semiconductors

China's Zhipu AI releases a 744-billion-parameter open-source model trained on Huawei Ascend chips that matches Claude and GPT on key benchmarks, sending its stock up 34 percent.

Samsung begins commercial HBM4 shipments with 3 TB/s bandwidth per stack, gaining a timing edge over SK Hynix as memory becomes the critical bottleneck in AI infrastructure.

Belgium's imec launches NanoIC, a sub-2nm semiconductor pilot line backed by 2.5 billion euros in public and private funding, marking Europe's biggest bet yet on closing the gap with Asian and American chipmakers.

Reno-based Positron AI has raised $230 million at a $1B+ valuation, claiming its Atlas chip matches Nvidia's H100 inference performance at one-third the power while its next-gen Asimov silicon promises six times the memory of Nvidia's Rubin.

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan reveals plans to build data-center GPUs and hires former Qualcomm architect Eric Demers to lead the effort.