Tech giant Microsoft and Paris-based startup Mistral AI, an innovator in open-source AI model development, have announced a new multi-year partnership to accelerate AI innovation and expand access to Mistral's state-of-the-art models. The collaboration will leverage Azure's cutting-edge AI infrastructure to propel Mistral's research and bring its innovations to more customers globally. The partnership focuses on three core areas. First, Microsoft will provide Mistral with Azure AI supercomputing infrastructure to power advanced AI training and inference for Mistral's flagship models like Mistral-Large. Second, the companies will collaborate on AI research and development to push AI model's boundaries. And third, Azure's enterprise capabilities will give Mistral additional opportunities to promote, sell, and distribute their models to Microsoft customers worldwide.

However, an investment in a European startup can not go smoothly without the constant eyesight of the European Union authorities and regulators to oversee the deal. According to Bloomberg, an EU spokesperson on Tuesday claimed that the EU regulators will perform an analysis of Microsoft's investment into Mistral after receiving a copy of the agreement between the two parties. While there is no formal investigation yet, if EU regulators continue to probe Microsoft's deal and intentions, they could launch a complete formal investigation that could lead to the termination of Microsoft's plans. Of course, the formal investigation is still on hold, but investing in EU startups might become unfeasible for American tech giants if the EU regulators continue to push the scrutiny of every investment made in companies based on EU soil.

Nintendo has published its quarterly financial results for the period ending March 31 (2024)—the numbers indicate that their trusty Switch hybrid console has continued to sell surprisingly well, despite industry watchdogs anticipating a sharp decline in late 2023. A Bloomberg Japan report has extracted crucial information from an important corporate investor call—Shuntaro Furukawa, the current company president, announced another sales milestone. The Switch has reached 139.36 million units sold (as of 31st December 2023) since its original rollout back in March 2017—it has the potential to outsell Sony's classic PlayStation 2 home console. Nintendo's CEO adhered to his company's strict script and did not address the big red elephant in the (conference) room—the highly anticipated Switch successor is an industry open secret—instead focusing on the current iteration being their "main business" going into FY2024-2025.

Despite recent "better than expected" financial figures, the Nintendo Switch is on a sales decline (going back several years)—the gaming community expected improved hardware to arrive at some point before 2024, but the House of Mario is in no rush to take on current generation Sony and Microsoft home console models. Furukawa-san stated that Nintendo will discuss its plans for the financial future during a May earnings briefing—this is largely in line with past declarations, the "Switch 2" is not arriving before Spring 2024. The latest reports suggest that the next Nintendo Direct presentation is scheduled for next week—perhaps February 15. Microsoft's Phil Spencer has teased a major Xbox "business update" announcement within the same timeframe.

AI is reshaping industries, society and the "very fabric of innovation"—and Canada is poised to play a key role in this global transformation, said NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang during a fireside chat with leaders from across Canada's thriving AI ecosystem. "Canada, as you know, even though you're so humble, you might not acknowledge it, is the epicenter of the invention of modern AI," Huang told an audience of more than 400 from academia, industry and government gathered Thursday in Toronto.

In a pivotal development, Canada's Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne shared Friday on X, formerly known as Twitter, that Canada has signed a letter of intent with NVIDIA. Nations including Canada, France, India and Japan are discussing the importance of investing in "sovereign AI capabilities," Huang said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Canada. Such efforts promise to enhance domestic computing capabilities, turbocharging local economies and unlocking local talent. "Their natural resource, data, should be refined and produced for their country. The recognition of sovereign AI capabilities is global," Huang told Bloomberg.

Bloomberg broke the news about Raspberry Pi leadership's lofty ambitions earlier this week—the news outlet reported on the UK-based "personal computer maker" appointing "bankers at Peel Hunt and Jefferies to prepare a London initial public offering (IPO)." In their opinion: "a listing that would be a win for the UK capital after an exodus of companies to the US." The Raspberry Pi 5 single-board computer launched last autumn, and proved to be a hit with hardware enthusiasts thanks to improved silicon delivering significant CPU and GPU uplifts (over Pi 4), and an in-house controller chip granting a fancier interface feature set. The Raspberry Pi Limited company is enjoying its many success stories, including an estimated valuation of ~$560 million and strategic investments courtesy of long-term partner, ARM Ltd.

