The Federal Trade Commission announced today that it issued orders to five companies requiring them to provide information regarding recent investments and partnerships involving generative AI companies and major cloud service providers. The agency's 6(b) inquiry will scrutinize corporate partnerships and investments with AI providers to build a better internal understanding of these relationships and their impact on the competitive landscape. The compulsory orders were sent to Alphabet, Inc., Amazon.com, Inc., Anthropic PBC, Microsoft Corp., and OpenAI, Inc.

"History shows that new technologies can create new markets and healthy competition. As companies race to develop and monetize AI, we must guard against tactics that foreclose this opportunity, "said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. "Our study will shed light on whether investments and partnerships pursued by dominant companies risk distorting innovation and undermining fair competition."

Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp (YMTC), China's biggest NAND flash memory manufacturer, has successfully raised billions of US Dollars in new capital to adapt to challenging US restrictions. According to the report from Financial Times, YMTC, which was added to a trade blacklist in December and barred from procuring US equipment to manufacture chips, exceeded its funding target. However, the exact amount remains undisclosed. The capital increase became necessary due to YMTC's substantial spending on finding alternative equipment and developing new components and core chipmaking tools. This financing round was oversubscribed by domestic investors, reflecting support for YMTC amid tightening US restrictions.

Last year, YMTC managed to raise 50 billion Chinese Yuan or about 7 billion US Dollars for equipment. Spending it all on the supply chain, the company is now looking to bolster its offerings with additional equipment for its memory facilities. One of the investors in the funding rally for YMTC has made a statement for Finanical Times: "If Chinese companies have equipment that can be used, [YMTC] will use it. If not, it will see if countries other than the US can sell to it. If that doesn't work, YMTC will develop it together with the supplier." This statement indicates that the company is looking into several options, where one is simply developing its custom machinery with the suppliers.

Arm Holdings plc (Nasdaq: ARM, "Arm") and Raspberry Pi Ltd today announced an agreement by Arm to make a strategic investment in Raspberry Pi. Arm has acquired a minority stake in Raspberry Pi, further extending a successful long-term partnership between the two companies as they collaborate to deliver critical solutions for the Internet of Things (IoT) developer community.

As the demand for edge compute accelerates, with the proliferation of more demanding IoT and AI applications, Raspberry Pi's solutions are putting the power of low-cost, high-performance computing into the hands of people and businesses all over the world. This investment further cements a partnership that began in 2008, and which has seen the release of many popular Arm-based Raspberry Pi products for students, enthusiasts and commercial developers. Raspberry Pi's most recent flagship product, Raspberry Pi 5, became available at the end of October.

Intel today shared its plans to advance its semiconductor technology development facilities at the Gordon Moore Park at Ronler Acres in Hillsboro, Oregon. The campus is Intel's innovation hub for leading-edge semiconductor research, technology development and manufacturing in the United States. This undertaking is possible with support from the state of Oregon, city of Hillsboro and Washington County, and in anticipation of support from the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act.

"Intel has been dedicated to driving innovation and advancing technology in Oregon for almost five decades, and we are set to lead the charge in restoring America's leadership in semiconductor R&D and manufacturing, backed by Oregon and the U.S. CHIPS Act. This investment further solidifies our commitment to the Silicon Forest and rebalancing the global semiconductor supply chain," said Dr. Ann Kelleher, Intel executive vice president and general manager of the Technology Development Group.

TSMC has gained the Taiwanese government's approval to invest $4.5 billion in its main North American manufacturing hub—Fab 21 is located in the greater Phoenix area. Mass production at the Arizona foundry has been delayed into 2025 due to behind-schedule equipment installations and various workforce-related issues, but a limited trial run is reported to begin early next year. Mid-last month, the TSMC executive board sought approval from Taiwan's Investment Commission for an additional overseas spend (the Arizona operation is registered as a subsidiary company).

