July 10, 2025

Round-up

Highlights

1. TSMC crushed Q2 guidance with T$933.8 bn ($31.9 bn) revenue, up 38.6 % YoY, riding the AI accelerator boom.¹
2. Nvidia brushed a $4 trn market cap and preps a trimmed-down Blackwell GPU for China ahead of Jensen Huang’s Beijing visit.²³
3. Intel’s CEO reportedly told staff the company is no longer a top-10 chipmaker, as fresh Oregon layoffs loom.⁴

Other developments

• ASML suspends U.S. diversity targets to comply with state regulations⁵
• Dutch court jails ex-ASML engineer for leaking lithography secrets to Russia⁶
• New Central NY tax credit bill aims to sweeten Micron’s $100 bn fab build⁷
• TSMC’s June sales slid 17.7 % MoM on a strong Taiwan dollar⁸
• Goldman Sachs initiates GlobalFoundries at “Neutral” after its MIPS deal pop⁹
• BelGaN GaN-power fab bankruptcy could pivot to photonic chips, costing Belgium €1 m (~$1.08 m)¹⁰

Did you know? Nvidia’s $4 trillion valuation equals about 3.6 % of global GDP — a larger share than Cisco ever held at the height of the dot-com bubble.³

In-depth

1. Government & Corporate Policy

• ASML rewrites its U.S. playbook

  • Drops inclusion & diversity KPIs for U.S. staff to stay inside legal guardrails⁵.
  • Analysts flag culture-risk; EU regulators watch for precedent.

• Lithography secrets leak leads to jail time

  • Dutch court sentences ex-ASML/NXP engineer to three years for sanction breaches⁶.
  • Case underscores tightening EU export-control enforcement.

• Albany pushes fresh incentives

  • Rep. Claudia Tenney’s bill would add a 10 % state tax offset for up-state fabs, targeting Micron’s mega-site⁷.
  • Local chambers say it narrows the cost gap with Arizona and Texas.

• Nvidia walks the export-control tightrope

  • Huang will seek Beijing’s blessing for a Cuda-compatible, bandwidth-capped Blackwell variant².
  • U.S. Commerce must still license the part, highlighting bilateral tension.

2. Economics, Finance & Business Outlook

• TSMC’s blockbuster quarter

  • Q2 revenue smashed the high end of guidance on soaring AI demand¹.
  • Apple, Nvidia and AMD drove more than half the uplift.

• FX headwinds bite June sales

  • June revenue fell 17.7 % MoM as a strong TWD shaved margin$s$⁸.
  • Hedging strategy expected in 17 July call.

• Nvidia eclipses Apple and Microsoft

  • Briefly became the world’s first $4 trn company before settling just shy³.
  • Index concentration risk is rising.

• Intel’s identity crisis deepens

  • CEO Lip-Bu Tan admits Intel is “no longer top-10,” amid 500 Oregon job cuts and wider restructuring⁴.
  • Manufacturing reboot centers on Arizona “Peak” node and outsourcing.

• GlobalFoundries gets lukewarm Wall St. welcome

  • Goldman Sachs starts coverage at “Neutral,” citing execution risk despite the MIPS IP buyout⁹.

• BelGaN bankruptcy fallout

  • Belgium may repurpose the GaN fab for photonics, eating a €1 m loss¹⁰.

3. Technology & R&D

• TSMC to on-shore advanced packaging

  • Will break ground on two U.S. SoIC/CoPoS plants in 2028, ending GPU back-haul to Taiwan¹¹.

• Chinese EDA roll-up stalls

  • Empyrean drops Xpeedic acquisition amid “regulatory uncertainty,” cooling local consolidation¹².

• Samsung & Cadence extend IP pact

  • Multi-year deal brings DDR5 and SerDes IP to Samsung’s 4 nm, 5 nm and 2 nm nodes¹³.

• Blackwell GPU lands in the cloud

  • CoreWeave deploys RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell cards, promising 30 % throughput gains over H100 clusters¹⁴.

• Memory price inflection ahead

  • TrendForce sees NAND contract prices up 5–10 % in Q3; DDR5 consumer modules could spike 40 %¹⁵.

Footnotes