Eben Upton, CEO of Raspberry Pi (Trading) Ltd., responded to a Tom's Hardware query regarding the Bloomberg news piece. He confirmed that banking firm "Peel Hunt and Jefferies" is involved in the preparation of an upcoming IPO, but nothing has been set in concrete. They expect to proceed: "when the market is ready. Right now there is no target valuation or a firm date." Upton discussed his firm's recent motivations: "We believe that London is the natural listing location for a company like Raspberry Pi, and that it wouldn't be an impediment to attracting US (or other international) investment, provided we're prepared to do the work to educate foreign investors." The listing is not expected to affect normal day-to-day operations, although he does not rule out the potential for growth: "If we do IPO at some point, I don't anticipate any changes to what Raspberry Pi Ltd does. Regardless, we're going to keep doing good engineering, designing the sorts of products we'd like to buy ourselves, and selling them to people (and companies) like us. Of course the Foundation would be able to use any money raised to do what it does at an even larger scale, which would be a great outcome."

Earlier today, Bloomberg published a report that covers expert analysis of the Nintendo Switch successor's alleged display credentials. The media outlet cites claims made by Hiroshi Hayase—Research Manager (of Small Medium Displays) at Omdia. The analyst proposes that Nintendo's hardware design team has selected an eight inch LCD screen for their "Switch 2" games console, he also believes that the launch model is due at some point this year. Hayase-san has gleaned information from supply chain insiders—the Switch successor could double shipments of entertainment-oriented "small displays." Sharp Corporation is believed to be Nintendo's main supplier, according to interpretations of deliberately vague company statements.

Nintendo's 2017 launch model sported a 6.2-inch LCD display, a more portable Lite version arrived in 2019 with a 5.5-inch display, and a larger 7-inch OLED iteration was released back in 2021. Gaming communities have long speculated about an abandoned "Switch Pro" model—many believe that the project was dropped due to ongoing supply chain problems during lockdown periods. The Switch OLED (plus its modernized dock station) is believed to be an interim gap fill. Nintendo has revealed little about their next generation gaming console, but development partners have been making some noise lately. According to a 4Gamer.net interview article, workers at Japanese studios (CAPCOM, Koei Tecmo, and Spike Chunsoft) have expressed major excitement about the upcoming model's prospects. GDC's 2024 State of the Game Industry report revealed that 240 respondents have admitted that they are actively working on Switch 2 games software.

OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, had a turbulent winter 2023 career moment, but appears to be going all in with his company's future interests. A Bloomberg report suggests that the tech visionary has initiated a major fundraising initiative for the construction of OpenAI-specific semiconductor production plants. The AI evangelist reckons that his industry will become prevalent enough to demand a dedicated network of manufacturing facilities—the U.S. based artificial intelligence (AI) research organization is (reportedly) exploring custom artificial intelligence chip designs. Proprietary AI-focused GPUs and accelerators are not novelties at this stage in time—many top tech companies rely on NVIDIA solutions, but are keen to deploy custom-built hardware in the near future.

OpenAI's popular ChatGPT system is reliant on NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, but tailor-made alternatives seem to be the desired route for Altman & Co. The "on their own terms" pathway seemingly skips an expected/traditional chip manufacturing process—the big foundries could struggle to keep up with demand for AI-oriented silicon. G42 (an Abu Dhabi-based AI development holding company) and SoftBank Group are mentioned as prime investment partners in OpenAI's fledgling scheme—Bloomberg proposes that Altman's team is negotiating a $8 to 10 billion deal with top brass at G42. OpenAI's planned creation of its own foundry network is certainly a lofty and costly goal—the report does not specify whether existing facilities will be purchased and overhauled, or new plants being constructed entirely from scratch.

The Chinese semiconductor industry is advancing, and interestingly, it is growing rapidly under sanctions, even with the blacklisting of companies by the US government. China's semiconductor industry is mainly represented by companies like Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) and Huawei Technologies, who are leading the investment and progress in both chip manufacturing and chip design. According to the latest interview with Bloomberg, former TSMC Vice President Burn J. Lin said that the US government and its sanctions can not stop the advancement of Chinese semiconductor companies. Currently, Lin notes that SMIC and Huawei can use older machinery to produce more advanced chips.

