Government-backed Japan Investment Corp. is in talks to acquire JSR, the leading producer of photoresist for semiconductor manufacturing, for roughly JPY1 trillion (US$7 billion), Nikkei has learned.

A group of investors led by Apollo Global Management is making a debt investment between $1 billion to $2 billion in chipmaker Wolfspeed to support its expansion in the US, media outlets reported on Sunday.

After the pandemic and war in Ukraine, and the inflation shock that followed, the global economy is in a precarious state. The last thing it needs right now is another nasty surprise.

Apple knows its products are already used across the manufacturing industry; this week it held a special event dedicated to Industry 4.0 at the heart of its APAC manufacturing chain in Korea.

This year's 618 shopping festival, which lasted for several weeks until June 18, is the first since China ended its virus control policies and was highly anticipated to stimulate an increase in consumer spending. However, the actual sales between June 1 and June 7 in the smart devices market didn't meet expectations. Consumers opted for high-quality products but were more price sensitive this year.

On Tuesday, BBC Radio 4's Today program aired an interview with Paul McCartney in which he announced that thanks to AI technology, a "final Beatles record" has been finished and will be released later this year. He said that AI techniques have isolated John Lennon's vocals from an old cassette tape demo, enabling him to complete the song.

Apple, having debuted the Vision Pro headset at $3,500, is already working on a cheaper model to get the new product category onto the faces of more people.

With the influx of consumer generative AI programs like Google's Bard and OpenAI's ChatGPT, the generative AI market is poised to explode, growing to $1.3 trillion over the next 10 years from a market size of just $40 billion in 2022, according to a new report by Bloomberg Intelligence (BI).

Though technology companies announced massive layoffs last year, 2023 has been much worse. So far, layoffs have far outpaced those in all of 2022, as tech giants including Amazon, Facebook parent company Meta, Microsoft, Google, IBM, SAP, and Salesforce - as well as many smaller companies - announce sweeping job cuts.

Analysts say the move will weaken export-control measures aimed at curbing Beijing.

A Hong Kong court's decision whether to grant an injunction against the distribution of protest song Glory to Hong Kong highlights the increasingly shaky ground upon which internet platforms are treading there. It could also be the final catalyst foreign players need to exit the market - a move that would be more damaging to Hong Kong than the companies calculating whether the legal minefield is still worth navigating.

British chip designer Arm, backed by SoftBank, is in talks with potential strategic investors including Intel to anchor what will be one of the largest initial public offerings of the year, according to people familiar with the matter.

Nvidia has become synonymous with AI, AMD will need to "step up its game" to better compete in this space.

TikTok's owner ByteDance has been accused of allowing Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members to access the data of Hong Kong civil rights activists and protesters.

The exhibitors and speakers at both Computex and its related InnoVEX Forum certainly demonstrated a mood of optimism for Taiwan's crucial role in the AI economy.

As generative AI revolutionizes tech, governments around the world are trying to come up with regulations that encourage its benefits while minimizing risks such as bias and disinformation.

The ecosystem for commercial chiplets-one where a marketplace of chiplets from many vendors can be incorporated into a multichip SoC by multiple packaging vendors with mix-and-match ease-has yet to appear.

Shares in computer chip designer Nvidia have soared over the past week, taking the company's valuation above the one trillion dollar mark.

It's been rumored that Apple would release a mixed-reality headset to the public for several years. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has steadily dripped details about the headset in recent months ahead of its expected WWDC 2023 unveil.

Speaking to the Financial Times, Jensen Huang said US export controls introduced by the Biden administration to slow Chinese semiconductor manufacturing had left the Silicon Valley group with "our hands tied behind our back" and unable to sell advanced chips in one of the company's biggest markets.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company has reopened a lead over internet giant Tencent Holdings as Asia's biggest company by market value, helped by a resumed rally in chip stocks.

Singapore is benefiting from the US-China discord in at least one respect: semiconductor sales.

The UK government has announced an investment of up to GBP1 billion (US$1.24 billion) in the domestic semiconductor industry, but has been criticized for declining to join the spending race that has seen the US and EU announce significantly bigger programs.

Seoul has signalled it will not intervene to stop South Korean companies Samsung and SK Hynix from filling in a market gap after China imposed a ban on US chipmaker Micron, in an escalation of the tech battle between the superpowers.

With Apple stock near an all-time high, it's worth asking how it got there - and how long that can last. The world's most valuable company makes great products, but it may turn out that the biggest driver of its share price has been the close relationship CEO Tim Cook has cultivated with China.

Dongfang Jingyuan Electron, a semiconductor software firm, is weighing filing for an initial public offering in China as soon as next year, according to people familiar with the matter, as the country spars with developed democracies over access to chipmaking technology.

Cutting economic ties with China is unrealistic, the chief executive of luxury carmaker Mercedes-Benz told tabloid newspaper Bild am Sonntag, and said attempting to do so would put most of Germany's industry at risk.

Ford Motor is hitting the brakes in China, the world's largest auto market, with new plans to scale back investment in order to improve profitability.

Arm has secretly filed for a public listing that its owner, SoftBank, says will see the chip design firm remain a subsidiary.

A man widely seen as the godfather of artificial intelligence (AI) has quit his job, warning about the growing dangers from developments in the field.

The Alibaba co-founder, who has an estimated fortune of $33 billion, has largely kept a low profile since the Chinese government began a fierce crackdown on the tech sector more than two years ago.

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said the company expects to pause hiring for roles it thinks could be replaced with artificial intelligence in the coming years.

"We think TSMC will move to normal wafer-based pricing on N3 with Apple during the first half of 2024, at around $16-17K average selling prices," Brett Simpson, senior analyst at Arete Research, said in a report. "At present, we believe N3 yields at TSMC for A17 and M3 processors are at around 55% [a healthy level at this stage in N3 development], and TSMC looks on schedule to boost yields by around 5+ points each quarter."

Seagate yesterday agreed to pay a $300 million fine for selling hard disk drives to Huawei, settling US government officials' allegation that shipments to the Chinese company violated export controls imposed in 2020. The fine is "the largest standalone administrative penalty" ever issued by the US Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), the agency said.

Tesla says it has no plans to stabilise the prices of its popular electric vehicles, despite repeated price cuts denting its profits.

Changxin Memory Technologies plans to file for a domestic initial public offering this year that could value the Chinese chipmaker north of $14.5 billion, a milestone debut that could help galvanize the country's technology aspirations.

The White House has asked South Korea to urge its chipmakers not to fill any market gap in China if Beijing bans Idaho-based Micron from selling chips, as it tries to rally allies to counter Chinese economic coercion.

The Biden administration is beginning to plan for 6G wireless telecommunications, seeking to expand internet access while reasserting US leadership in a sector where China has notched gains.

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook has launched the company's first retail store in India in the financial capital Mumbai.

Apple's regular series of record-setting Mac sales sprees seems to be taking a raincheck. As economic malaise ate a huge chunk of PC sales in the first quarter of 2023, the Mac maker was the worst affected of all, according to preliminary results from IDC.