Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo listens as President Joe Biden participates virtually in a meeting on the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) for America Act at the White House on July 25, 2022.
Anna Moneymaker | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Intel has been badly beaten down of late, losing 60% of its value this year as it struggles to find its way in the booming artificial intelligence market while aggressively building out fabs in the U.S. The company is turning to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo for help.
In a recent meeting with Raimondo, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger voiced frustration over the heavy reliance that U.S. companies have on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, the world’s largest contract chipmaker.
Raimondo followed that up with meetings with a handful of public market investors to reinforce the importance of chip manufacturing in the U.S., given the growing geopolitical risk around Taiwan, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the discussions were private. Raimondo’s goal was to urge shareholders in companies like Nvidia and Apple to recognize the economic benefits of having a U.S. foundry that can produce AI chips, the people said.
Intel is currently building out plants in four U.S. states as it seeks to become more of a foundry business, manufacturing chips for other suppliers. Earlier this year, Intel was awarded up to $8.5 billion in CHIPS Act funding from the Biden administration and could receive an additional $11 billion in loans from the legislation, which was passed in 2022.
None of the funds have been distributed yet. A senior government official told CNBC disbursements are expected by the end of the year.
It’s an increasingly important initiative for Intel, which is getting trounced in the market for microprocessors. In addition to losing share in its core PC and data center market to the likes of Advanced Micro Devices, Intel is hardly on the map in AI, where Nvidia is dominant.
Intel’s foundry effort has been stunted by delays, according to sources with knowledge of the matter. TSMC is also building a foundry in Arizona and has faced similar issues.
The U.S. Commerce Department declined to comment, as did a spokesperson for Intel.
Intel’s board is meeting this week to discuss the company’s restructuring plans, including potentially splitting up its design business from its foundry, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Intel CFO David Zinsner told investors at a conference last week that splitting up the businesses made sense.
“What I can predict is we are going to create more separation between these two businesses,” Zinsner said. “It’s important for customers to see that separation.”
In its earnings report last month, Intel reported profit and revenue that trailed analysts’ estimates and said it was cutting 15% of its workforce. After the report, the stock had its worst day in 50 years, falling to its lowest in over a decade.
Nvidia manufactures nearly all of its cutting-edge chips at TSMC, which is also a major manufacturer for AMD, Apple, Amazon,. Google and Broadcom. Concerns have been rising for years that China could invade Taiwan, creating a massive risk for the U.S. chip industry.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang spoke at the Goldman Sachs Communicopia conference on Wednesday and was asked about the geopolitical risk tied to Taiwan and what he would do if something happened.
“In the event that we have to shift from one fab to another, we have the ability to do it,” Huang said, in conversation with Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon. “We won’t be able to get the same level of performance or cost, but we will be able to provide the supply.”
Roblox on Friday announced new short-video and AI features that come amid increasing lawmaker scrutiny into how the company protects children on its platform.
With Roblox Moments, users 13 and older will be able to create and share video clips of their gameplay with others on a feed within the platform. The artificial intelligence additions, meanwhile, will allow users to generate advanced 3D objects for the games they create on the platform.
Tune in at 4:15 p.m. ET: Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki joins CNBC TV to discuss the company’s latest announcements coming out of its developer conference. Watch in real time on CNBC+ or the CNBC Pro stream.
Although users can share video clips from mature games on Moments, users who do not meet the age requirements of those experiences will be unable to view them, the company said. Roblox will moderate each video shared on Moments and will allow users to “flag content that they find is inappropriate,” said Matt Kaufman, Roblox safety chief. Moments is launching in a limited release on Friday.
The AI features will roll out to users before the end of the year. Roblox users will be able to use the artificial intelligence tools to create objects, like futuristic monster trucks, that match the aesthetics of the games users build on the platform, said Anupam Singh, Roblox’s senior vice president of engineering. Those creations will also be moderated, Kaufman said.
Roblox faces a number of lawsuits alleging that its design enables online predators to exploit underage victims.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill sued Roblox in August, alleging the company fails to implement robust safety protocols to “protect child users from predators.” At the time, Roblox said, “any assertion that Roblox would intentionally put our users at risk of exploitation is simply untrue.”
