Chips

Google Chips

Google Unveils Ironwood, Its Most Powerful AI Chip Yet

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Chris McKay• April 9, 2025 • 2 min read

Google has introduced Ironwood, its seventh-generation TPU, purpose-built for the inference-heavy demands of large AI models, offering unmatched compute scale, energy efficiency, and memory bandwidth.

SoftBank AI Infrastructure Chips

SoftBank will Aquire Ampere for $6.5 Billion

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Chris McKay• March 20, 2025 • 2 min read

SoftBank Group is acquiring Ampere Computing for $6.5 billion in cash, aiming to boost its AI infrastructure through Ampere’s high-performance ARM-based chip designs.

Arm Chips AI Infrastructure

Malaysia Strikes $250M Deal with Arm to Jumpstart AI Chip Industry

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Chris McKay• March 5, 2025 • 2 min read

Malaysia will pay Arm Holdings $250 million over ten years for chip design licenses, aiming to shift from chip assembly to full-fledged semiconductor design and production amid rising AI demand.

Venture Capital Startups Chips

EnCharge AI Raises $100M to Bring Energy-Efficient AI Chips to Market

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Chris McKay• February 13, 2025 • 2 min read

The company is developing analog in-memory computing chips designed to significantly lower the energy consumption of AI inference workloads.

Venture Capital Startups Chips AI Infrastructure

Tenstorrent Secures $693M to Challenge NVIDIA's AI Chip Dominance

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Chris McKay• December 2, 2024 • 2 min read

AI chip startup Tenstorrent has raised $693 million in Series D funding, positioning itself as a potential challenger to NVIDIA in the competitive AI hardware market. The round, which values the company at $2.6 billion, drew investment from notable backers including Samsung Securities, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Hyundai

Venture Capital Startups Chips

Ubitium Promises Universal Chip to Replace Specialized Processors, Raises $3.7M

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Chris McKay• November 21, 2024 • 2 min read

If successful, Ubitium's technology could eliminate the need for separate CPUs, GPUs, and other specialized chips, significantly reducing costs and complexity in everything from embedded systems to high-performance computing.

China Chips Geopolitics

Huawei's AI Chip Ambitions Hit Hard by US Sanctions

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Chris McKay• November 19, 2024 • 2 min read

This setback impacts not only Huawei but also China's broader ambitions to lead in AI technology.

Chips AI Infrastructure Geopolitics

TSMC Secures $6.6B in US Chip Funding for Arizona Plants

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Chris McKay• November 15, 2024 • 1 min read

This funding supports TSMC's historic $65 billion investment across three semiconductor plants in Arizona, representing the largest foreign direct investment in a new U.S. manufacturing project.

Chips Startups

CoreWeave Closes $650M Secondary Sale

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Chris McKay• November 13, 2024 • 1 min read

This lets early investors and employees cash out some shares ahead of a possible 2025 IPO.

Chips

TSMC Halts Advanced AI Chip Production for Chinese Tech Giants

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Chris McKay• November 8, 2024 • 2 min read

Starting November 11, TSMC will stop producing AI chips using 7-nanometer and more advanced processes for Chinese customers. The decision affects major tech companies like ByteDance, Alibaba, and Baidu, which rely on these chips for their AI chatbots and cloud services.

Chips TSMC

TSMC's Arizona Plant Achieves Higher Chip Yields Than Taiwan Facilities

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Chris McKay• October 25, 2024 • 2 min read

This breakthrough is an encouraging sign for both TSMC and the U.S. government's broader push to re-establish semiconductor manufacturing on American soil.

Google Chips

Google DeepMind’s AlphaChip Has Secretly Transformed Microchip Design with AI

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Chris McKay• September 26, 2024 • 2 min read

The speed and accuracy with which AlphaChip generates layouts far exceed traditional methods, compressing months of work into hours.

Intel Chips

Intel Spins Off Foundry Business, Partners with Amazon on AI Chips

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Chris McKay• September 16, 2024 • 2 min read

Intel will produce a custom AI chip for AWS using its advanced 18A process node, as well as a custom Xeon 6 chip on its Intel 3 process.

Intel Chips Military & Defense

Intel Receives $3 Billion Grant from U.S. Government to Develop Secure Military Chips

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Chris McKay• September 16, 2024 • 2 min read

The Secure Enclave initiative aims to ensure a reliable supply of cutting-edge microelectronics for military and intelligence purposes.

Chips AI Infrastructure

Cerebras Launches Game-Changing AI Inference Service

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Chris McKay• August 27, 2024 • 2 min read

Their service can process Llama 3.1 8B at 1,800 tokens per second and Llama 3.1 70B at 450 tokens per second.

AMD Chips

AMD to Acquire ZT Systems for $4.9 Billion, Bolstering AI Infrastructure Capabilities

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Richard Banfield• August 19, 2024 • 2 min read

The acquisition marks a significant step in AMD’s efforts to expand its presence in the AI ecosystem, aiming to strengthen its AI data center capabilities and challenge the dominance of market leader Nvidia.

South Korea Chips Startups

South Korean AI Chip Makers Rebellions and Sapeon Finalize Merger

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Chris McKay• August 19, 2024 • 1 min read

The merger will create a company valued at approximately 1.4 trillion won ($1 billion), potentially becoming South Korea's first AI sector "unicorn."

Groq Chips

AI Chip Startup Groq Secures $640 Million in Funding, Valued at $2.8 Billion

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Chris McKay• August 5, 2024 • 2 min read

Notable investors in this round include Neuberger Berman, Cisco, Samsung Catalyst Fund, and others.

OpenAI Chips AI Infrastructure

OpenAI in Talks With Broadcom to Develop New AI Chip

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Chris McKay• July 18, 2024 • 1 min read

While creating a new chip is no easy feat, the potential payoff is significant. It could provide OpenAI with leverage in negotiations and reduce their reliance on a single supplier.

Venture Capital Startups Chips

SiMa.ai Raises Additional $70M to Bring its Multimodal Generative AI Chips to Edge Devices

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Richard Banfield• April 4, 2024 • 2 min read

SiMa.ai's proprietary combination of silicon and software allows the MLSoC to adapt to any framework, network, model, sensor, or modality, making it a versatile platform for edge AI applications.