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Pat Gelsinger, CEO, of Intel Corporation, testifies during the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing on semiconductors titled Developing Next Generation Technology for Innovation, in Russell Senate Office Building on Wednesday, March 23, 2022.

Tom Williams | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images

Intel said it will treat its programmable chip unit as as a standalone business, with an aim to spin it out through an IPO in the next two to three years.

The chipmaker’s stock price rose 2.3% in extended trading after the announcement on Tuesday.

Intel’s Programmable Solutions Group will have its own balance sheet as it heads toward independence. The company will continue to support the business and retain a majority stake, and could also seek private investment.

Sandra Rivera, who leads Intel’s broader Data Center and AI group, will become PSG CEO. Intel will manufacture the group’s chips.

The move follows Intel’s spinoff last year of Mobileye, its self-driving subsidiary, and continues a strategy under CEO Patrick Gelsinger to control costs and focus on the foundry business and core processors in an effort to catch Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. in manufacturing by 2026. Intel acquired the FPGA business when it bought Altera for $16.7 billion in 2015.

“Our intention to establish PSG as a standalone business and pursue an IPO is another example of how we are consistently unlocking more value for our stakeholders,” Gelsinger said in a statement.

The move also highlights the strong demand in the semiconductor industry for field programmable gate arrays, or FPGAs. Lattice Semiconductor, a maker of FPGAs, has seen its stock rise about 30% so far in 2023, and reported 18% growth in sales in the most recent quarter. AMD, Intel’s chief rival, bought FPGA maker Xilinx for $35 billion in 2022.

FPGAs are simpler than the powerful processors at the heart of servers and PCs but are often more flexible, respond faster and can be more power-efficient. They’re “programmed” after they’re shipped for specific uses in data centers, telecommunications, video encoding, aviation and other industries. FPGAs can also be used to run some artificial intelligence algorithms.

Intel’s FPGAs are sold under the Agilex brand. Intel doesn’t break out PSG sales yet, but said in July that the unit had three record quarters in a row, offsetting a slump in server chip sales. PSG has been part of Intel’s Data Center and AI group, which generated $4 billion in sales in the second quarter.

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IBM cutting thousands of jobs in the fourth quarter

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IBM cutting thousands of jobs in the fourth quarter

Arvind Krishna, CEO of IBM, arrives for the Inaugural AI Insight Forum in Russell Building on Capitol Hill, on Wednesday, September 13, 2023.

Tom Williams | Cq-roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images

IBM said Tuesday that it will lay off a small percentage of its employees in the current quarter.

“In the fourth quarter we are executing an action that will impact a low single-digit percentage of our global workforce,” a spokesperson told CNBC. “While this may impact some U.S.-based roles, we anticipate that our U.S. employment will remain flat year over year.”

IBM employed 270,000 people at the end of 2024, according to its latest annual report. A 1% cut to headcount would represent the loss of 2,700 jobs.

Other technology companies have been slimming down lately, with executives looking for ways to improve productivity by increasing reliance on artificial intelligence tools.

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In October, Amazon said that it would cut 14,000 corporate employees, while Facebook parent Meta said its AI unit would get rid of 600 workers.

On Oct. 22, IBM delivered stronger earnings than expected, thanks to a 10% jump in revenue from software, meeting consensus.

CEO Arvind Krishna has helped IBM expand its revenue base since he replaced Ginni Rometty in 2020.

The hardware, software and services provider said goodbye to some marketing and communications staff members in March 2024.

AI agents took over the work of about 200 people in human resources, leading the company to bring on more salespeople and software developers, Krishna told The Wall Street Journal in May.

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Appeals court dubious of FTX founder Bankman-Fried’s conviction challenge

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Appeals court dubious of FTX founder Bankman-Fried’s conviction challenge

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, arrives at court as lawyers push to persuade the judge overseeing his fraud case not to jail him ahead of trial, at a courthouse in New York, August 11, 2023.

Eduardo Munoz | Reuters

The judges in a federal appeals court in New York on Tuesday were skeptical of arguments by a lawyer for Sam Bankman-Fried that his conviction for a multi-billion-dollar fraud related to his cryptocurrency exchange FTX and an associated hedge fund should be tossed out.

Bankman-Fried’s attorney, Alexandra Shapiro, was almost immediately and then repeatedly interrupted by the three-judge panel on the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals as she tried to make her case that SBF deserved a new trial because the first one was “fundamentally unfair.”

“From my reading of the record, [there was] very substantial evidence of guilt,” Judge Barringon Parker told Shapiro.

“Are you seriously suggesting to us that if your client had been able to testify about the role that attorneys played in preparing these various documents, the not-guilty verdicts would have rolled in?” Parker asked, as Bankman-Fried’s parents looked on from the courtroom gallery.

Bankman-Fried, 33, was convicted in November 2023 of seven criminal counts for fraud against customers of FTX and lenders to the hedge fund Alameda Research. He is serving a 25-year prison sentence.

Defense lawyer Alexandra Shapiro makes oral arguments before United States Circuit Judges for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit Barington D. Parker Jr., Eunice C. Lee and Maria Araujo Kahn during former cryptocurrency executive Sam Bankman-Fried’s appeal of his fraud conviction in New York City, U.S., November 4, 2025 in a courtroom sketch.

Jane Rosenberg | Reuters

Shapiro argued that rulings by the trial judge, Lewis Kaplan of U.S. District Court in Manhattan, which included limiting what SBF could testify about, unfairly favored prosecutors.

That “allowed the prosecution to present this morally compelling tale, but prevented the defense from showing that the story wasn’t true,” she said.

“The defense was cut off at the knees by the judge’s rulings,” Shapiro told the panel.

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She said prosecutors were allowed to falsely argue at trial that customers and lenders had lost billions of dollars, and would never be able to recover that money.

In reality, she said, it was her understanding that 98% of all FTX creditors have received 120% of their investments plus interest, and that the FTX estate has already paid $8 billion to creditors and another $1 billion in legal fees. She added that there is another $8 billion left to cover $2 billion in remaining claims.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Thane Rehn spent the bulk of his time during the hearing answering questions by the judge over how an $11 billion forfeiture against SBF is structured, and what will happen to that forfeiture order if all victims are made whole before the entire amount is spent.

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OpenAI launches Sora for Android devices

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OpenAI launches Sora for Android devices

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

OpenAI on Tuesday launched its Sora app of AI-generated videos for Android devices.

The artificial intelligence company first launched Sora for Apple devices in September. The announcement on Tuesday brings the popular AI app to the Google Play app store for users in the U.S., Canada, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.

Sora reportedly hit 1 million downloads less than five days after its debut, and it topped Apple’s App Store for nearly three weeks. Sora currently holds the no. 5 spot on Apple’s list of the top free apps, behind Google’s Gemini at no. 4 and ChatGP, which is also made by OpenAI, in the top spot.

OpenAI is working on making the app available in Europe, according to a post on X from Bill Peebles, head of Sora at OpenAI.

The app allows users to create AI-generated videos through written prompts, then post those videos onto a shared feed, similar to that of TikTok. Although initially rolled out as an invite-only platform, Sora is now available to anyone for a limited time, according to an OpenAI post on X.

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