Alibaba’s profit fell 75% as quarterly AI spending hit $10bn
Alibaba’s profit fell 75% as quarterly AI spending hit $10bn

Alibaba’s net profit fell 75% in the June quarter, to $1.54bn. The cause was not a weak business. It was the bill for building one. Capital spending reached $9.98bn in three months, up 75% on the same quarter last year, according to the results announc…

Synopsys validates a PCIe 6.0 PHY inside a face-to-face 3D stack at 64 GT/s — says it got there by pulling apart an existing 2D test chip
Synopsys validates a PCIe 6.0 PHY inside a face-to-face 3D stack at 64 GT/s — says it got there by pulling apart an existing 2D test chip

Synopsys has published silicon results for what it calls the first 3D PCIe 6.0 test chip, a 5nm PHY built into a face-to-face stacked package.

SMIC posts record $3B quarter and hikes wafer prices — US sanctions hand Chinese foundry a captive AI market

SMIC posted its first $3 billion quarter earlier this month, with revenue up 36.1% year on year, net profit nearly tripling to $479.2 million.

A British AI-chip startup is raising at $6.5bn after an Anthropic deal
A British AI-chip startup is raising at $6.5bn after an Anthropic deal

Fractile, a British startup building chips for artificial intelligence, is in advanced talks to raise money at a valuation more than six times what it fetched three months ago, Bloomberg reported. The jump follows a deal to supply chips to Anthropic. T…

Samsung hiked foundry prices up to 15%, with China paying the steepest
Samsung hiked foundry prices up to 15%, with China paying the steepest

Samsung has raised prices for some of its advanced contract chipmaking by as much as 15 percent for new orders, according to a Reuters report. Two people familiar with the matter said the increases follow a surge in demand for AI chips. That demand is …

Marvell hands Google a $12.2bn share option in a custom-chip deal
Marvell hands Google a $12.2bn share option in a custom-chip deal

Marvell Technology has agreed to give Google the right to buy up to $12.2 billion of its shares. In return, Google will buy its custom chips. The chipmaker set out the deal in a regulatory filing on Wednesday. Its stock jumped as much as 14 percent on …

Velaura raises $110mn to sell AI chips that cut the power bill, not the clock speed
Velaura raises $110mn to sell AI chips that cut the power bill, not the clock speed

A chip startup that promises to cut the power AI uses has raised $110mn and crossed a $1bn valuation. Velaura AI, based in Santa Clara, announced the Series A round on Tuesday. The company said in a statement that it builds ultra-low-power silicon and …

The US is about to tell 35 countries to choose between it and China on AI
The US is about to tell 35 countries to choose between it and China on AI

Michael Martina reported the draft for Reuters on 14 August, citing a US official and an internal document. The letter goes to the 35 signatories of an American “AI Opportunity Statement” from June. Its message is that countries must choose. The wordin…

The US told Apple not to buy Chinese memory chips. It has no rule that stops it
The US told Apple not to buy Chinese memory chips. It has no rule that stops it

The commerce secretary made the comments to The Wall Street Journal on 14 August, in a piece by Rolfe Winkler, Raffaele Huang and Amrith Ramkumar. “The Trump administration is not in favor of that,” Lutnick said. There have to be “other solutions to th…