This request was approved by the commission yesterday (September 18)—a $3.5 billion cash injection was already given the thumbs-up back in March. Exact areas of expenditure have not been declared to the public, but Taiwanese media outlets believe that the second phase of funds will be marked for working capital expenses at the North American division. Short-term business costs include the purchase of inventory (e.g raw materials), day-to-day operating expenses and resolvement of short-term debts. Mark Liu, TSMC's chairman, recently expressed optimism about goings-on at Arizona's Fab 21—mentioning significant progress made over the spring and summer period.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) yesterday made the announcement that it has approved an investment in Arm Holdings Plc. The market leader in contract chipmaker is prepared to spend around $100 million, upon the UK-headquartered semiconductor design firm going public. Regulatory filing information has SoftBank Group aiming to raise about $4.87 billion with its initial public offering (IPO) of Arm. The listing has, so far, attracted a number of "cornerstone investors" including NVIDIA, Intel, AMD, Apple, Samsung Electronics and Alphabet.

Mark Liu, TSMC's chairman, stated last week that "Arm is an important element of our ecosystem, our technology and our customers' ecosystem. We want it to be successful, we want it to be healthy. That's the bottom line." The spending spree announcements also extended to something Team Blue related—TSMC declared that it has reached an agreement with Intel to purchase a 10% equity interest in IMS Nanofabrication Global, LLC. This deal is valued at roughly $432.8 million. Intel has already sold 20% of IMS to Bain Capital, but it still retains majority ownership—the two business deals valued IMS Nanofabrication at approximately $4.3 billion, according to an Intel statement.

We heard rumblings about Intel considering a stake in Arm earlier this summer—Reuters picked up on the multinational corporation's leadership negotiating with Japan's SoftBank about becoming a potential anchor investor in the latter's initial public offering (IPO) of Arm Holdings plc. Several big players have reportedly been courted as key strategic partners—Arm already counts some of these corporations as major clients and business partners. The looming IPO has an estimated value of around $60 billion and $70 billion. Intel has made their investment public today, as announced this morning by Stuart Pann, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Foundry Services.

Pann elaborated on his company's major strategic decision, during proceedings at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia & Technology Conference: "80% of TSMC wafers have an Arm processor in them...The fact that our organization, the IFS organization, is embracing Arm at this level, investing in Arm, doing partnerships with Arm should give you a signpost that we are absolutely serious about playing this business. Because if you are not working with Arm, you cannot be a foundries provider." Despite competing in several market segements, Intel Foundry Services (IFS) and Arm announced a multi-generation agreement, earlier this year, to enable chip designers to build low-power compute system-on-chips (SoCs) on the former's 18A process. The now tighter relationship appears to be steering Team Blue back to formerly abandoned pastures—Pann stated: "Our focus will be for now, much more on ARM and around RISC-V, because that is where the volumes is at, but expect more to come out in the coming months...For example, we announced something with Arm, we will do more with them, clearly as they expand their base. They have multiple interests in multiple areas, and they have been a superb partner."

Lenovo Group today announced first quarter results, reporting Group revenue of US$12.9 billion and net income of US$191 million on a non-Hong Kong Financial Reporting Standards (HKFRS) basis. Revenue from the non-PC businesses accounted for 41% of Group revenue, with the service-led business achieving strong growth and sustained profitability - further demonstrating the effectiveness of Lenovo's intelligent transformation strategy.

The Group continues to take proactive actions to keep its Expenses-to-Revenue (E/R) ratio resilient and drive sustainable profitability, whilst also investing for growth and transformation. It remains committed to doubling investment in innovation in the mid-term, including an additional US$1 billion investment over three years to accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) deployment for businesses around the world - specifically AI devices, AI infrastructure, and AI solutions.

Sony Corporation was in a boastful mood back in March of this year—Hiroki Totoki, the firm's executive deputy president and CFO declared that a $5+ billion (JP¥700 billion) budget had to been allocated for strategic investments across several departments in 2023. At the time it was not made clear how much of that pot would be assigned to Sony Interactive Entertainment/PlayStation, but a new report published by Nikkei Asia's Business section has revealed that the Japanese multinational conglomerate is set to open up and reach deep into its "war chest."

