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Semiconductor capital equipment stocks took a brutal U-turn on Monday. Heading into the opening bell, the sector was riding a pre-market high. The optimism was fueled by easing geopolitical tensions in Iran and a blockbuster Wall Street Journal report revealing that Nvidia is in talks to guarantee a massive $250 billion in financing for an OpenAI data center project. But that AI-driven euphoria evaporated instantly. ASML erased early gains of over 2%—and dragged U.S. peers Applied Materials (AMAT), Lam Research (LRCX), and KLA Corp (KLAC) down with it—following a breaking report by The Information. According to the report, a Shanghai-based,...

This video explores **China’s recent development of a domestic Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machine** (0:00), a crucial piece of technology for advanced semiconductor manufacturing. Despite being long dominated by the Dutch company *ASML*, China has managed to build a working prototype by taking a different engineering approach to bypass technical hurdles. **Key takeaways:** * **Light Source Innovation:** Instead of just mirroring *ASML*'s method of hitting moving tin droplets with lasers, China is actively developing **Laser-Induced Discharge Plasma (LDP)** (2:40). While *ASML* moved away from this method years ago due to scalability issues, China is betting on modern advancements to make...

Atop a newly completed, 3.5-million-square-foot building that stands on 1,100 acres in the Arizona desert north of Phoenix is a giant logo of a microchip wafer and the letters TSMC.Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's first Arizona chip fabrication plant, or fab, is making history because it's the most advanced chip fab on U.S. soil, and Apple has committed to being the site's largest customer.CNBC first visited the fab in 2021, not long after TSMC broke ground. The company initially announced the plant would cost $12 billion and pump out 5-nanometer chips by the end of 2024. Three years later, that price...

A semiconductor company whose president was head of the now-bankrupt Solyndra solar energy company stands to receive $6.6 billion in funding from the Biden administration. Under a preliminary agreement, according to CNBC, a subsidiary of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) in Arizona will receive the funding under the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act. The company’s president is Brian Harrison. The Washington Free Beacon reported that Harrison was CEO of Solyndra, which in the early 2000s was involved in the manufacturing of solar panels and considered at the forefront of the sustainable energy industry.

On Wednesday, while campaigning in Arizona, Joe Biden revealed that the government reached an $8.5 billion deal with U.S. chipmaker Intel to build four plants in the U.S. that will build advanced computer chips. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said the deal would enable the U.S. to manufacture 20% of the world's most advanced computer chips by 2030 and create 30,000 jobs. “Failure is not an option — leading-edge chips are the core of our innovation system, especially when it comes to advances in artificial intelligence and our military systems,” Raimondo told reporters. “We can’t just design chips. We have to...

Derrick Lemond Simmons, 50, was arrested after he attacked the unnamed coworker with a bat, knife and hatchet at the semiconductor manufacturer’s Ocotillo campus on Saturday, according to court documents obtained by Arizona Family. Chandler police responding to the scene found one person dead with fatal blunt force trauma injuries and another person injured.

Intel .. on Friday broke ground on two new factories in Arizona as part of its turnaround plan to become a major manufacturer of chips for outside customers. The $20 billion plants - dubbed Fab 52 and Fab 62 - will bring the total number of Intel factories at its campus in Chandler, Arizona, to six. They will house Intel's most advanced chipmaking technology and play a central role in the Santa Clara, California-based company's effort to regain its lead in making the smallest, fastest chips by 2025, after having fallen behind rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing ... deepening its manufacturing...

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has been in discussions for several years with both TSMC and Intel to build advanced chip manufacturing plants in the U.S. and extract U.S. supply chain needs from China and southeast Asia. It appears his efforts, and the emphasis on global supply-chain shifts from President Trump, are getting results. According to numerous media reports Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) is likely to announce this week they will build an advanced chip manufacturing facility in Arizona. A manufacturing facility for advanced 5 nanometer chip manufacturing is a steep investment decision costing around $10 billion. This shift in...

Intel chief executive Brian Krzanich used a surprise Oval Office appearance Wednesday to announce a $7 billion investment in an Arizona factory that has sat empty since construction wrapped up three years ago. The chipmaker said the factory, called Fab 42, will employ 3,000 when it opens in 2020 or 2021 - nearly a decade behind schedule. The news suggests Intel is making progress in deploying a new production technology, called extreme ultraviolet (EUV), which will enable smaller features on its microprocessors....

Chip giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is supercharging an already massive US investment spree – pledging an additional $100 billion to meet surging AI demand. The move brings TSMC’s investment in the US to $265 billion and comes as the company posted second-quarter earnings that blew past market expectations Thursday. TSMC, which supplies powerful chips that are critical for tech giants like Apple and Nvidia, boosted its global capital spending plan for 2025 to between $60 billion and $64 billion. That record level marks an increase of about 7% to 14% from its previous forecast. Still, TSMC’s US-listed shares slipped...

