Ian King - The Japan Times

December 25, 2024

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Ian King

The departure of Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger opens the possibility of fresh deal talks.

BUSINESS / Companies

Dec 4, 2024

Intel’s CEO departure opens door to new deal discussions

The CEO's departure is also an opportunity for suitors to take another look at acquiring some or all of Intel.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger delivers a speech at the COMPUTEX forum in Taipei on June 4. When Gelsinger met with the Intel board last week, he was given the option to retire or be removed.

BUSINESS / Companies

Dec 3, 2024

Intel CEO forced out by board frustrated with slow progress

Whoever replaces Pat Gelsinger will face the same set of problems he was brought in to fix, including the fallout from decisions made by his predecessors.

Jensen Huang (left), co-founder and CEO of Nvidia, and Masayoshi Son, chairman and CEO of SoftBank Group, during a fireside chat at the Nvidia AI Summit Japan on Wednesday

BUSINESS / Companies

Nov 13, 2024

SoftBank plans first supercomputer with Nvidia Blackwell chips

Nvidia’s chips have become a prized commodity for the world’s biggest tech companies, which use the components to develop and run AI models.

Intel, once the world’s largest chipmaker, has become the target of takeover speculation since a rapid deterioration of its business this year.

BUSINESS / Tech

Sep 28, 2024

Arm is rebuffed by Intel after inquiring about buying product unit

Intel, once the world’s largest chipmaker, has become the target of takeover speculation since a rapid deterioration of its business this year.

Intel has been working on an expensive plan to remake itself and bring in new products, technology and outside customers under Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger.

BUSINESS / Tech

Sep 23, 2024

Apollo to offer multibillion-dollar investment in Intel

The development comes as San Diego-based Qualcomm floats a friendly takeover of Intel, raising the prospect of one of the biggest-ever M&A deals.

A semiconductor wafer at the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) Museum of Innovation in Hsinchu, Taiwan, in 2022

BUSINESS / Tech

Sep 23, 2024

TSMC and Samsung weigh adding chip factories in UAE, WSJ says

Projects of the scale under consideration could cost more than $100 billion to complete and may not come to fruition, the paper reported.

A secretive program called Secure Enclave and involving Intel and the Pentagon seeks to establish production for advanced chips with military and intelligence applications.

BUSINESS / Tech

Sep 14, 2024

Intel solidifies $3.5 billion deal to make chips for U.S. military

The secretive program, called Secure Enclave, seeks to establish production for advanced chips with military and intelligence applications.

Samsung has won the long-awaited approval from artificial-intelligence giant Nvidia for a version of its high-bandwidth HBM3 memory chips.

BUSINESS / Companies

Jul 30, 2024

Samsung begins closing gap in making AI memory chips for Nvidia

The advances that include winning approval from artificial-intelligence giant Nvidia come after months of stumbles for Samsung.

Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang delivers a keynote address on the latest innovations in AI, during a developers conference at the SAP Center in San Jose, California, on March 18. Nvidia on Wednesday issued a second-quarter revenue forecast of about $28 billion, topping the $26.8 billion predicted by analysts.

BUSINESS / Companies

May 23, 2024

Nvidia delivers on AI hype, igniting $140 billion stock rally

Its shares rose as much as 7.8% in extended trading on Wednesday, taking them above $1,000 for the first time.

U.S. President Joe Biden touts the economic benefits of semiconductor investment at Intel’s Ocotillo Campus in Chandler, Arizona, on March 20.

BUSINESS / Tech

May 13, 2024

Global chips battle intensifies with $81 billion subsidy surge

The rush of funding has hardened battle lines in the U.S.-China trade war, including in nations like Japan.

SoftBank Group is in talks to acquire Graphcore, a struggling British semiconductor startup.

BUSINESS / Companies

May 9, 2024

SoftBank said to be in talks to buy troubled AI chip firm Graphcore

Graphcore reported just $2.7 million in revenue for 2022, a 46% drop from the prior year, according to its latest financial report.

Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang displays products onstage during the annual Nvidia GTC Artificial Intelligence Conference at SAP Center in San Jose, California, on Monday.

BUSINESS / Tech

Mar 19, 2024

Nvidia unveils 'superchip' successor to all-conquering AI processor

The new chip, multiple times faster at handling AI models, will be the basis of new computers being deployed by the world’s largest data center operators.

Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief executive officer of SoftBank Group, speaks during the SoftBank World event in Tokyo in October.

BUSINESS / Tech

Feb 17, 2024

Masayoshi Son aims to launch a $100 billion AI chip venture

The SoftBank Group founder is looking to create a chip venture to compete with Nvidia and supply semiconductors essential for AI.

The U.S. push to undermine Beijing’s semiconductor ambitions has increasingly singled out ASML, drawing the ire of the Dutch company's outgoing head Peter Wennink and some local lawmakers.

BUSINESS / Tech

Jan 26, 2024

ASML’s China sales surged despite secret Dutch deal with U.S.

The deal, which hasn’t been reported before, stumbled as ASML turned to Beijing to compensate for weak demand elsewhere.

Nvidia has unveiled three new desktop graphics chips with extra components that will let gamers, designers and other computer users make better use of AI on their personal machines without having to rely on remote services accessed over the internet.

BUSINESS / Tech

Jan 9, 2024

Nvidia rolls out new chips as part of 'AI PC' push

The firm has unveiled three new desktop graphics chips with extra components that will let users make better use of AI on their personal machines.

Up until very recently, the business of packaging semiconductors — encasing chips in materials that both protect them and connect them to the electronic device they’re part of — was, at best, an afterthought for the industry.

WORLD / Politics

Nov 22, 2023

A new front is opening up in the U.S.-China conflict over chips

The process of packaging semiconductors is increasingly seen as the "secret sauce" — a path toward achieving higher performance.

Washington is taking steps to prevent U.S. chipmakers from circumventing government rules in order to sell to China.

BUSINESS / Tech

Oct 16, 2023

U.S. to tighten rules aimed at keeping advanced chips out of China

The Biden administration is aiming to close loopholes that might help its geopolitical rival gain cutting-edge technologies.

Arm CEO Rene Haas rings the opening bell, as Softbank's Arm, a chip design firm, holds an initial public offering at Nasdaq MarketSite in New York on Thursday.

BUSINESS / Companies

Sep 15, 2023

Chip designer Arm soars 25% in IPO win for owner SoftBank

Shares in the chip designer, still 90% owned by SoftBank, closed at $63.59 in New York trading Thursday, giving it a market value of over $65 billion.

Arm U.S. headquarters in San Jose, California

BUSINESS / Companies

Sep 13, 2023

Arm’s CEO is pitching a made-for-you chip strategy ahead of IPO

The company is shifting its strategy, now focusing on doing complex design work on specific products, tailored for what it sees as key areas of growth.

The initial public offering for Arm Holdings is set to be the biggest in the United States this year.

BUSINESS / Markets

Aug 22, 2023

SoftBank’s planned IPO for Arm set to be biggest of 2023

Arm didn’t disclose proposed terms for the share sale in the document, but it’s expected to seek a valuation of $60 billion to $70 billion.

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Visitors to Kyoto walk along a street near Kiyomizu Temple in April. A popular tourist spot, Kyoto has seen what locals feel to be an overwhelming amount of tourists in 2024.

Is Japan ready for 60 million tourists?

By Kathryn Wortley

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