Daily: Trump considers using CHIPS funds for Intel stake
10 min read.
Highlights
CHIPS for Intel stake? The Trump admin, which has been skeptical of the bipartisan CHIPS Act from the beginning, is considering using CHIPS funds to invest in a stake of Intel. The vast bulk of CHIPS funding has already been committed, so it is unclear how the Trump admin will tap into the funds.
Beijing pushes domestic chips. Beijing is continuing their push to encourage use of domestic semiconductors as Nvidia seeks to re-enter the Chinese market. Publicly owned computing hubs will be required to source more than 50% of their chips from domestic companies.
On the American side, Sinocism’s Bill Bishop reports: “Hearing [Nvidia] are going around DC openly declaring people who are advocating for export controls as “foolish idiots” and trashing talking them saying they are “unpatriotic” trying to hold back American profits. Also hearing U.S. companies are asking Nvidia if they can buy H20s but Nvidia is saying no - and they’re also decreasing the price they’re selling them for in China by 15% to account for the new export tax.” Recommend Sinocism for all things China.
SK Hynix overtakes Samsung. TrendForce data shows that SK Hynix has taken more DRAM market share than Samsung for the first time: in 1Q25, SK Hynix has 36% and Samsung has 33.7%, Samsung’s lowest share in at least a decade.
1. Policy and Geopolitics
1.1
Bloomberg (08/15): Trump Administration Eyeing Chips Act Funds for Intel Stake
The Trump administration is considering using funds from the US Chips Act to take a stake in Intel Corp., according to people familiar with the discussions, part of efforts to rescue the embattled chipmaker and shore up domestic semiconductor manufacturing.
The government’s talks focus on using Chips Act funding to at least partially finance an equity stake in Intel, the people said, while emphasizing that discussions are in early stages and other options could be under consideration. It’s unclear if the approach would involve converting some or all of Intel’s existing Chips Act grants into equity, allocating new funding from a broader pool or combining Chips Act money with other financing streams.
The discussions of a US government stake in Intel — first reported by Bloomberg News — kicked off a rally for the chipmaker. The shares rose 11% over the past two days, capping their best weekly gain since February.
1.2
Reuters (08/15): Trump says he will set tariffs on steel and semiconductor chips in coming weeks
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday he would announce tariffs on imports of steel and semiconductor chips in coming weeks.
"I'll be setting tariffs next week and the week after on steel and on, I would say, chips," Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he headed to a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska.
He said the rates would be lower at the start to allow companies to build up domestic manufacturing in the U.S., rising sharply later, following a pattern he has also outlined for tariffs on pharmaceuticals. He gave no exact rates.
1.3
SCMP (08/17): China mandates more domestic AI chips for data centres to cut reliance on Nvidia
China is requiring its data centres to use more home-grown computing chips in a move that underscores Beijing’s accelerated efforts to cut reliance on foreign technology as the US tightens export controls.
Publicly owned computing hubs across the country have been asked to source more than 50 per cent of their chips from domestic producers to support the indigenous semiconductor sector, according to people familiar with the matter.
The mandate finds its origins in guidelines proposed in March last year by the Shanghai municipality, which was among the first in the country to stipulate that “adoption of domestic computing and storage chips at the city’s intelligent computing centres should be above 50 per cent by 2025”.
1.4
WaPo (08/15): Trump, an active intervenor in tech, reported holdings in Nvidia, Apple
President Donald Trump’s increasingly aggressive intervention in the U.S. technology sector has come even though his financial disclosure forms show significant holdings in some of the companies most directly affected by his efforts, including Apple and Nvidia.
Trump’s latest investment filing with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics showed that he owned between $615,000 and $1.3 million in Nvidia shares at the end of last year, and $650,000 to $1.35 million of Apple stock.
Nvidia and Apple have both recently benefited from special concessions Trump has made to tech companies.
1.5
EE Times (08/15): India Approves $550M for Semiconductor Expansion Across Three States
The Indian government has approved four new semiconductor manufacturing projects under the India Semiconductor Mission (ISM), across three states with a total outlay of $550 million (Indian ₹4,594 crore).