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has told ASML that Washington is concerned that one of its top chipmaking machines may have found its way to China in violation of U.S.-led export restrictions, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday. Lutnick expressed the concerns over ASML’s extreme ultraviolet lithography, or EUV machines, to senior leaders of the Dutch firm in a series of meetings, the report. ASML's most advanced EUV systems are roughly the size of a school bus and weigh 180 tons. The U.S. Commerce Department and the White House were not immediately available for comment outside business hours when contacted by...

In a move that feels less like a corporate transaction and more like the final punchline to a 40-year industry rivalry, AMD announced Wednesday that it has agreed to acquire Intel, the company it has spent decades chasing, imitating, undercutting, suing, licensing from, and lately outperforming. The all-stock transaction, which AMD described as a "once-in-a-generation opportunity to unify x86 innovation," would combine the two companies under a single umbrella just a few years after such an outcome would have sounded ridiculous. For most of modern computing history, Intel was the empire and AMD the scrappy survivor, the perpetual second source...

Apple is beginning to bring its semiconductor manufacturing supply chain back to the United States. Nearly all of the most advanced chips are made in Taiwan, which China has threatened to annex. Concentrating chip supplies on an island that could be invaded, or face steep U.S. tariffs from Trump, is a big risk to Apple's business. To find out how far the company still has to go, WSJ reporter Rolfe Winkler visited several of the company's suppliers including TSMC, ASML and Foxconn in the Southwest. Inside Apple's Multibillion-Dollar Push to Make Chips in the U.S. | WSJ | 10:37 The...

The Chinese semiconductor industry faces a critical barrier in scaling up chip production, primarily due to the lack of lithography equipment in fabs. This limitation has confined firms like SMIC to a specific production volume and prevented them from scaling up significantly for several years now. Apart from developing in-house alternatives, it seems like Chinese engineers were actually keen to 'reverse engineer' ASML's DUV equipment, according to a report from The National Interest. Now, in the process of opening up the equipment, the individuals broke down the DUV machinery. This is actually interesting and hilarious at the same time. While...

Texas Instruments is building a $60 billion U.S. manufacturing megaproject where Apple vows to make "critical foundation semiconductors" for iPhones and other devices. CNBC went to Sherman, Texas, for an exclusive first look inside the newest fab of seven TI's building in Utah and Texas to provide U.S.-made chips to customers like Nvidia and Ford. TI shares have suffered amid tariff concerns, and it's lost analog market share for several years, but top leaders are confident about the huge spend. Why Texas Instruments Is Betting $60 Billion On Making Cheap Chips In The U.S. | 15:41 CNBC | 4.01M subscribers...

There are rumors that Intel and TSMC might team up to produce chips, and this news has stirred strong reactions from experts, industry insiders, politicians -- and, naturally, Intel employees, too. For example, one Intel engineer, Joseph Bonetti, posted on LinkedIn (though he later deleted his post) that Intel is about to reclaim its leadership in chip-making and win over more customers. He warned that giving TSMC control over Intel's manufacturing would be a big mistake.Intel is also leading in another area by using advanced machines from ASML -- a toolset with which only Intel has experience [sic]. Although Intel's...

Last month, during the thick of the holidays, I found myself in a rare though not totally unprecedented predicament: I wasn’t sure which way to bet on the stock market in the year ahead. In my December column, I told you there were three possible 2025 outcomes – all of them seemingly likely, and to a vexingly similar degree. I also told you that I’d come back to you when I could conclude which is, in fact, the most likely. Well, I’m back – and with an answer that has surprised me in more ways than one. Recall the three...

World trade is truly global and interconnected. Perhaps the chip industry exemplifies this most. Apple sells phones around the world that rely on manufacturing by TSMC who is in turn supplied by a Dutch company few investors know anything about. And it’s that little-known Dutch company that quite possibly triggered Warren Buffett to make a huge purchase in its most recent quarter. You’re about to discovery why.Back Up a SecondLet’s back up a moment and examine what happened. In its latest 13F filing, Warren Buffett announced that his holding company Berkshire had initiated a new position in TSMC, the world’s...

NEW YORK – China’s semiconductor industry has lagged the US in patents and lagged South Korea and Taiwan in fabrication, but it hopes to leapfrog its competition by adopting revolutionary new chip design technologies. Advanced chips used in 5G smartphones and some workstations squeeze billions of transistors onto a fingernail-sized chip by shrinking the dimensions of the transistor itself to 3 to 5 nanometers. Most chips have gate widths of 28 nanometers and higher. Etching tiny circuits on silicon is enormously difficult. Only the Dutch manufacturer ASML makes the lithography machines that use the short wavelengths at the extreme end...

SEOUL – The middle ground between China and the United States is collapsing under South Korea’s feet as it is torn in opposite directions by the two giant economies it seeks to balance between. On the one hand, it is being “requested” to submit detailed information on its flagship industrial sector to the United States – which is also pressuring the country’s number-two memory chipmaker to halt shipments of advanced machinery to China. That move could halt an upgrade to a major DRAM fab, in a sector where large-scale capital investment is crucial. On the other hand, the country’s diesel...