry.

The South Korean chip giant claimed the HBM3E 12H “raises both performance and capacity by more than 50%.”

“The industry’s AI service providers are increasingly requiring HBM with higher capacity, and our new HBM3E 12H product has been designed to answer that need,” said Yongcheol Bae, executive vice president of memory product planning at Samsung Electronics.

“This new memory solution forms part of our drive toward developing core technologies for high-stack HBM and providing technological leadership for the high-capacity HBM market in the AI era,” said Bae.

Samsung Electronics is the world’s largest maker for dynamic random-access memory chips, which are used in consumer devices such as smartphones and computers.

Generative AI models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT require large numbers of high-performance memory chips. Such chips enable generative AI models to remember details from past conversations and user preferences in order to generate humanlike responses.

The AI boom continues to fuel chipmakers. U.S. chip designer Nvidia posted a 265% jump in fourth fiscal quarter revenue thanks to skyrocketing demand for its graphics processing units, thousands of which are used to run and train ChatGPT.

During a call with analysts, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the company may not be able to maintain this level of growth or sales for the whole year.

“As AI applications grow exponentially, the HBM3E 12H is expected to be an optimal solution for future systems that require more memory. Its higher performance and capacity will especially allow customers to manage their resources more flexibly and reduce total cost of ownership for datacenters,” said Samsung Electronics.

Samsung said it has started sampling the chip to customers and mass production of the HBM3E 12H is planned for the first half of 2024.

Samsung is likely to see 'very strong' improvement in earnings, analyst says

“I assume the news will be positive for Samsung’s share price,” SK Kim, executive director of Daiwa Securities, told CNBC.

“Samsung was behind SK Hynix in HBM3 for Nvidia last year. Also, Micron announced mass production of 24GB 8L HBM3E yesterday. I assume it will secure leadership in higher layer (12L) based higher density (36GB) HBM3E product for Nvidia,” said Kim.

In September, Samsung secured a deal to supply Nvidia with its high-bandwidth memory 3 chips, according to a Korea Economic Daily report, which cited anonymous industry sources.

The report also said that SK Hynix, South Korea’s second-biggest memory chipmaker, was leading the high-performance memory chip market. SK Hynix was previously known as the sole mass producer of HBM3 chips supplied to Nvidia, the report said.

Samsung said the HBM3E 12H has a 12-layer stack, but applies advanced thermal compression non-conductive film which allows the 12-layer products to have the same height specification as 8-layer ones to meet current HBM package requirements. The result is a chip that packs more processing power, without increasing its physical footprint.

“Samsung has continued to lower the thickness of its NCF material and achieved the industry’s smallest gap between chips at seven micrometers (µm), while also eliminating voids between layers,” said Samsung. “These efforts result in enhanced vertical density by over 20% compared to its HBM3 8H product.”

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Trump says he talked to Apple CEO Tim Cook after China tariff rollback

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Trump says he talked to Apple CEO Tim Cook after China tariff rollback

Apple CEO Tim Cook, center, watches during the inauguration ceremonies for President Donald Trump, right, and Vice President JD Vance, left, in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 20, 2025.

Shawn Thew | Afp | Getty Images

President Donald Trump said Monday that he talked to Apple CEO Tim Cook after the U.S. and China agreed to suspend most tariffs for 90 days.

Wall Street and Apple investors cheered the pause on Chinese tariffs. Apple stock was up 6% in trading on Monday, versus 3% for the Nasdaq.

“I spoke to Tim Cook this morning, and he’s going to, I think, even up his numbers,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “$500 billion, he’s going to be building a lot of plants in the United States for Apple. And we look forward to that.”

Apple previously said in February it would spend $500 billion to expand many of its operations in the U.S., including assembling AI servers in Houston.

Any cooling of a U.S.-China trade war is expected to boost Apple, which does the majority of its device production in the country, and also counts the region as its third-largest by sales.

Read more CNBC tech news

Still, it’s not clear how much Monday’s announcement immediately helped Apple.

In April, most of Apple’s most important products, such as smartphones and computers, received exemptions on some of the highest 145% tariffs, but there are still 30% tariffs on Chinese imports even after Sunday’s deal. Apple still faces 10% tariffs in some of its secondary production locations, such as India and Vietnam.

The Trump administration wants Apple to bring device production, including iPhone manufacturing, to the United States, a move that many experts believe would be unlikely and expensive.

Earlier this month, Cook told investors about the company’s tariff strategy on an earnings call. He said that Apple is currently sourcing American-bound products from production locations in Vietnam and India, but didn’t want to speculate beyond June, calling the situation “difficult to predict.”

