Intel Corp shares on Thursday gained on a report that the company has tentatively agreed to a joint venture with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a sign the beleaguered US chipmaker is moving ahead with a plan that has been highly anticipated by investors.
TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, is to take a 20 percent stake in the new company, the report said.
The shares on Thursday climbed more than 2 percent after the Information Web site reported the news, erasing a decline of more than 5 percent earlier in the session. The shares had been up about 10 percent this year through Wednesday, fueled in part by hopes that Intel would pursue such a move.
Photo: Reuters
Executives from both companies reached a preliminary agreement to form a joint venture that would run Intel’s manufacturing plants, the Information reported.
Intel and other US chipmakers would hold the majority of shares in the initiative, which would include at least some of the US company’s factories, said the news site, which cited unnamed people familiar with the situation.
TSMC yesterday said it has “no comment on market rumors” when responding to an inquiry about the matter from the Taipei Times.
Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) yesterday downplayed the potential combination between TSMC and Intel when he was asked about whether the TSMC-Intel deal would be one of the nation’s bargaining chips in its negotiations to reduce the 32 percent “reciprocal” tariff imposed on Taiwanese imports to the US.
“The principle is that for any ongoing cooperation or negotiations, we will put the country’s interest first,” Cho said. “As for new speculation or news, we have not received any reports yet.”
United Microelectronics Co (UMC, 聯電), Taiwan’s second-largest contract chipmaker, was reportedly in merger talks with US chipmaker GlobalFoundries Inc in another push by Washington to secure more less-advanced chip capacity in the US.
UMC denied the report.
Bloomberg News in February reported that TSMC and Intel were discussing the idea at the request of the administration of US President Donald Trump. The scenario is meant to help address Intel’s deteriorating financial state, which has forced the company to cut thousands of jobs and curb its expansion plans.
If the plan goes ahead, it would be a dramatic early step for Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武), who took the job last month.
During an appearance at the Intel Vision conference in Las Vegas on Monday, he said the chipmaker would spin off assets that are not central to its mission.
TSMC has already been stepping up its investments in the US. TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) joined Trump at an event last month and pledged to spend an additional US$100 billion on chipmaking plants in the US.
Additional reporting by Lisa Wang
Meta Platforms Inc offered US$100 million bonuses to OpenAI employees in an unsuccessful bid to poach the ChatGPT maker’s talent and strengthen its own generative artificial intelligence (AI) teams, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said. Facebook’s parent company — a competitor of OpenAI — also offered “giant” annual salaries exceeding US$100 million to OpenAI staffers, Altman said in an interview on the Uncapped with Jack Altman podcast released on Tuesday. “It is crazy,” Sam Altman told his brother Jack in the interview. “I’m really happy that at least so far none of our best people have decided to take them
BYPASSING CHINA TARIFFS: In the first five months of this year, Foxconn sent US$4.4bn of iPhones to the US from India, compared with US$3.7bn in the whole of last year Nearly all the iPhones exported by Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) from India went to the US between March and last month, customs data showed, far above last year’s average of 50 percent and a clear sign of Apple Inc’s efforts to bypass high US tariffs imposed on China. The numbers, being reported by Reuters for the first time, show that Apple has realigned its India exports to almost exclusively serve the US market, when previously the devices were more widely distributed to nations including the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. During March to last month, Foxconn, known as Hon Hai Precision Industry
PLANS: MSI is also planning to upgrade its service center in the Netherlands Micro-Star International Co (MSI, 微星) yesterday said it plans to set up a server assembly line at its Poland service center this year at the earliest. The computer and peripherals manufacturer expects that the new server assembly line would shorten transportation times in shipments to European countries, a company spokesperson told the Taipei Times by telephone. MSI manufactures motherboards, graphics cards, notebook computers, servers, optical storage devices and communication devices. The company operates plants in Taiwan and China, and runs a global network of service centers. The company is also considering upgrading its service center in the Netherlands into a
Taiwan’s property market is entering a freeze, with mortgage activity across the nation’s six largest cities plummeting in the first quarter, H&B Realty Co (住商不動產) said yesterday, citing mounting pressure on housing demand amid tighter lending rules and regulatory curbs. Mortgage applications in Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung totaled 28,078 from January to March, a sharp 36.3 percent decline from 44,082 in the same period last year, the nation’s largest real-estate brokerage by franchise said, citing data from the Joint Credit Information Center (JCIC, 聯徵中心). “The simultaneous decline across all six cities reflects just how drastically the market
RSS