The Union Cabinet cleared proposals spread across Odisha, Punjab, and Andhra Pradesh from SiCSem, Continental Device India Ltd. (CDIL), 3D Glass Solutions Inc., and Advanced System in Package (ASIP) Technologies.
2. Economy, Finance, and Business
2.1
TrendForce (08/15): Samsung’s DRAM Market Share Reportedly Plunges to 33% in H1, Bets on HBM and DDR5 Recovery
Samsung Electronics, struggling with HBM3E verification for NVIDIA, reported a drop in its global DRAM market share in its semi-annual report released on Aug. 14, according to South Korean media outlets Sedaily and The Hankyoreh. The company’s DRAM share by value reportedly fell to 32.7% in H1 2025, down 8.8 percentage points from 41.5% last year.
Notably, The Hankyoreh reports that Samsung’s DRAM share has fallen below 40% for the first time since 2014, dropping to 32.7% in H1 2025 from a peak of 48% in 2016. The decline reflects its weakness in HBM, the report adds.
This aligns with TrendForce’s findings: SK hynix led the DRAM market for the first time in Q1 2025 with a 36% share, while Samsung fell to 33.7% from 39.3% in Q4 2024.
2.2
Korea Herald (08/17): SK hynix racks up 70% of sales in US on AI chip boom
Chip giant SK hynix has reported that its US revenue accounted for nearly 70 percent of its total sales in the first half of the year, boosted by surging demand for AI-critical high-bandwidth memory chips, helping the chipmaker cut debt and increase investments.
The company reported revenues in the US of 27.83 trillion won ($20.02 billion) from January to June, representing 69.8 percent of its total sales of 39.87 trillion won, according to a regulatory filing on Sunday. The figure includes sales at its US unit, SK hynix America, which posted 24.7 trillion won in sales, more than double from a year ago when it recorded 12.2 trillion won.
2.3
Chosun Daily (08/18): Samsung trails SK hynix, Micron in Nvidia HBM supply
Samsung Electronics is expected to begin full-scale shipments of its fifth-generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM3E) products to Broadcom as early as the second half of this year. However, deliveries of its 12-layer HBM3E products to Nvidia, a major HBM customer, have been delayed due to Nvidia’s ongoing quality tests. While SK hynix and Micron have already supplied HBM to Nvidia, Samsung—which had initially aimed to start supplying as early as the second quarter of this year—has fallen behind.
Three broad factors are hindering Samsung’s ability to supply Nvidia. First, Samsung has failed to meet Nvidia’s heat dissipation standards, which are twice as stringent as Broadcom’s. Second, when Samsung’s HBM is connected to Nvidia’s NVLink, a high-speed, low-latency interconnect, the digital signal quality degrades. Lastly, Samsung’s lower yield rate (the proportion of functional products out of total production) compared to its competitors acts as an additional impediment.
2.4
Bloomberg (08/15): Intel CEO’s ‘Amazing Story’ Has Helped Make Him a Billionaire
The 65-year-old technology and venture capital industry veteran has amassed a fortune worth at least $1.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which is calculating Tan’s net worth for the first time.
The bulk of his fortune stems from Cadence Design Systems Inc., a maker of chip design tools where Tan was chief executive officer for 12 years before joining Intel. He has sold shares worth more than $575 million in the San Jose, California-based company, and still holds a $500 million position, according to Bloomberg’s calculations.
Walden International went on to invest $5 billion in more than 600 companies across 12 countries, many of them niche semiconductor firms. For a decade and a half, he served on the board of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., now China’s leading chipmaker.
Since joining Intel as CEO in March, Tan has accelerated his divestments in Chinese technology companies. But he remains executive chairman of Walden International and also invests through Walden Catalyst Ventures, a venture arm focused on startups in the US, Europe and Israel.