Even so, SMIC could progress to 5 nm technology using existing equipment, particularly with scanners and other machinery from ASML. Development under sanctions would also force China to experiment with new materials and other chip packaging techniques that yield higher performance targets. SMIC has already developed a 7 nm semiconductor manufacturing node, which Huawei used for its latest Mate 60 Pro smartphone, based on Huawei's custom HiSilicon Kirin 9000S chip. Similarly, the transition is expected to happen to the 5 nm node as well, and it is only a matter of time before we see other nodes appear. "It is just not possible for the US to completely prevent China from improving its chip technology," noted Burn J. Lin.

Haruhiro Tsujimoto, Capcom's chief operating officer, spoke to Bloomberg during last week's Tokyo Game Show. The discussion touched upon several subject matters, but the key takeaway was his refusal to accept any outside bid for complete ownership of Capcom's development and publishing arms. Sony and Microsoft have been hoovering up studios over the past three years, but the COO stated that any approach or bid for Capcom would be "gracefully declined." Tsujimoto was presented with a hypothetical situation: "How would Capcom respond to an acquisition offer from Microsoft?" A continuation of their existing relationship was his preference going forward: "I believe it would be better if we were equal partners."

He revealed that offers were made in the past: "There was a time (when) we were a target." Capcom desires internal "organic growth," rather than rapid expansion through acquisitions. It will occasionally rely on the third parties to develop games: "I also believe we can utilize external partners...but we have no intention of acquiring companies." Returning to the subject of growth—Capcom has not yet implemented a major price hike for its AAA titles, unlike other (rival) publishers—gamers are now paying up to $70 for (base/standard edition) big-budget interactive experiences on the latest-gen consoles and PCs. The house of Resident Evil and Street Fighter is seemingly ready to follow suit—as reported by Nikkei; Tsujimoto-san stated: "Development costs now are about 100 times more than they were during the Famicom era, but software prices haven't gone up to that extent...There's also a need to raise wages in order to attract talent. Seeing as wages are rising in the industry as a whole, I think raising unit prices is a healthy business model."

Insiders claim that a potential merger between Western Digital and Kioxia is closer to happening—following longer than anticipated negotiation between involved parties, including Bain Capital and Toshiba. Technicalities have prolonged proceedings—an August 2023 sign off date was expected—but Kioxia Holdings' lenders seem motivated to get everything over the finish line. According to a Bloomberg report, at least three Japanese banks are ready to submit a commitment letter (next month) for the refinancing of ¥2 trillion ($14 billion) in loans—anonymous sources suggest that Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, Mizuho Financial Group and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group are involved. These organizations hope to fund the merger with Western Digital's flash memory business.

Representatives for Western Digital, Kioxia, Bain Capital and (so far named) Japanese banks have declined to provide statements in response to the Bloomberg report. Allegedly, part of the loan will be used to pay special dividends to Kioxia's shareholders. A Reuters summary of said conditions reads: "Under the terms of the deal being negotiated, Western Digital will hold about 50.5% of the combined company with the remaining 49.5% held by Kioxia...Of the 2 trillion yen loan, 400 billion yen will likely be funded through loan commitments and the Development Bank of Japan will provide a loan of 300 billion yen. The rest will likely be equally split between the three megabanks." Bloomberg's insiders believe that Western Digital's hard drive business is not being offered up.

Arm's impending IPO, valued between $60 billion and $70 billion, has reportedly garnered substantial backing from industry giants such as Apple, NVIDIA, Intel, and Samsung, as per sources cited in a Bloomberg report. This much-anticipated public offering serves as a litmus test for investor interest in new chip-related stocks and could reshape the tech industry landscape. While the information remains unofficial, it underscores the significant support Arm has received from major licensees, including Apple, AMD, Cadence, Intel, Google, NVIDIA, Samsung, and Synopsys, with each potentially contributing between $25 million and $100 million, a testament to their confidence in Arm's future prospects. Originally, SoftBank aimed to raise $8 billion to $10 billion through the IPO, but a strategic shift to retain a larger Arm stake revised the target to $5 billion to $7 billion.

