Federal prosecutors unsealed a case detailing “Operation Gatekeeper,” a smuggling ring that allegedly tried to export $160M in Nvidia H100 and H200 GPUs to China. In a bizarre twist, President Trump announced on the same day that the US would now allow H200 exports to China for a 25% fee.
The AI hardware race is heating up on two fronts. Nvidia is pushing TSMC to produce more H200 chips amid massive Chinese orders, while Meta is buying startup Manus to bolster its AI agent capabilities.
Nvidia is making a huge strategic move into AI inference, licensing Groq’s chip technology for a reported $20 billion. The deal brings Groq’s leadership and engineers into Nvidia’s fold as the AI market shifts focus from training models to running them at scale.
TSMC is facing a severe supply crunch for its upcoming 2nm chips, with capacity fully booked until the end of 2026. The company has notified customers of price increases for its advanced nodes for four consecutive years, starting January 1st.
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have analyzed the atmosphere of a truly bizarre world. The planet, PSR J2322-2650b, is stretched into a lemon shape, has a carbon-rich atmosphere, and orbits a millisecond pulsar every 7.8 hours, completely upending our understanding of planetary evol
Apple’s switch to its own silicon five years ago was a massive risk that redefined laptop performance and battery life. The real impact, however, is how the M-series’ unique architecture is now enabling a new wave of on-device AI applications that competitors are scrambling to match.
Intel’s latest AI Playground software update appears to have leaked a major new GPU. The guide references an unnamed Arc GPU with a massive 32 GB of VRAM, sparking speculation about the upcoming Battlemage architecture.
Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Z Flip8 foldable will reportedly be powered by the new Exynos 2600 chipset, continuing a shift started with the Flip7. Meanwhile, the pricier Z Fold8 is said to be sticking with a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.
Samsung has announced its Exynos 2600 processor, built on a cutting-edge 2-nanometer manufacturing process. This could give its upcoming phones a performance and efficiency edge, but a regional chip split might still be in the cards.
The scramble for DRAM memory has gotten so intense it’s allegedly leading to corruption. Samsung is now investigating employees in Taiwan for reportedly taking kickbacks from distributors to secure supply.