As its battle with Microsoft/Xbox heats up, Sony has designated a 300 billion yen (converting roughly to $2.13 billion) to research and development for its game division for the fiscal year ending in March 2024. This is reportedly 40% of its total R&D spending, which will exceed its investments in two other key interests—namely electronics and semiconductors. Nikkei notes that "earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) for the company's game business was about 337 billion yen ($2.4 billion) last fiscal year, up more than 60% from five years ago." Sony anticipates that the live service gaming market will hit a high of $19 billion in 2026, so it is shifting priorities from its traditional hardware-based model to an online system where customers are expected to buy add-ons for streamed content. Its $3.7 billion buyout of Bungie in 2022 formed a central pillar for this new strategy—the MMORPG-specialist studio is reportedly serving as a consultant on several live service projects in development at other SIE-owned outfits. The main goal seems to a targeted launch of 12 live service titles by the fiscal year ending March 2026.

Several big players in the industry have (reportedly) presented themselves as potential anchor investors in Ltd. Japan's SoftBank Group Corp, the owner of the British semiconductor and software design company is preparing an initial public offering (IPO) in the USA, with a likely kick-off date in September. The Financial Times has today claimed that NVIDIA was invited (by Softbank) to actively negotiate with Arm leadership with the aim to join a group of prospective IPO anchor investors. Citing insider sources who have been briefed about ongoing deliberations—Team Green could be proposing an investment of roughly $35 billion to $40 billion.

The report suggests that SoftBank would prefer an offer closer to $70 - 80 billion—it seems that more haggling is on the cards. NVIDIA is a longtime partner and client of Arm, with the former attempting to buyout the latter over a year ago—but their agreement was terminated due to "significant regulatory challenges" in regions including the US, UK and China. At the time, the scuppered deal's estimated value was widely reported being $66 billion.

Atari has today announced that it has formed a collaboration with Playmaji, the company responsible for the Polymega retro game console. The new partnership will "include strategic initiatives that will provide support for Atari games on Polymega hardware and software and integration between Polymega and the Atari VCS." The Polymega console features a modular design that allows the owner to configure their unit to suit differing retro games (physical media) libraries. As part of the deal, Playmaji will introduce a new cartridge model that grants backward compatibility with Atari 2600 and 7800 systems. Wade Rosen, chairman and CEO of Atari stated: "Polymega's approach fills an important need in the market, providing a hardware solution that allows players to legally access classic retro content while respecting game companies' intellectual properties."

Bryan Bernal, chief executive officer of Playmaji chipped in: "This partnership is a vote of confidence in Polymega. This is an important step in the growth of our platform, and we look forward to working with Atari in the important space of retro innovation." Atari has been on an expansion kick lately, with its acquisition of retro/abandonware specialist, Nightdive Studios, announced a few months ago, as well as a Fig crowdfunding campaign. News outlets have reached out for a comment about the company's apparent minority investment in Playmaji. Availability of the modular Polymega console has been inconsistent going back many years—customers expressed their concerns about delays in 2019. Playmaji released an assuring message earlier today, likely in reaction to extra attention due to their new partnership: "Every single person with a system pre-order will have it in hand before end of year."

The U.S. Patent Office tribunal has ruled in favor of Intel Corp in a significant $2.2 billion case against VLSI Technology LLC. Intel's bid to nullify a patent that constituted $1.5 billion of a $2.18 billion verdict it previously lost to VLSI in 2021 was accepted. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board invalidated the computer chip-related patent and another VLSI patent, accounting for the rest of the Texas federal court verdict. An Intel spokesperson expressed their satisfaction with the decision, criticizing the invalidated VLSI patents as "low-quality."

VLSI, the company holding the patent that has filed several infringement lawsuits against Intel, retains the option to appeal both decisions to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In a separate case last year, VLSI secured a verdict worth $949 million against Intel in Texas. VLSI is a subsidiary of Fortress Investment Group, which is managed by investment funds from SoftBank Group. The patent board proceeding was initiated by South Dakota-based Patent Quality Assurance LLC, while another patent from the $2.18 billion verdict was contested by OpenSky Industries LLC. Despite initial sanctions for attempting to extort both Intel and VLSI, OpenSky was permitted to continue the proceeding with Intel at the helm.

Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), a leading American venture capital firm is in the process of setting up its first international office (outside of its California base of operations) in the United Kingdom. One of their mission statements reads: "(we) invest in seed to venture to late-stage technology companies, across bio + healthcare, consumer, crypto, enterprise, fintech, games, and companies building toward American dynamism." News sites have reported on Facebook and Twitter being notable "safe" prospects for a16z's team in the past. The company is hedging its bets on the UK government's fairly lax approach to crypto and blockchain regulation, following crackdowns on the cryptocurrency industry in the US. News outlets point to a notable case where the North American financial watchdog/regulator is suing the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, due to activities "placing investors' assets at significant risk." The new Andreessen Horowitz London office is marked for a late 2023 opening—Chris Dixon the head of crypto investing at a16z has written about his firm's decision to embrace a new market location: "While there is still work to be done, we believe that the UK is on the right path to becoming a leader in crypto regulation...The UK also has deep pools of talent, world-leading academic institutions, and a strong entrepreneurial culture."

He has also declared that the UK Prime Minister - Rishi Sunak - is very pleased about a16z setting up shop in the City of London (financial district). The UK leader's statement reads: "As we cement the UK's place as a science and tech superpower, we must embrace new innovations like Web3, powered by blockchain technology, which will enable start-ups to flourish here and grow the economy. That success is founded on having the right regulation and guardrails in place to protect consumers and foster innovation. While there's still work to do, I'm determined to unlock opportunities for this technology and turn the UK into the world's Web3 centre. That's why I am thrilled world-leading investor, Andreessen Horowitz, has decided to open their first international office in the UK - which is testament to our world-class universities and talent and our strong competitive business environment."

We are pleased to announce that we have raised $450 million in Series C funding led by Spark Capital with participation from Google, Salesforce Ventures, Sound Ventures, Zoom Ventures, and others. The funding will support our continued work developing helpful, harmless, and honest AI systems—including Claude, an AI assistant that can perform a wide variety of conversational and text processing tasks.

Anthropic was founded to build AI products that people can rely on and generate research about the opportunities and risks of AI. Our CEO, Dario Amodei, says, "We are thrilled that these leading investors and technology companies are supporting Anthropic's mission: AI research and products that put safety at the frontier. The systems we are building are being designed to provide reliable AI services that can positively impact businesses and consumers now and in the future."

Sony Group Corporation is reported to be considering a partial spinoff and listing of its financial services division, in order to raise capital for further investments in its entertainment arm and next generation image sensor technologies. Reuters has published details from a corporate strategy meeting that took place last week (on May 18) - executives at the Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation are contemplating the future of Sony Financial Group. This arm of the business is comprised of several subdivisions including a bank and an insurance firm. Sony Corporation managed to gain full control of these finance organizations three years ago, according to Reuters.

Sony is seeking to retain a stake of just below 20%, and posits that its financial businesses will gain the ability (following the suggested partial spinoff and listing) to raise cash independently for sustainable growth. The company hopes to provide extra funds for its entertainment and semiconductor operations that "need an unprecedented amount of investment." The PlayStation group is aiming to ramp up production of its PS5 console - supply chain problems have caused delays and unit shortages in the past, and Sony is keen to build on the gaming platform's success, without restrictions going forward. The company is keen to advance its camera parts division - in order to meet increasing market demand for smartphone and vehicle sensor components. Hiroki Totoki (President of Sony Group Corp) emphasized that greater investments in these sectors will allow the company to stay competitive large global rivals.

Applied Materials, Inc. today announced a landmark investment to build the world's largest and most advanced facility for collaborative semiconductor process technology and manufacturing equipment research and development (R&D). The new Equipment and Process Innovation and Commercialization (EPIC) Center is planned as the heart of a high-velocity innovation platform designed to accelerate development and commercialization of the foundational technologies needed by the global semiconductor and computing industries.

To be located at an Applied campus in Silicon Valley, the multibillion-dollar facility is designed to provide a breadth and scale of capabilities that is unique in the industry, including more than 180,000 square feet - more than three American football fields - of state-of-the-art cleanroom for collaborative innovation with chipmakers, universities and ecosystem partners. Designed from the ground up to accelerate the pace of introducing new manufacturing innovations, the new EPIC Center is expected to reduce the time it takes the industry to bring a technology from concept to commercialization by several years, while simultaneously increasing the commercial success rate of new innovations and the return on R&D investments for the entire semiconductor ecosystem.