This IPO's success holds paramount importance for SoftBank and its CEO, Masayoshi Son, particularly following the Vision Fund's substantial $30 billion loss in the previous fiscal year. Masayoshi Son is reportedly committed to maintaining significant control over Arm, planning to release no more than 10% of the company's shares during this initial phase, aligning with SoftBank's recent acquisition of the Vision Fund's Arm stake and reinforcing their belief in Arm's long-term potential. Arm has enlisted renowned global financial institutions such as Barclays, Goldman Sachs Group, JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Mizuho Financial Group to prepare for the IPO, highlighting the widespread interest in the offering and the anticipated benefits for these financial institutions.

According to the report coming from Bloomberg, European Union has approved as much as 8.1 billion Euros (about 8.6 billion USD) for research of advanced semiconductors. Accompanied by the 13.7 billion Euros in private funds, the total investment for boosting domestic semiconductor manufacturing in the EU is almost 22 billion Euros. As part of the European CHIPS Act, the project aims to develop Europe as the world's semiconductor powerhouse, with as much as 20% of all semiconductors produced in the EU by 2030. This ambitious goal is backed by state subsidies, as well as investors creating private pools of funds to aid companies in creating semiconductor manufacturing facilities on European soil.

This Important Project of Common European Interest (IPCEI) on Microelectronics and Communication Technologies is an essential step for Europe's semiconductor independence. Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton noted, "In a geopolitical context of de-risking, Europe is taking its destiny into its own hands. By mastering the most advanced semiconductors, the EU will become an industrial powerhouse in markets of the future." Companies like Intel, Infineon, STMicroelectronics, GlobalFoundries, and Wolfspeed announced European investments, with TSMC considering a production facility in Germany. German Economy Minister Robert Habeck has noted that Germany has 31 projects in 11 regions, adding, "We can thus increase resilience across Europe in this important field and secure value creation and jobs."

Earlier today Nintendo released its financial/earning reports for the fiscal year ending March 2023, and company president Shuntaro Furukawa has briefed investors about sales forecasts, according to a report published by Bloomberg. Furukawa-san predicts that the Switch gaming console will only sell 15 million units over the next fiscal year - sales have been slowing down for a while according to Nintendo's figures, with almost 18 million units purchased throughout 2022-23. The numbers are still very impressive when you consider that Nintendo's flagship gaming platform has been on the market for just over six years - across that span of time, total unit sales have hit the 125.62 million mark.

Furukawa also informed shareholders about the prospect of a Switch console successor arriving within the next fiscal period - Bloomberg's article brings the bad news at this point - it seems that Nintendo is not anticipating a new hardware launch within that time frame. Nintendo's software release schedule - especially in regards to first party titles - looks very threadbare for the rest of the year. The much anticipated Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom arrives on Friday (May 12) followed by Pikmin 4 in July, but things look to be quiet after that - unless Nintendo has a few surprises lined up for June's preview event season. Rumors of a next generation Switch have been doing the rounds since 2020, back then a "Pro" model was often touted - fans later found out that Nintendo had simply refreshed the system with an OLED panel, some tweaks to chipset efficiency, and updated the docking system to modern output standards - this premium model hit the market in late 2021.

Last month, reports were saying that Intel wanted an additional €3.2 billion from the German government in subsidies to build its fab in Magdeburg, but apparently that wasn't nearly enough, as the company has increased its demands to somewhere between €4 billion to €5 billion. What triggered Intel to go ask the German government for even more cash is most likely a combination of things, as Intel is going to want to cover increases in costs courtesy of interest hikes and the inflation that's going on globally, alongside soaring energy prices in Europe. The expected cost of the new fab is said to have increased from €17 billion to €30 billion, which is not exactly pocket change.