The company on Wednesday announced it would expand an age estimation program that Roblox debuted in July.
Google was on Friday hit with a 2.95-billion-euro ($3.45 billion) antitrust fine from European Union regulators for anti-competitive practices in its lucrative advertising technology business.
The European Commission, which is the executive body of the EU, accused Google of distorting competition in the so-called adtech market by unfairly favoring its own display advertising technology services to the detriment of rival adtech providers, advertisers and online publishers.
It also ordered Google to “bring these self-preferencing practices to an end” and “implement measures to cease its inherent conflicts of interest along the adtech supply chain.” The company has 60 days to respond.
“Today’s decision shows that Google abused its dominant position in adtech harming publishers, advertisers, and consumers. This behaviour is illegal under EU antitrust rules,” EU competition chief Teresa Ribera said in a statement Friday.
“Google must now come forward with a serious remedy to address its conflicts of interest, and if it fails to do so, we will not hesitate to impose strong remedies.”
Google’s global head of regulatory affairs, Lee-Anne Mulholland, said the EU decision is “wrong” and the firm will appeal.
“It imposes an unjustified fine and requires changes that will hurt thousands of European businesses by making it harder for them to make money,” Mulholland said. “There’s nothing anticompetitive in providing services for ad buyers and sellers, and there are more alternatives to our services than ever before.”
The case dates back to 2021 when the EU first opened a probe into Google to assess whether the tech giant favors its own online display ad technology services.
The news comes after Reuters reported earlier this week that the Commission had delayed the fine as regulators were waiting for the U.S. to cut tariffs on European cars as part of a trade deal.
Broadcom shares soared 15% on Friday after the chipmaker said on its earnings call that it had secured a new $10 billion customer. Analysts quickly pointed to OpenAI.
Following a better-than-expected earnings report late Thursday, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan told analysts that a fourth large customer had put in orders for $10 billion in custom artificial intelligence chips, which the company calls XPUs.
“One of these prospects released production orders to Broadcom, and we have accordingly characterized them as a qualified customer for XPUs,” Tan said. He added that the order increased Broadcom’s forecast for AI revenue next year, when shipments will begin.
Analysts at Mizuho, Cantor Fitzgerald and KeyBanc all said they think AI startup OpenAI is the customer. The Financial Times reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the partnership, that the two companies co-designed a chip that will hit the market next year.
OpenAI declined to comment on the report.
While Broadcom doesn’t name its large web-scale customers, analysts have said dating back to last year that its first three clients were Google, Meta and TikTok parent ByteDance.
“During the call, the company surprised us by noting that it had secured a $10B order from a fourth XPU customer (we believe this is OpenAI), adding significant upside to the company’s three current XPU customers (Google, Meta, and ByteDance),” analysts at Cantor wrote in a note late Thursday. “Shipments are expected to commence in 2026.”
Broadcom’s stock has been on a tear of late as the company has joined Nvidia at the front of the race to build the kinds of processors and infrastructures needed for massive AI workloads. The stock is up about 130% in the past year, lifting Broadcom’s market cap past $1.6 trillion.
For the fiscal third quarter, Broadcom reported earnings and revenue that topped estimates. The company said it expects $17.4 billion in fourth-quarter revenue, higher than the $17.02 billion expected by Wall Street analysts, with AI revenue reaching $6.2 billion.
But news of an incoming $10 billion customer is what got Wall Street excited.
Tan said on the call that “immediate and fairly substantial demand” boosts the outlook for next year, “and really changes our thinking of what 2026 would be starting to look like.”
The company didn’t provide specific guidance for next year, but Tan suggested that growth in its AI could be above the 50% to 60% range he’d offered in the prior call.
Analysts at Mizuho raised their AI revenue growth estimate for next year to 76% up from about 60%, which would bring the total to $35 billion. Total revenue for the year ending in October 2026 is expected to increase about 30% to $81.8 billion from $63.1 billion this fiscal year, according to analysts surveyed by LSEG.
In addition to hardware, Broadcom has a large software business, keyed by its $61 billion acquisition of server virtualization software vendor VMware in 2023. Revenue in the infrastructure software business, which includes VMWare, rose 43% to $6.79 billion.