Ethernovia, Inc., a Silicon Valley-based startup, today announced that it has completed its A-round financing of $64 million. The funding round consists of multiple investors, including Porsche Automobile Holding SE (Porsche SE), Qualcomm Ventures, VentureTech Alliance, AMD Ventures, Western Digital Capital, Fall Line Capital, Taiwania Capital, ENEA Capital and others.

As vehicle architectures evolve from domain-centric controllers, networking solutions must concurrently evolve to support higher data rates of advanced vehicle applications while meeting demand for improved reliability and security. Such advanced applications include Advanced Driver-Assisted Systems (ADAS), autonomous driving (AD) and a rich ecosystem of customer software delivered Over the Air (OTA).

LG is reported to be making substantial investments into improving and upgrading its OLED manufacturing facilities in South Korea - last month we found out about a similar effort underway at Samsung (courtesy of Reuters). Nikkei Asia has today published an article that explores this situation plus a wider context - their findings reaffirm existing claims that Samsung Display has spent $3+ billion on the sprucing up of its Tangjeong factory. LG's modernization bill is smaller at a mere $2.5 billion - this will be spent on creating additional production lines at the company's mainline Paju plant. LG is aiming to increase factory output of medium-sized OLED panels using sixth generation technology.

According to last month's report, industry insiders have suggested that Samsung was ramping up its high end OLED production lines in order to secure substantial component orders from a key client, Apple, with premium display panels destined for fitting on next generation iPad and MacBook products. Reuters posited that LG was not able to fulfil any new requests from Apple at the time - due to its display factories being fully booked and operating at maximum capacity. It seems that LG is now addressing this problem by making necessary and essential upgrades at its Paju P10 OLED facility. A domestic rivalry is only part of the problem, both giant South Korean electronics firms are also keeping a collective eye on other rival manufacturers (operating out of nearby nations).

According to Business Insider, Twitter has made a substantial investment into hardware upgrades at its North American datacenter operation. The company has purchased somewhere in the region of 10,000 GPUs - destined for the social media giant's two remaining datacenter locations. Insider sources claim that Elon Musk has committed to a large language model (LLM) project, in an effort to rival OpenAI's ChatGPT system. The GPUs will not provide much computational value in the current/normal day-to-day tasks at Twitter - the source reckons that the extra processing power will be utilized for deep learning purposes.

Twitter has not revealed any concrete plans for its relatively new in-house artificial intelligence project but something was afoot when, earlier this year, Musk recruited several research personnel from Alphabet's DeepMind division. It was theorized that he was incubating a resident AI research lab at the time, following personal criticisms levelled at his former colleagues at OpenAI, ergo their very popular and much adopted chatbot.

Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation ("SSS") and Raspberry Pi Ltd. ("RPL") today announced the agreement by SSS to make a strategic investment in RPL. The minority investment cements the relationship between the two companies, to provide a development platform for SSS's edge AI devices to the worldwide community of Raspberry Pi users.

"Our goal is to provide new value to a variety of industries and support them in solving issues using our innovative edge AI sensing technology built around image sensors," said Terushi Shimizu, President and CEO of Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation. "We are very pleased to be partnering with Raspberry Pi Ltd. to bring our AITRIOS platform -- which supports the development of unique and diverse solutions utilizing our edge AI devices -- to the Raspberry Pi user and developer community, and provide a unique development experience."

Samsung Electronics has announced that its sub-division, Samsung Display, is planning to invest $3.1 billion until 2026 in Asan, South Korea to manufacture advanced organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display panels. The country's ministry stated that Samsung's next generation of OLED display panels will be integrated into tablets and laptops. There are already rumors swirling that Apple has contracted with Samsung Display to produce parts for a refresh of the MacBook Pro range that is set to debut at some point before 2026.

