chip

According to a report by Reuters, on October 20, ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent have ordered over 3 million RTX PRO 5500 graphics cards from NVIDIA, with a unit price of approximately $11,400, totaling over $35 billion. Due to U.S. export controls, this chip does not include the advanced Blackwell architecture and is currently the most powerful compliant NVIDIA chip available for purchase in China.Insiders have indicated that due to demand far exceeding production capacity, NVIDIA has informed partners that it may only be able to fulfill 5% to 10% of orders. Chinese tech companies primarily use this chip for AI inference and post-training model generation. Although its performance is far inferior to the banned B300 and H200 chips, in the context of ongoing computing power shortages and restrictions, the RTX PRO 5500 has become an attractive alternative. Additionally, NVIDIA plans to shift most of TSMC's capacity to the new generation Rubin products starting in 2027. Currently, ByteDance, Alibaba, Tencent, and NVIDIA have not commented on this.

According to The Information, DeepSeek is collaborating closely with Huawei to jointly design the next generation of AI chips, aiming to build models that do not rely on NVIDIA's computing power. Insiders revealed that Huawei engineers have entered DeepSeek's office to understand its model architecture and algorithm requirements, and to test how the chips handle data transmission and compression, with the first compatible chip targeting Ascend 950DT.The report pointed out that this move comes as China pushes to reduce its dependence on American chips. Limited by TSMC's foundry services and U.S. export controls, Huawei's Ascend 950DT is planned for release in 2027, but mass production may be delayed until 2028. To address the chip shortage, DeepSeek is using the TileLang programming language to bypass CUDA restrictions, while still attempting to acquire the banned NVIDIA Blackwell chips through third-party data centers. In addition, DeepSeek is forming a chip team and has begun testing clusters with over 1,000 processors.

NVIDIA has successfully won central processing unit (CPU) chip orders from the rapidly growing artificial intelligence startup Modal. Modal had previously only used Intel and AMD chips, indicating that NVIDIA has made significant progress in entering this market.

Financial Associated Press, October 20 - Amazon launched the open-source tool TorchNeuron on the 19th local time, aiming to lower the barrier for developers to transition from NVIDIA chips to its self-developed chips, challenging NVIDIA's software barrier built on CUDA. According to reports, this tool allows AI code written in PyTorch to run on Amazon's self-developed AI chips without the need for rewriting. PyTorch is maintained primarily by Meta and is described as an open-source framework used by most AI developers.Amazon's chip design department, Annapurna Labs, introduced that with TorchNeuron, developers only need to modify one configuration to run the same code on the self-developed Trainium chip. Amazon announced the launch of this tool on the 19th local time and plans to publicly release it in a free open-source format at the PyTorch conference in San Jose, California on the 20th.Colin Brace, Vice President of Software at Annapurna Labs, stated in an interview that the launch of TorchNeuron is intended to reduce the steps required for developers to try Amazon's self-developed chips, starting from the customers' existing workflows. He revealed that over 30 early customers are already using it, covering fields such as robotics, world models, and voice AI, and mentioned that switching to Amazon chips can save costs.

According to LatePost's LatePost Auto report, Li Auto's chip subsidiary Shanghai Mahexin Technology has completed a Series A equity financing of 1.625 billion yuan, with Li Auto contributing 1 billion yuan and external investors contributing a total of 625 million yuan. After the financing is completed, Li Auto holds 74.01% of the shares, making it the largest shareholder, while external investment institutions include Hangzhou Jingtou, BlueRun Ventures, Huaye Tiancheng Capital, and Qiji Chuangtan.Hangzhou Jingtou has also received an additional investment equity of 500 million yuan, bringing the company's valuation to 17.1 billion yuan, with 20% of the equity allocated for employee incentives. Insiders say the funds will be used for subsequent chip research and development and commercialization, and they hope to supply externally and expand into businesses outside of automotive. Li Auto co-founder Ma Donghui stated on September 21 that Mahe chips, silicon carbide modules, and other products can be sold externally, and Li Auto is developing the second generation of Mahe intelligent driving chips.