An Apple spokesperson declined to comment.

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U.S.-China breakthrough send tech and chip stocks soaring

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U.S.-China breakthrough send tech and chip stocks soaring

HANGZHOU, CHINA – JUNE 3, 2024 – The NVIDIA logo and the Apple logo are pictured in Hangzhou city, Zhejiang province, China, June 6, 2024. On June 5, Eastern time, Nvidia’s stock market value exceeded $3 trillion, officially surpassing Apple’s market value and becoming the world’s second largest technology giant by market value. It is worth noting that in just over 3 months, Nvidia’s market value soared from $2 trillion to $3 trillion. (Photo credit should read CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images)

Cfoto | Future Publishing | Getty Images

Global technology and chip stocks rallied on Monday after the U.S. and China agreed to pause most tariffs on each other’s goods.

Technology stocks — such as semiconductor firms and smartphone makers — have been hit hard as trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies threatened to disrupt supply chains and hurt some of the biggest U.S. businesses.

But investors breathed a sigh of relief after talks between the U.S. and China over the weekend yielded a temporary pause in “reciprocal” tariffs.

In the U.S., Nvidia, which still faces a number of restrictions on the chips it is allowed to ship to China, was around 4% higher in premarket trade, while AMD was up 5%. Broadcom was also around 5% higher, along with Qualcomm.

Other companies in the semiconductor supply chain also jumped. Marvell, which last week postponed a previously scheduled investor day due to macroeconomic uncertainty, surged 7.5% in premarket trade.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s largest chipmaker, saw its U.S.-listed shares jump around 4% in the premarket. TSMC’s Taiwan-listed stock closed before the tariff announcement.

In Europe, ASML, a supplier of critical machinery required to manufacture the most advanced chips, rallied 4.5% in early trade. Infineon was also sharply higher.

Semiconductors and some electronics received an exemption from President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs last month, but the U.S. signaled the reprieve was temporary and that these products could still be in line for special duties.

Investors have been concerned about the impact on major tech stocks, especially those with exposure to China such as Apple and Amazon, whose shares have been under pressure this year.

Apple, which still makes 90% of its iPhones in China, said during its earnings report this month that it expects tariffs will add $900 million to its costs for the current quarter. Apple shares were more than 7% higher.

Amazon was up more than 8% in premarket trade Monday. Many sellers on Amazon rely on Chinese products.

U.S.-listed Chinese tech stocks also surged. Chinese e-commerce giants Alibaba and JD.com were higher, alongside internet firm Baidu.

“With US/China clearly on an accelerated path for a broader deal we believe new highs for the market and tech stocks are now on the table in 2025 as investors will likely focus on the next steps in these trade discussions which will happen over the coming months,” Daniel Ives, global head of technology research at Wedbush Securities, said in a note on Monday.

“This morning is a huge win for the bulls and a best case scenario post this weekend in our view.”

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Google agrees to pay Texas $1.4 billion data privacy settlement

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Google agrees to pay Texas .4 billion data privacy settlement

A Google corporate logo hangs above the entrance to the company’s office at St. John’s Terminal in New York City on March 11, 2025.

Gary Hershorn | Corbis News | Getty Images

Google agreed to pay nearly $1.4 billion to the state of Texas to settle allegations of violating the data privacy rights of state residents, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Friday.

Paxton sued Google in 2022 for allegedly unlawfully tracking and collecting the private data of users.

The attorney general said the settlement, which covers allegations in two separate lawsuits against the search engine and app giant, dwarfed all past settlements by other states with Google for similar data privacy violations.

Google’s settlement comes nearly 10 months after Paxton obtained a $1.4 billion settlement for Texas from Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to resolve claims of unauthorized use of biometric data by users of those popular social media platforms.

“In Texas, Big Tech is not above the law,” Paxton said in a statement on Friday.

“For years, Google secretly tracked people’s movements, private searches, and even their voiceprints and facial geometry through their products and services. I fought back and won,” said Paxton.

“This $1.375 billion settlement is a major win for Texans’ privacy and tells companies that they will pay for abusing our trust.”

Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said the company did not admit any wrongdoing or liability in the settlement, which involves allegations related to the Chrome browser’s incognito setting, disclosures related to location history on the Google Maps app, and biometric claims related to Google Photo.

Castaneda said Google does not have to make any changes to products in connection with the settlement and that all of the policy changes that the company made in connection with the allegations were previously announced or implemented.

“This settles a raft of old claims, many of which have already been resolved elsewhere, concerning product policies we have long since changed,” Castaneda said.

“We are pleased to put them behind us, and we will continue to build robust privacy controls into our services.”

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