Industry insiders are claiming that the substantial investment into the company's Asan, South Chungcheong factory will help fulfil orders placed by Apple for iPad and MacBook OLED displays - the North American company has not officially confirmed an adoption of that type of screen technology for these product ranges. Samsung is likely trying to secure a long term relationship with the Silicon Valley behemoth, and at the same time outmaneuver its competitors in South Korea as well as those in neighboring nations. It has been reported that domestic rival LG is currently unable to take on new orders, as its display factories are functioning at maximum production capacities.

Reykjavík, Iceland - 21 March 2023 - CCP Games, creators of sci-fi spacefaring MMO EVE Online, announced today that $40M in financing has been secured from external partners. This financing will allow CCP Games to build upon the discoveries of its research & development team to enable the full-scale development of a new AAA title utilizing blockchain technology, set within the EVE Universe.

"Since its inception, CCP Games' vision has been to create virtual worlds more meaningful than real life. Now, with advancements made within blockchain, we can forge a new universe deeply imbued with our expertise in player agency and autonomy, empowering players to engage in new ways. This financing has marked an exciting frontier in our studio history as we begin our third decade of virtual world operations. We are humbled by the confidence from our partners in the development of this new title," said CCP Games CEO, Hilmar V. Pétursson.

Global fab equipment spending for front-end facilities is expected to decrease 22% year-over-year (YoY) to US$76 billion in 2023 from a record high of US$98 billion in 2022 before rising 21% YoY to US$92 billion in 2024 to reclaim lost ground, SEMI announced today in its latest quarterly World Fab Forecast report. The 2023 decline will stem from weakening chip demand and higher inventory of consumer and mobile devices.

Next year's fab equipment spending recovery will be driven in part by the end of the semiconductor inventory correction in 2023 and strengthening demand for semiconductors in the high-performance computing (HPC) and automotive segments. "This quarter's SEMI World Fab Forecast update offers our first look ahead to 2024, highlighting the steady global expansion of fab capacity to support future semiconductor industry growth driven by the automotive and computing segments and a host of emerging applications," said Ajit Manocha, SEMI president and CEO. "The report points to a healthy 21% uptick in equipment investment next year."

The UK Treasury has set aside a budget of £900 million to invest in the development of a supercomputer that would be powerful enough to chew through more than one billion billion simple calculations a second. A new exascale computer would fit the bill, for utilization by newly established advanced AI research bodies. It is speculated that one key goal is to establish a "BritGPT" system. The British government has been keeping tabs on recent breakthroughs in large language models, the most notable example being OpenAI's ChatGPT. Ambitions to match such efforts were revealed in a statement, with the emphasis: "to advance UK sovereign capability in foundation models, including large language models."

The current roster of United Kingdom-based supercomputers looks to be unfit for the task of training complex AI models. In light of being outpaced by drives in other countries to ramp up supercomputer budgets, the UK Government outlined its own future investments: "Because AI needs computing horsepower, I today commit around £900 million of funding, for an exascale supercomputer," said the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt. The government has declared that quantum technologies will receive an investment of £2.5 billion over the next decade. Proponents of the technology have declared that it will supercharge machine learning.

Intel Corporation today announced that its board of directors has reset its dividend policy, reducing the quarterly dividend to $0.125 per share (or $0.50 annually) on the company's common stock. The dividend will be payable on June 1, 2023, to stockholders of record on May 7, 2023. Intel also reaffirmed its first-quarter 2023 business outlook provided at its most recent earnings call, including revenue of between $10.5 billion and $11.5 billion; gross margin of 34.1% on a GAAP basis and 39% on a non-GAAP basis; tax rate of (84%) on a GAAP basis and 13% on a non-GAAP basis; and earnings per share of $(0.80) on a GAAP basis and $(0.15) on a non-GAAP basis.

The decision to decrease the quarterly dividend reflects the board's deliberate approach to capital allocation and is designed to best position the company to create long-term value. The improved financial flexibility will support the critical investments needed to execute Intel's transformation during this period of macroeconomic uncertainty. Since first initiated in 1992, Intel's dividend has delivered more than $80 billion in cash returns to the company's stockholders, and the board is committed to maintaining a competitive dividend.