In a statement to Bloomberg, Intel said that "disruptions in the global economy have resulted in increased costs, from construction materials to energy," and continued "We appreciate the constructive dialogue with the federal government to address the cost gap that exists with building in other locations and make this project globally competitive." The construction start of the Magdeburg fab has already been delayed and according to Bloomberg, Intel is also considering delaying its planned assembly factory in Italy. It doesn't look promising for either party, as Intel seems to want to spend as little as possible on building its new facilities, while expecting various governments around the world to prop it up until the new facilities are making money. Hopefully neither nation will agree to Intel changing the terms of the deals, as it could cost more nations more than they would earn in long term revenue from Intel.

The Netherlands-based ASML has reportedly launched a comprehensive investigation into the company's branch in China following reports that one of its former employees allegedly stole confidential information. According to Bloomberg, the employee in question was part of a product life cycle management (PLM) program for ASML's advanced lithography solutions. Specifically, the employee worked for the Teamcenter software division responsible for lithography tool management. This software was used to create digital twins of scanners and other tools and allowed information to be shared among the company's employees. In ASML's case, the software contained all the confidential information about the scanners and how they work, which makes it a target for IP theft. We do not know if this is a China-sponsored action to boost its domestic lithography tool development; however, ASML has issued a statement below.

ASMLWe have experienced unauthorized misappropriation of data relating to proprietary technology by a (now) former employee in China. We promptly initiated a comprehensive internal review. Based upon our initial findings we do not believe that the misappropriation is material to our business. However, as a result of the security incident, certain export control regulations may have been violated. ASML has therefore reported the incident to relevant authorities. We are implementing additional remedial measures in light of this incident.

Dell, the global PC conglomerate, is reportedly cutting the number of its employees. The alleged move is a direct response to the economic downturn caused by declining demand for PCs, which is Dell's primary source of revenue. According to Bloomberg Intelligence, Dell is laying off about 5% of its global workforce, representing 6,650 employees from its offices. As the source notes, Dell is going under re-evaluation of its operations, and the employee headcount reduction is the affected area that will benefit the company an estimated 700 million to one billion US Dollars, as analysts predict.

IDC notes that shipments of Dell PCs have experienced the most significant decline of 37% in Q4 of 2022, compared to the same period in 2021. And given a considerable downturn, Dell's 55% of revenue from PCs is poorly affected. The company is now joining others in big tech in performing layoffs to keep profits afloat.

According to Bloomberg, Japan and the Netherlands are getting ready to join the US in limiting access to advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment for China. The three nations are currently in talks—that might end as soon as today—over how they can impose joint limits on what kind of equipment and tools can be exported to China. Apparently there will be no official announcement if a deal is struck, instead the restrictions will simply be implemented as required.

Bloomberg states that the Netherlands will expand export restrictions that ASML is already under, which according to the publication means stricter export rules around DEUV machines, which are used in cutting edge semiconductor nodes. Japan is said to implement similar export restrictions for Nikon as well as Tokyo Electron, with the US already having implemented restrictions for Applied Materials. The export restriction deal is in part being done to appease US equipment makers, who have complained that their international competitors haven't been under the same export restrictions when it comes to China, as they have. The question is if the export restrictions will hinder China in the long run, or if the nation will simply push ahead and develop its own, competing semiconductor manufacturing tools.

Update Jan 28th: Japan and the Netherlands reached an agreement with the US on Friday and the two countries are said to be making individual announcements with regards to their individual agreements with the US.

According to a report from Bloomberg, Western Digital and Kioxia are holding new talks about a potential merger of both companies' flash production businesses. The merger appears to be quite complex, as not only does it involve Western Digital spinning off its flash production business unit, which is then said to be merged with Kioxia, into what will be a publicly traded company in the US, but there will also be a second listing in Japan for the company.

Considering that Kioxia came out of Toshiba's DRAM and NAND flash manufacturing business, in which Western Digital was a partner until Toshiba divested its business into Kioxia. This caused quite some tension between the two companies, but Western Digital and Kioxia kept producing NAND flash in the shared facilities. The report by Bloomberg suggests that a management team from Western Digital will be running the combined company, which could potentially lead to future issues between the US and Japanese sides of the company. Time will tell if a merger will actually take place or not, as the two companies failed to come to an agreement in 2021, but it's possible that something has changed since then. Back in 2021, the merger was valued at US$20 billion plus.