2.5
TrendForce (08/18): TSMC Arizona Delivers 2Q25 Investment Income; as Kumamoto Fab Struggles with Losses
TSMC reported a net profit of NT$398.27 billion in the second quarter of 2025. Within this, TSMC Arizona posted NT$4.232 billion in net income, its second straight quarter of profitability. For the first time, it also contributed NT$6.447 billion in investment income recognized by TSMC. Although this represented only 1.62% of TSMC’s quarterly net profit, it highlights that U.S. manufacturing is now on track—forming a sharp contrast with the losses at its Japanese operations.
The report notes that TSMC’s first fab in Arizona, with a monthly capacity of about 30,000 4nm wafers, is already fully booked by Apple, AMD, and others. Citing industry sources, the report notes that a fab’s profitability ultimately depends on UTR (capacity utilization rate). As the report points out, strong customer demand is the main reason TSMC’s U.S. fabs have been able to achieve profitability so quickly.
2.6
Bloomberg (08/15): Swiss Chipmaker U-blox Confirms Talks With Advent on Takeover
Swiss positioning chips maker U-blox Holding AG said it’s currently in negotiations with Advent over a potential transaction involving a possible takeover.
Whether a deal will materialize remains open at this stage, according to a statement on Friday that confirmed an earlier Bloomberg News report. Advent is working on an offer to acquire U-blox in a deal that could be valued at more than 1 billion Swiss francs ($1.2 billion), people familiar with the matter have said.
3. Technology
3.1
TrendForce (08/18): NVIDIA Reportedly Eyes Small-Scale HBM Base Die Production in 2027: Rattling Memory, Chip Markets
Market rumors suggest NVIDIA has kicked off development of its own HBM base die, sending ripples through the supply chain as it could reshape the next-generation HBM landscape. According to the Commercial Times, the chip is expected to be built on the 3nm node, with small-batch trial production scheduled for the second half of 2027.
The move, according to TrendForce, indicates NVIDIA is advancing toward customized HBM base dies that integrate portions of GPU functionality into the base layer, targeting enhanced overall performance for both HBM and GPU systems.
Notably, as TrendForce observes, NVIDIA will first adopt standard HBM4e in the first half of 2027—supplied by SK hynix on TSMC’s 12nm process—before transitioning to customized HBM4e designs from the second half of 2027 through 2028, with SK hynix supporting production on TSMC’s 3nm node.
3.2
TrendForce (08/18): China Unveiled its First Commercial Electron Beam Lithography Machine
On August 13, China’s first domestically developed commercial electron beam lithography machine, Xizhi, was officially unveiled in Yuhang, Zhejiang.
According to Hangzhou Government Website, this machine is one of the first projects signed at Zhejiang University’s Technology Commercialization Base. It has already been tested at a client site, with precision on par with mainstream international equipment. This milestone marks that quantum chip R&D now has its own “Chinese engraving knife.”
3.3
The Verge (08/15): China is about to launch SSDs so small you insert them like a SIM card
MicroSD cards are tiny but slow; the M.2 storage sticks in your PC are blazing fast but bigger and fully enclosed. Now, a new type of SSD out of China could be the best of both worlds — and it’s already set to appear in two cutting-edge gaming portables.
Chinese storage manufacturer Biwin is calling it the “Mini SSD,” though another manufacturer refers to it as the “1517”; it measures just 15mm x 17mm x 1.4mm thick, smaller than a U.S. penny and just slightly larger than MicroSD. Despite that, it offers maximum sequential read speeds of 3,700 megabytes per second (or 3,400MB/s writes) over a PCIe 4x2 connection, and offers 512GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities.
To put that in context, the new MicroSD Express cards that work with the Nintendo Switch 2 top out at a theoretical 985MB/s, less than a third the speed. And while a full-size SD Express card could theoretically beat Mini SSD at 3,940MB/s, it would be nearly twice the size of Biwin’s creation.
3.4
Nikkei (08/16): Nidec unit starts producing wafer-moving robots for chipmaking in China
A Nidec group company has begun production of semiconductor wafer transfer robots in China, where the Japanese motor manufacturer sees an opportunity in a government push to develop the chip industry.
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