According to the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily, during the sixth RISC-V China Summit, ZTE Microelectronics' subsidiary, Lirui Micro, unveiled the high-performance RISC-V CPU chip, Mount Everest 200, designed for intelligent computing centers. Lirui Micro stated that Mount Everest 200 is the industry's first RISC-V CPU chip aimed at intelligent computing center scenarios, with detailed product specifications to be officially released by the end of this year.Mount Everest 200 focuses on three major scenarios: Agent clusters, inference super-node Hosts, and enterprise-level intelligent computing hybrid inference. It natively supports RISC-V AI instruction acceleration and is optimized for KV Cache and long-context large model inference. This chip integrates various acceleration engines, including Matrix, Vector, compression, and encryption, supports high-speed interconnect interfaces such as DDR5, PCIe, and CXL, and can adapt to RISC-V native AI and GPU acceleration card MoE large model hybrid inference solutions.

At the 2026 RISC-V China Summit, Chief Scientist Meng Jianyi of Alibaba Damo Academy stated: So far, the Xuantie chips have steadily shipped over 6 billion units. Xuantie is a series of RISC-V processors launched by Alibaba Damo Academy.At the conference, Alibaba Damo Academy also released the first automotive-grade enhanced E908A chip. Meng Jianyi cited a prediction from Omida, stating that by 2030, the annual shipment volume of global RISC-V processors will grow by nearly 30% each year, and by 2030, the global market share of processor shipments will reach approximately 25%.

According to Bloomberg, Asian semiconductor stocks continued to weaken on Monday. The Bloomberg Asia Chip Index fell more than 2%, reaching its lowest level since July, with TSMC, SK Hynix, and Advantest being the main drags. The Korea Composite Stock Price Index recorded its largest weekly decline since October 2008 last week, dropping more than 3% at one point on Monday before recovering some ground; the Nikkei 225 index fell 2.3% at one point, and the Taiwan Weighted Index dropped 2%.Market concerns stem from two aspects. First, the pressure on financing for AI infrastructure in the United States continues to ferment, with CoreWeave's financing capabilities being questioned and the IPO expectations for Anthropic and Nscale cooling. Second, Chinese AI company DeepSeek released a new model update over the weekend, claiming faster operation speeds and lower resource consumption, raising concerns about the potential decrease in storage capacity required for AI models and the possible impact on chip demand.Kang DaeKwun, CEO of Life Asset Management, stated that the market uncertainty is too high, making it difficult to determine when the Korean stock market will bottom out. Financing for U.S. corporate AI projects is one of the main risks, and the profitability of Korean chip companies still heavily relies on continuous investment in AI infrastructure by U.S. companies. This week, the earnings reports from tech giants like Meta and Tesla will be an important window to observe the growth momentum of AI capital expenditures.

According to the Industrial and Commercial Times, Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has approved TSMC's first phase plan for the production of advanced semiconductors using 3-nanometer process at its second factory in Kumamoto Prefecture. This will be the first time a manufacturer in Japan produces 3-nanometer chips. TSMC can further expand its production capacity based on additional support from the Japanese government. Kumamoto Prefectural Governor Seiji Kimura stated that this plan will drive a new wave of creative revitalization.The Nikkei reported that the Ministry of Economy has listed the Kumamoto second factory as a recipient of subsidies, with plans to produce 3-nanometer chips, expected to officially start production in December 2028, with final capacity depending on the amount of subsidies. The Ministry will include the budget needed for subsidies in the fiscal year 2027 budget request, with the Japanese government originally planning to provide 732 billion yen in subsidies. The Asahi Shimbun pointed out that the Kumamoto second factory is still under construction and is adjacent to the already operational Kumamoto first factory.Previously, TSMC planned for the second factory to manufacture 6-nanometer and 12-nanometer processes, with a monthly capacity of 48,000 wafers, and planned to produce 40-nanometer chips; in February this year, the plan was changed to 3-nanometer, reducing the monthly capacity to 6,000 wafers. The adjustment plan for the Kumamoto first factory was also approved by the Ministry, with the original plan to produce 55,000 wafers per month covering 22 to 28 nanometers and 12 to 16 nanometers, while the new plan stops production of 12 to 16 nanometers, changing to 45,000 wafers per month for 22 to 28 nanometers.

