AMD and Intel dip on report China told telecoms to remove foreign chips
Semiconductors are a key focus in the technology trade war taking place between the U.S. and China.
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Shares of Advanced Micro Devices and Intel dipped on Friday after The Wall Street Journal reported that China is ordering the country’s largest telecommunications carriers to cease use of foreign chips.
Chinese officials issued the directive earlier this year for the telecom systems to replace non-Chinese core processors by 2027, the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The report said the mandate would impact AMD and Intel.
Both stocks traded down as much as 4% on Friday afternoon.
Intel declined to comment on the report. AMD didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
China accounted for 27% of Intel’s revenue in 2023, making it the company’s biggest market. AMD generated 15% of sales from China, including Hong Kong, last year. Their reliance on China underscores the continued importance of the world’s second-biggest economy despite U.S. regulations aimed at curbing chip exports to the country and China’s efforts to be less dependent on foreign technology.
China set new guidelines in December to remove U.S. chips from government computers and servers, blocking processors from AMD and Intel, the Financial Times reported last month.
And in October 2022, the U.S. instituted rules designed to limit China’s access to advanced American chips, especially those critical to artificial intelligence technology. Late last year, the U.S. announced new restrictions to prevent the sale of more AI chips to China, seeking to close perceived loopholes in the previous order.
AMD failed to get U.S. approval for an AI chip it designed for China and will need to apply for an export license, Bloomberg reported last month.
Intel has reportedly survived a push by AMD to end its sale of hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of laptop chips to the U.S.-sanctioned Chinese telecom company Huawei.
Technology
Figure AI sued by whistleblower who warned that startup’s robots could ‘fracture a human skull’
Startup Figure AI is developing general-purpose humanoid robots.
Figure AI
Figure AI, an Nvidia-backed developer of humanoid robots, was sued by the startup’s former head of product safety who alleged that he was wrongfully terminated after warning top executives that the company’s robots “were powerful enough to fracture a human skull.”
Robert Gruendel, a principal robotic safety engineer, is the plaintiff in the suit filed Friday in a federal court in the Northern District of California. Gruendel’s attorneys describe their client as a whistleblower who was fired in September, days after lodging his “most direct and documented safety complaints.”
The suit lands two months after Figure was valued at $39 billion in a funding round led by Parkway Venture Capital. That’s a 15-fold increase in valuation from early 2024, when the company raised a round from investors including Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, and Microsoft.
In the complaint, Gruendel’s lawyers say the plaintiff warned Figure CEO Brett Adcock and Kyle Edelberg, chief engineer, about the robot’s lethal capabilities, and said one “had already carved a ¼-inch gash into a steel refrigerator door during a malfunction.”
The complaint also says Gruendel warned company leaders not to “downgrade” a “safety road map” that he had been asked to present to two prospective investors who ended up funding the company.
Gruendel worried that a “product safety plan which contributed to their decision to invest” had been “gutted” the same month Figure closed the investment round, a move that “could be interpreted as fraudulent,” the suit says.
The plaintiff’s concerns were “treated as obstacles, not obligations,” and the company cited a “vague ‘change in business direction’ as the pretext” for his termination, according to the suit.
Gruendel is seeking economic, compensatory and punitive damages and demanding a jury trial.
Figure didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Nor did attorneys for Gruendel.
The humanoid robot market remains nascent today, with companies like Tesla and Boston Dynamics pursuing futuristic offerings, alongside Figure, while China’s Unitree Robotics is preparing for an IPO. Morgan Stanley said in a report in May that adoption is “likely to accelerate in the 2030s” and could top $5 trillion by 2050.
Read the filing here:
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