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Researchers inside the semiconductor fabrication lab at the Centre for Nano Science and Engineering, at the Indian Institute of Science, in Bangalore on June 30, 2018.

Manjunath Kiran | Afp | Getty Images

India has approved building three semiconductor plants with investments of more than $15 billion as the country aims to become a major chip hub.

“India already has deep capabilities in chip design. With these units, our country will develop capabilities in chip fabrication. Advanced packaging technologies will be indigenously developed in India,” according to a government statement on Thursday.

India has ambitions to become a major chip hub on the lines of the U.S., Taiwan and South Korea, and has been courting foreign firms to set up operations in the country.

Tata Electronics will partner Taiwan’s Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp to build one of the fabrication plants in Dholera, Gujarat, with an investment of nearly $11 billion (Rs.91,000 crore), according to the statement.

PSMC provides chip design and manufacturing services in the logic and memory segments. It has six semiconductor foundries in Taiwan.

The factory will focus on the mature 28-nanometer technology, namely in industries such as automobiles, consumer electronics and defense. Mature technology refers to processes involved in making 28-nanometer or larger chips — generally considered legacy chips.

Tata Semiconductor Assembly and Test Pvt Ltd will set up the second plant in Morigaon, Assam, with an investment of $3.26 billion (Rs.27,000 crore), to develop “indigenous advanced semiconductor packaging technologies including flip chip and integrated system in package technologies” for automotive, EVs and consumer electronics segments.

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CG Power, in partnership with Japan’s Renesas Electronics Corporation and Thailand’s Stars Microelectronics will set up the third factory in Sanand, Gujarat, specializing in chips for consumer, industrial, automotive and power applications. It will see an investment of nearly $1 billion (Rs 7,600 crore).

All three factories will start construction within next 100 days.

India in June 2023 had approved Micron for setting up a semiconductor unit in Sanand, Gujarat.

“Within a very short time, India Semiconductor Mission has achieved four big successes. With these units, the semiconductor ecosystem will get established in India,” the government said.

These factories will directly create 20,000 advanced technology jobs and about 60,000 indirect jobs.

Global chip manufacturers have been looking to diversify operations amid geopolitical uncertainty, which stands to benefit countries such as India.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s largest contract chip maker, most recently opened a new plant in Japan as the country is attempting to boost its lagging chip-manufacturing industry.

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Microsoft loses status as OpenAI’s exclusive cloud provider

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Microsoft loses status as OpenAI's exclusive cloud provider

US President Donald Trump, from left, Larry Ellison, co-founder and executive chairman of Oracle Corp., Junichi Miyakawa, chief executive officer of SoftBank Corp., and Sam Altman, chief executive officer of OpenAI Inc., in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. Trump announced a joint venture to fund artificial intelligence infrastructure worth billions of dollars with the leaders of Softbank Group Corp., OpenAI LLC, and Oracle Corp., an effort aimed at speeding development of the emerging technology.

Aaron Schwartz | Sipa | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Microsoft, the biggest investor in OpenAI and its principal cloud partner, is losing its designation as exclusive provider of computing capacity for the artificial intelligence startup.

In a blog post on Tuesday, Microsoft said that it’s still in a favorable position with OpenAI. Going forward, when OpenAI seeks additional capacity, Microsoft will have the “right of first refusal” before OpenAI checks with other parties.

The change in their relationship was disclosed as part of President Donald Trump’s announcement of the Stargate Project, a joint venture with OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank to invest billions of dollars in AI infrastructure in the U.S. Executives from those companies committed to invest an initial $100 billion and up to $500 billion over the next four years in the project, which will be set up as a separate company.

Oracle is a “key initial technology partner” alongside Arm, Microsoft and Nvidia in setting up data center infrastructure, OpenAI said in a blog post.

“The data centers are actually under construction,” Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison said at a press conference at the White House, alongside Trump. “The first of them are under construction in Texas. Each building is a half a million square feet. There are 10 buildings currently being built, but that will expand to 20 and other locations beyond the Abilene location, which is, which is our first location.”

Oracle shares jumped 7% on Tuesday.

In 2019, three years before the launch of ChatGPT, Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI, which committed to moving its services to Azure. As OpenAI’s computing needs expanded, Microsoft signed contracts with third-party cloud providers, such as CoreWeave, to supplement its Azure cloud infrastructure.

Oracle entered the mix last year. The database software maker, which trails Amazon, Microsoft and Google in the cloud market, said in June that Microsoft’s Azure AI platform would be extended to Oracle’s cloud.

OpenAI said on Tuesday that it will continue to increase consumption of Azure, and Microsoft said OpenAI recently made “a new, large Azure commitment” for products and model training. Microsoft still has rights to OpenAI’s intellectual property, which can go in products such as Copilot. And it still has the exclusive on supplying computing requests for OpenAI’s application programming interface.