Samsung Electronics will adopt TSMC's 3-nanometer process to produce the next generation of custom HBM chip bare dies for NVIDIA. This is the first time Samsung has collaborated with TSMC in the HBM manufacturing stage.NVIDIA has requested Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology to use TSMC's process to manufacture NVHBM bare dies and to utilize sixth-generation DRAM technology. Samsung plans to continue independently producing standard HBM and custom products for other customers.

According to CoinDesk, during the market closure on Saturday, leveraged bets linked to chip stocks and semiconductor funds were liquidated for nearly $52 million within 10 minutes. According to CoinGlass data, approximately $51.6 million in chip stocks and semiconductor fund-related positions were forcibly closed between 21:22 and 21:32 UTC, of which about $38 million came from bullish bets on rising prices. The sell-off began at Binance and quickly spread to Hyperliquid within seconds.The SOXL contract, which is three times long on chip stocks, suffered the largest loss, approximately $12.7 million; contracts for SanDisk and SK Hynix each lost about $10.8 million. According to David Jeong, CEO of trading firm Tread.fi, he placed the first large sell orders for SanDisk and Micron on Binance at 21:21:59 UTC, and less than a second later, the orders impacted Hyperliquid—this platform, launched by Trade XYZ, tracks contracts for stocks, with about 10 addresses establishing short positions on 6 chip-related contracts within 1.8 seconds. In the first minute, Binance processed approximately $21.9 million in SanDisk trades, while Trade XYZ accounted for $3.1 million.Storage chip stocks had already experienced a tumultuous week due to new competition from Chinese chip manufacturer CXMT. With the stock market closed, these contracts had no real stock prices for reference, and traders could only compete against each other; the rules of Trade XYZ allow the platform to set reference prices independently before external stock quotes resume, with relevant quotes returning when U.S. stocks open on Monday.

Tom Lee, Chairman of the Ethereum treasury company BitMine, stated in an interview with CNBC yesterday that if the fundamentals remain stable, cryptocurrencies, chip stocks, and neocloud company will be "a trigger-ready opportunity." They have all "pulled back to support levels."Tom Lee believes that when the fundamentals remain stable and the market becomes fearful, "this is actually a pretty good risk-reward scenario."

Google stated that its Willow quantum chip reduces the error rate in preparing the special states (Magic States) required for quantum computing by about 40 times through a method called "Cultivation." The related research was published this week in Science, which is expected to lower the hardware costs of future large-scale quantum computers and draw more attention to the potential threat of cracking Bitcoin wallets.Magic States are a key resource needed to perform certain quantum computing operations, and their preparation process consumes a significant amount of hardware. Google's experiment achieved about 99.99% state fidelity, but only about 8% of attempts passed the screening. Researchers indicated that future experiments need to be scaled up and issues such as real-time operation and error correction need to be addressed. In March of this year, Google estimated that under specific hardware assumptions, future quantum computers might only need fewer than 500,000 physical qubits to crack the cryptography used in Bitcoin and Ethereum wallets.For Bitcoin, some early wallets' public keys have been public since their mining, theoretically making them targets for future quantum attacks; while wallets with undisclosed public keys may face different attack conditions. However, this breakthrough does not mean that quantum computers are capable of cracking Bitcoin. Google's previous cost estimates for attacks assumed the use of efficient Magic States preparation schemes, so this result cannot simply be understood as a 40-fold reduction in the cost of cracking Bitcoin. Research is still in the advancement stage of quantum hardware and error correction technology, and the complete equipment and engineering capabilities required for actual attacks have not yet been realized.

The white-haired stock god Serenity stated that the storage chip industry is experiencing unprecedented long-term demand visibility, with large cloud service providers like Google even seeking to sign long-term supply agreements extending to 2035. However, the market is still affected by concerns over the sustainability of AI infrastructure investments and financing risks.Serenity also cited the views of Dell CEO Michael Dell, who indicated that the shortage of storage chip supply may last for about 4 years, as the construction cycle for new fabs is relatively long, and the related capacity is expected to be released by 2029 to 2030. Dell anticipates that the imbalance between supply and demand for storage chips may further worsen by 2027.

