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Jim Keller's Tenstorrent Just Raised $1.5 Billion to Take On Nvidia — and Its Valuation More Than Doubled
Jim Keller's AI chip startup Tenstorrent raised a $1.5B Series E at a $6.2B valuation, more than double its 2024 price.
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Semiconductors
The latest Semiconductors news and analysis from Tech Arcade.
Semiconductors
Chip Stocks Just Bled for Eight Straight Days — and $1 Trillion Went With Them
More than $1 trillion was wiped from AI and chip stocks as the SOX fell for eight straight sessions, its worst run since 2008, and CoreWeave's bonds buckled.
Semiconductors
Microsoft's New AI Chip Carries 288GB of Memory — and a Message for Nvidia
Microsoft unveiled Maia 300, a custom AI chip with 288GB of HBM4 and 18 TB/s bandwidth, built to cut its inference bill and its reliance on Nvidia.
breaking
TSMC Just Made $23.6 Billion in Profit in Three Months — on the Day Asia's Chip Stocks Crashed
TSMC posted a record $23.6bn quarterly profit, up 69% and above forecasts, hours after an 8% crash in Korean chip stocks.
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ASML Just Smashed Profit Forecasts With €5 Billion — and Says It Can't Build Chip Machines Fast Enough Until 2029
ASML posted €4.96bn Q3 profit vs ~€4.1bn expected, guided Q4 sales to €14.2–15.2bn and warned supply won't meet demand in 2027–28.
breaking
Microsoft's Maia 300 Chip Claims 40% More AI Per Megawatt Than GPUs — and It's Headed for Gigawatt Scale
Microsoft's third-gen Maia 300 AI chip claims 40% more tokens per megawatt than GPU systems, with multi-gigawatt deployment from 2027.
Semiconductors
TSMC's $16 Billion September Was Its Idea of a Breather
TSMC booked NT$511.86bn (~$16.07bn) in September 2026, up 54.6% YoY and down just 0.6% from a record August.
AI
Broadcom Wants to Line Up $50 Billion in Debt So OpenAI Can Buy Chips From Broadcom
Broadcom is reportedly working to arrange $50B+ in debt financing so OpenAI can buy the custom chips Broadcom builds — the AI boom goes on credit.
Semiconductors
Micron Made $54 Billion in 90 Days — and Still Can't Make Enough Memory
Micron just booked $54.23 billion in a single quarter, up 379% year over year, as AI's hunger for high-bandwidth memory turns a commodity-chip maker into one of the most profitable hardware businesses on Earth.
AI
AMD Paid $8.2 Billion for a Two-Year-Old Startup. The Chips Weren't the Point.
AMD is paying $8.2 billion in stock for Fei-Fei Li's World Labs — a ~40-person, two-year-old startup — to buy its way into spatial AI and take a swing at Nvidia.
Semiconductors
SiMa.ai Hit $1.45 Billion Building the Chip Your Robot Runs Without the Cloud
SiMa.ai raised $150M at a $1.45B valuation to run AI on-board robots, drones, and cars — betting the next chip war happens outside the data center.
Semiconductors
Qualcomm's New Phone Chip Broke 5 GHz on 2nm — Then Split the Flagship in Two
Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 is the first phone chip to hit 5.0 GHz, built on 2nm — and Qualcomm split the flagship into two, locking the local AI behind the pricier Extreme.
AI
AMD Just Cracked $1 Trillion — and OpenAI Holds a Warrant for a Tenth of It
AMD's market value pushed past $1 trillion for the first time as AI chip demand — and warrant deals with OpenAI and Meta — sent the stock up nearly 10%.
AI
Nvidia Just Wrote Its Biggest Check Ever: $12.93 Billion for the Web's Free AI Model Library
Nvidia is paying $12.93 billion for Hugging Face, the 'GitHub of AI' — its largest acquisition ever, at roughly 86 times revenue. Inside the biggest check in the company's history.
Semiconductors
Enflame Sells 1.7% of China's AI Chips. Its Stock Still Nearly Tripled on Day One.
Tencent-backed Enflame raised $911 million, then opened 188% higher on its Shanghai debut — closing near $25.5 billion despite holding just 1.7% of China's AI chip market.
AI
Positron Skipped the Priciest Part of an AI Chip. Investors Just Valued It at $5 Billion.
Reno chip startup Positron just raised $875 million at a $5 billion valuation on a bet against high-bandwidth memory the priciest, scarcest part of an AI chip.
Broadcom
Broadcom Sold $16.7 Billion of Custom AI Chips in 90 Days. The Stock Fell Anyway.
Broadcom sold $16.7B of custom AI chips in one quarter, up 221%, with Google, Anthropic and OpenAI on the roster. So why did the stock fall?
AI
Google Promised Marvell $120 Billion in Chips. The Stock Fell 7% the Day It Beat Earnings.
Google's custom-chip deal could hand Marvell up to $120 billion in revenue. So why did the stock drop 7% on record earnings? The payoff doesn't land until fiscal 2029.
Semiconductors
AMD Bought Taalas to Etch AI Models Into Silicon. The First Chip Ran 48× a GPU.
AMD is buying Toronto startup Taalas, which etches AI model weights directly into silicon. Its first test chip ran Llama 3.1 8B at 16,960 tokens/sec — about 48x a GPU.
AI
Etched Doubled to $21 Billion in a Month — on a Chip That Only Runs Transformers
Etched, a transformer-only AI chip startup, just doubled to a $21 billion valuation on a $700M round led by Jane Street — with $1B in booked orders and one very concentrated bet.
Semiconductors
Intel Just Sold $20 Billion of Stock at $95 a Share — a Year After the Government Paid $20.47
Intel just sold $20 billion of stock at $95 a share — a year after the U.S. government bought in at $20.47. Inside the raise, the comeback bet, and the catch.
Semiconductors
SK Hynix Just Bet $38 Billion on Two Factories That Won't Make a Chip Until 2029
SK Hynix's board just approved 54 trillion won ($38B) for two new fabs that won't ship a chip until 2029 — a massive bet that the AI memory shortage is permanent.
AI
AMD's Data Center Sales Doubled to $6.7 Billion. The Stock Dropped 9% Anyway.
AMD's Data Center revenue more than doubled to $6.72 billion in Q2 2026 and total sales hit a record $11.54 billion — but the stock still dropped 9% after hours. Here's why.
AI
The Chip That Only Runs Transformers Is Now Worth $10.3 Billion
Etched raised $300M at a $10.3B valuation for Sohu, a chip that runs transformers and nothing else — a pure bet that the architecture is done changing.