The world is without a doubt entering a recession and now the first rumours of mass layoffs in the tech industry are starting. According to Bloomberg, Intel is considering laying off thousands of employees as a measure to cut costs, as its businesses are slowing down. Bloomberg is mainly citing the PC market, which the publication calls Intel's main business, although Intel's Client Computing Group (CCG) does a lot more than just selling PC chips, but the group was Intel's largest source of revenue in Q2 this year by quite some margin. That said, despite a revenue of US$7.7 billion in Q2, this was down 25 percent compared to 2021, which in all fairness was a record year for most companies in the PC industry.

According to Bloomberg, Intel had 113,700 employees as of July this year and the publication said Intel is considering cutting as much as 20 percent of its sales and marketing staff. Bloomberg is expecting Intel to be looking at reducing fixed costs by 10 to 15 percent, although this is unlikely to affect key parts of Intel's business units. Last quarter, most of Intel's business units made a healthy profit, but only the Network and Edge Group had a significant revenue increase over the same quarter in 2021, with most other groups being down significantly. The third quarter results aren't expected to improve upon things, something that appears to be reflected in Intel's share price, which is down over 50 percent in 2022. That said, all of Intel's competitors are in the same boat and it's likely that we'll see more news about companies that are considering trimming back on their expenses and staff numbers in the near future. Intel is scheduled to report its third quarter earnings on the 27th of October.

Stock prices of major semiconductor foundry companies such as TSMC and Samsung took a major beating on Monday. TSMC, Taiwan's premier foundry, sees its share prices drop by 7.1%, its lowest since Q1 2021. Samsung Electronics dropped by as much as 3.9%, and SK Hynix by 3.5%. Bloomberg reports that the selloffs in Asian markets may have been triggered by traders returning on Monday from a week's holiday reacting to fresh curbs on semiconductor sales to China by the Biden administration. The publication also remarks that global tech stocks have had their worst month since the October 2008.

"The latest U.S. move would prompt China to move faster in fostering the domestic chip industry," said Omdia analyst Akira Minamikawa. "Japanese firms should continue trading with Chinese firms with goods not restricted because the business is business. But they should be ready for a future--maybe in a decade or two--when they lose all the Chinese customers as a result of the current tension dialing up speed of the Chinese efforts."

Qualcomm is a company well known for designing processors going inside a vast majority of smartphones. However, the San Diego company has been making attempts to break out of its vision to focus on smartphones and establish new markets where it could show its potential for efficient processor design. According to Bloomberg's insights, Qualcomm is planning to re-enter the server market and try again to compete in the now very diverse space. In 2014, Qualcomm announced that the company is developing an Arm ISA-based CPU that will target servers and be an excellent alternative for cloud service providers looking at efficient designs called Centriq. Later on, in November of 2017, the company announced the first CPU Centriq 2400, which had 48 custom Falkor cores, six-channel DDR4 memory, and 60 MB of L3 cache.

What happened later is that the changing management of the company slowly abandoned the project, and the Arm CPU market was a bit of a dead-end for many projects. However, in recent years, many companies began designing Arm processors, and now the market is ready for a player like Qualcomm to re-enter this space. With the acquisition of Nuvia Inc., which developed crazy fast CPU IPs under the leadership of industry veterans, these designs could soon see the light of the day. It is reported that Qualcomm is in talks with Amazon's AWS cloud division, which has agreed to take a look at Qualcomm's offerings.

ASML is one of the critical semiconductors companies, as they provide tools for making actual silicon. Located in the Netherlands, they are famous for their DUV and EUV lithography tools, used to etch designs onto silicon wafers. According to the report from Bloomberg, the United States governing body is negotiating with the Dutch government to restrict the export of ASML's products to China. This came to affection following US Deputy Commerce Secretary Don Graves's visit to the Netherlands to discuss supply chain issues and meeting with ASML Chief Executive Officer Peter Wennink. While these suggested export restrictions could be beneficial to the strategic placement of US against China, it would hurt ASML's revenue as sales in China accounted for a 16% share of the company's revenue in 2021.