The Google Quantum AI team published a paper in Science, announcing that a technique called magic state cultivation reduces errors by about 40 times on the Willow processor, producing logical fidelity of 99.99% for T states. Magic states are one-time resources required to run useful quantum programs, consumed with each use; according to estimates cited by Google, the cost of producing magic states can account for up to 95% of a quantum computer's total capacity, leaving very limited space for actual computation.The previous standard approach was magic state distillation proposed by physicists Sergei Bravyi and Alexei Kitaev in 2004, which required a large number of qubit factories dedicated solely to this task. Google researchers proposed a cheaper cultivation route in 2024, which behaves more like a filter: injecting rough magic states into a small area of the chip, running a series of checks on them, discarding all attempts found to be defective, and allowing the passers to gradually expand. In the experiments, only about 8% of attempts passed all checks, meaning that more than 90% of attempts had to be discarded for each clean state retained.The cultivation technology is one of the supports for Gidney's 2025 estimate that RSA-2048 encryption could be broken by fewer than a million noisy qubits, a reduction of 20 times from the 20 million estimated in 2019. This experiment used up to 54 of the 105 qubits in Willow, with the paper noting that breaking the RSA-2048 key requires magic states with an error rate of about one in ten billion, which is about a million times cleaner than this result.

As chip stocks' market value evaporates by $1 trillion, ETF investors are pouring billions into the dip.The VanEck Semiconductor ETF attracted over $430 million in inflows over the past three days, while the Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X Shares ETF saw approximately $3.8 billion in inflows this week, setting a record. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index has cumulatively dropped 12% over six days.

According to Bloomberg, ByteDance is close to reaching an agreement with MediaTek to procure semiconductors for data centers. Sources familiar with the matter say that the Chinese social media company is in deep discussions with MediaTek regarding the supply of custom chips, which will be used to operate ByteDance's data centers.Sources indicate that MediaTek will provide an unspecified number of application-specific integrated circuits, which are chips customized for the client's platform. If the deal is finalized, ByteDance could become MediaTek's second-largest customer for such chips after Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet, and it would help the Taiwanese chipmaker compete with Qualcomm. Due to the private nature of the arrangements, the sources requested anonymity.

The world's largest foundry, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), announced that driven by a surge in global demand for artificial intelligence processors, its net profit in the third quarter increased by 69% year-on-year, reaching a historic high and exceeding market expectations.TSMC stated that from July to September, net profit rose to 763.1 billion New Taiwan dollars (approximately 23.59 billion US dollars), surpassing the institutional expectation of 746.3 billion New Taiwan dollars.

Analyst Murphy posted on platform X, stating that as of October 15, 2026, Bitcoin has fallen to around $81,000 on October 9, 12, and 15, repeatedly testing the same support area. The latest round of declines, combined with U.S. inflation exceeding expectations, rising market concerns about the Federal Reserve tightening monetary policy further, and weakening U.S. stocks, has put overall pressure on risk assets.Murphy noted that from the on-chain adjusted realized loss data, the scale of losses corresponding to the three dips shows a decreasing trend: the loss on October 12 was less than that on October 9, and while the loss on October 15 was larger than on October 12, it was still lower than on October 9. October 9 appears to be a peak where short-term price-sensitive chips concentrated their exit; during the second dip, market sentiment was more cautious, and the willingness to sell was not strong; the third decline, under macroeconomic negative influences, again forced some swing chips to stop-loss and exit. Therefore, the current market is closer to a gradual clearing of swing chips rather than a full-blown panic sell-off. If the proportion of short-term holders' losses remains around 31%, below the historical cumulative average of 42.7%, it indicates that the clearing of chips may not be sufficient, and further volatility and selling pressure may still occur. Next, it should be observed whether the scale of realized losses continues to converge: if the price maintains near the current support area and the release of losses gradually weakens, it indicates that passive selling is decreasing, and a phase adjustment may be nearing its end; if the scale of losses expands significantly again, it indicates that the market still needs to undergo a more thorough turnover of chips.