But the relationship has shown signs of strain, and Microsoft named OpenAI as a competitor in July. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella talked about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s big ambitions on a podcast with investors Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley that was released in December.

“What he wants to do, I have to accommodate for, so that he can do what he does,” Nadella said. “And he needs to accommodate for the discipline that we need on our end, given the overall constraints that we may have.”

WATCH: President Trump speaks on AI infrastructure investment

President Trump speaks on AI infrastructure investment

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Trump says he’s open to TikTok sale to Elon Musk or Larry Ellison

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Trump says he's open to TikTok sale to Elon Musk or Larry Ellison

The TikTok short form video hosting service logo is seen on a mobile device in this illustration photo taken in Warsaw, Poland on 17 July, 2024.

Jaap Arriens | Nurphoto | Getty Images

President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he’d consider the possibility of Tesla CEO Elon Musk or Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison purchasing TikTok.

At a press briefing to announce a joint venture for investing in artificial intelligence infrastructure, Trump was asked by a reporter if he was open to “Elon buying TikTok.”

“I would be if he wanted to buy it, yes,” Trump said in response. “I’d like Larry to buy it, too.”

TikTok, which is owned by China’s ByteDance, is in a state of limbo in the U.S. after Trump signed an executive order on Monday to keep TikTok operating in the U.S. for 75 days. That order aims to suspend a ban that went into effect after the Supreme Court last week upheld the validity of a national security law that would penalize app stores and service providers for hosting TikTok unless ByteDance sold it.

Analysts have valued TikTok’s U.S. business at about $50 billion.

Trump said on Tuesday that TikTok would be “worthless” without a permit to operate in the U.S., but could be worth $1 trillion with one.

Musk, who is also CEO of SpaceX and owner of social media app X, was one of Trump’s top financial backers in the campaign and is positioned to wield major influence in the administration. Ellison is a longtime Trump supporter, and Oracle is TikTok’s cloud infrastructure provider in the U.S.

“What I’m thinking about saying to somebody is, buy it and give half to the United States of America,” Trump said. “And we’ll give you the permit.'”

Trump said ByteDance would have “the ultimate partner” in the U.S. which would “make it very worthwhile for them in terms of the permits and everything else.”

Trump’s views on TikTok have shifted radically since his first term. In 2020, Trump signed an executive order to ban the app. A federal court viewed his effort as “arbitrary and capricious,” and blocked him. He began to speak more favorably of TikTok after he met in February with billionaire Republican megadonor Jeff Yass, a major ByteDance investor who also owns a stake in the owner of Truth Social, Trump’s social media app.

TikTok CEO Shou Chew attended Trump’s inauguration in Washington, D.C., on Monday.

ByteDance has not indicated whether it will sell TikTok, but the Chinese government has reportedly considered a plan that would involve Musk acquiring the operations.

Musk didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Oracle and TikTok representatives also didn’t provide an immediate comment.

WATCH: President Trump speaks on AI infrastructure investment

President Trump speaks on AI infrastructure investment

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Nvidia passes Apple again to become world’s most valuable company

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Nvidia passes Apple again to become world's most valuable company

Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s founder, president and CEO, speaks about the future of artificial intelligence and its effect on energy consumption and production at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 27, 2024.

Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images

Nvidia passed Apple in market value on Tuesday, once again becoming the most valuable publicly-traded company in the world.

Shares of the chipmaker rose over 1% on Tuesday, and shares are up about 4% so far in 2025 after rising 171% in 2024 and nearly 239% in 2023, reflecting insatiable demand for the company’s artificial intelligence chips.

Meanwhile, Apple shares slid 4% on Tuesday. They’re now down 12% this year after gaining 30% in 2024. The iPhone maker has developed its Apple Intelligence suite of AI features for its phones and laptops, but its business doesn’t have the same level of exposure to the AI boom.

Nvidia has the vast majority of market share for graphics processing units, or GPUs, which have become essential for developing and deploying AI software such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT. While revenue growth has slowed, it still nearly doubled to $35.08 billion in the most recent quarter.

Apple was the first company to reach the $1 trillion, $2 trillion and $3 trillion market cap milestones. Nvidia previously passed Apple in June and then again in November.

On Tuesday, Nvidia had a market cap of about $3.4 trillion, versus Apple at $3.3 trillion.Microsoft is just behind them at $3.2 trillion. A major buyer of Nvidia’s GPUs. Microsoft said earlier this month that it expected to spend $80 billion on AI data centers in fiscal 2025.

In November, Nvidia joined the Dow Industrial Average, replacing Intel, and joining Apple and Microsoft in the blue-chip index.

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Nvidia's outperformance will continue and growth rates will remain higher: Deepwater's Gene Munster

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