It is recorded that the Chinese spending spree on tools has been the greatest among every country, lasting for two years in a row. By banning ASML from exporting its lithography tools to China, the US could theoretically halt Chinese plans for achieving the government's intended semiconductor independence. The talks with the Dutch government and ASML are still a work in progress, so we are yet to see if the deal is finalized. Additionally, it is worth pointing out that the major US semiconductor manufacturing tool makers like Applied Materials and Lam Research are already banned from exporting to China.

Back in June, SiFive, a company focusing on providing RISC-V-based IP solutions, received an offer for a takeover from Intel. With a value of over two billion dollars, the company's request was on the table to accept. However, according to the latest report from Bloomberg, SiFive declined an offer and aimed to get an initial public offering or get acquired by an even larger vendor. What made the company reject, you might question?

Well, according to sources familiar with the deal, Intel's offer of two billion USD was not enough, and it interrupted the company's ideologies of operation. SiFive management didn't like how Intel would integrate the company in its roadmaps and decided to stay independent. For now, the company is looking to start an initial public offering or get acquired an even larger company that would respect its vision and guidelines, unlike Intel's offer.

Remember that rumour from last week about TSMC potentially building a fab in Japan and partnering up with Sony? Well, the deal is on and the fab is set to start construction in 2022, with production expected to start sometime in 2024. However, as mentioned, the fab isn't going to be using any cutting edge technology when it comes to the process node, since it's intended for imaging sensors and EV components.

The new fab is said to focus on 28 and 22 nm nodes, according to Tim Culpan, who writes for Bloomberg and who has been reporting on TSMC for at least the last decade. This is backed up by the Nikkei that reports that the US$7 billion fab will make chips in the 20-nm range, without going into further details beyond mentioning these nodes are over a decade old. That said, there are still plenty of products made on older nodes than that, as not everything has to be built on a cutting edge node and many components wouldn't benefit from a smaller node. Regardless, this fab won't help with the current shortage of components, but will hopefully lead to better availability of certain components in the future.

According to Bloomberg, which first predicted the arrival of Apple custom processors in MacBooks, we have another piece of information regarding Apple's upcoming MacBook Pro lineup, set to arrive this summer. As you are aware, MacBook Pro right now comes in two different variants. The first is a smaller 13-inch design that is powered by Apple's M1 chip, while the second is a 16-inch design powered by an Intel Core processor. However, it seems like that will no longer be the case when the next-generation lineup arrives. Starting this summer, all of the MacBook Pro models will have Apple's custom silicon powering these devices, which bring Intel's presence to an end.

And the successor to the now-famous M1 chip seems to be very good. As per the report, Apple is upgrading the architecture and the total core count. There are two different chips, codenamed Jade C-Chop and Jade C-Die. Both are 10-core designs, equipped with two small and eight big cores. The difference between the two is the total number of graphics cores enabled. The smaller version will have 16 graphics cores, while the bigger one will have 32 graphics cores. On the SoC, there will be an updated Neural Engine, for better AI processing. These new processors will come with up to 64 GB of RAM in selected configurations as well. The report also notes the arrival of HDMI port, SD card slot, and MagSafe for charging.

On Monday, GIGABYTE, a Taiwanese PC manufacturer, has published a blog post that made fun of other component manufacturers for having their products made in China, the "low-cost, low-quality way". According to Bloomberg, who was the first to spot the blog post, which is now removed. According to the report, such a statement had a massive toll on the shares of the Taiwanese company. E-commerce operators in China, like JD.com Inc. and Suning.com Co., have removed GIGABYTE products from their offerings and searching GIGABYTE or "Jijia" (Chinese company name) returned zero results from these websites. This has single-handedly caused the shares of the company to plummet by 10%, wiping away around $550 million worth of market cap.

The original blog post has since been removed, and GIGABYTE has issued a public apology, which you can see here. The translation of the text says that "A few days ago, part of the text content published on our official website is seriously inconsistent with the fact. It is caused by poor internal management of the company. We sincerely apologize for the discomfort caused to you." The company has also noted that it is very proud of "Made in China" products. On a more personal note, it is interesting to see such a strict market response coming from a blog post, and even more interesting to witness this exclusion from the Chinese e-commerce companies.