u/cxr_cxr2

Bloomberg) -- Super Micro Computer forecast net sales for the first quarter; the guidance beat the average analyst estimate.
FIRST QUARTER FORECAST
Sees net sales $14.5 billion to $15.5 billion, estimate $11.99 billion (Bloomberg Consensus)
Sees adjusted EPS $1.01 to $1.10, estimate 74c
2027 YEAR FORECAST
Sees net sales $65 billion to $72 billion, estimate $54.43 billion
FOURTH QUARTER RESULTS
Adjusted EPS $1.70 vs. 41c y/y, estimate $1.59
Net sales $11.12 billion, +93% y/y, estimate $11.26 billion
Adjusted operating expenses $356.9 million
Adjusted net income $1.23 billion vs. $260.7 million y/y, estimate $1.14 billion
COMMENTARY AND CONTEXT
Micro Shares Jump 8% as 1Q Sales Forecast Tops Estimate
The Company expects net sales in the range of $14.5 billion and $15.5 billion for the first quarter of fiscal year 2027 ending September 30, 2026, GAAP net income per diluted share of $0.89 to $0.98 and non-GAAP net income per diluted share of $1.01 to $1.10.
NOTE
For Bloomberg Consensus estimates used in this story see: SMCI Equity MODL
Shares rise 9.3% in post-market trading to $34.53 on 1.43 million shares traded
7 buys, 12 holds, 4 sells

Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump is preparing to impose tariffs and minimum prices on imported polysilicon, a bid to boost domestic production of the material as well as the US semiconductors and solar panels made from it.
The trade action, which could come as soon as Thursday, was described by people familiar with the matter who requested anonymity to discuss details before they’re announced. 
In recent days, administration officials have discussed tariffs of at least 15% and a range of minimum import prices that would apply not just to raw polysilicon but various solar-power equipment using it, including wafers, photovoltaic cells and solar modules, according to the people. 
The planned mix of tariffs and price floors marks Trump’s latest effort to wield levies to spur US manufacturing and diversify supply chains, which China dominates in the solar industry. 
Administration officials as of Wednesday afternoon were still finalizing details of the proclamation, which is subject to change. 
The effort comes as Trump is rebuilding his global tariff wall after the Supreme Court struck down his earlier levies imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. 

The measures under discussion spring from a Commerce Department investigation launched last year under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, which examined the US’s reliance on foreign supplies of both raw polysilicon and its derivative products. The department is also leading Section 232 probes into imports of drones and industrial machinery, among other products.
Officials also are planning on implementing a temporary offset program designed to insulate domestic manufacturers currently reliant on imported material from the levies, the people said. 
Relief would be tied to those manufacturers’ capital investments in the US. The Trump administration adopted a similar approach on pharmaceutical tariffs to reward companies investing in the US, while avoiding immediate price or supply shocks. 
The refined silicon crystals are widely used in technology that powers modern-day life. Electronics-grade polysilicon serves as an indispensable building block for chips used in products including smartphones, medical equipment, precision-guided weapons and flight-control systems. 
Solar-grade polysilicon, which is less pure but more common, is the first ingredient in crystalline silicon solar panels used to generate power.
A White House official said the administration is closely examining domestic production capabilities in sectors critical for national and economic security, but declined to get ahead of the president on the matter. 

Trump has disparaged solar power and his administration has taken steps to slow such projects. But supporters of tariffs argued that if domestic solar-grade production capacity is restricted, there are consequences for US electronics-grade output too. 
Current US polysilicon production capacity is limited and companies that stand to benefit include Corning Inc.’s Hemlock Semiconductor and Wacker Chemie AG, which have operations in Michigan and Tennessee. 
During the Commerce investigation, domestic polysilicon advocates encouraged the administration to focus remedies on the material coming from or linked to China. 
They argued solar-grade production in the US isn’t profitable at current prices without some trade support and that the goal should be to calibrate tariffs so they are high enough to offset overcapacity as well as below-cost pricing by China. 
The administration was also urged to create incentives encouraging the purchase of US-made polysilicon and to bar Chinese supplies from use in critical infrastructure and defense equipment. 
Congress last year phased out tax credits that had rewarded developers installing largely American-made solar panels in renewable power projects nationwide, which had encouraged more domestic manufacturing of the gear. 
The latest trade move follows more than a decade of stop-and-start tariffs and incentives seeking to weaken China’s grip on the solar panel supply chain, from polysilicon processing to the final module assembly. Although the US invented the first photovoltaic cell for converting the sun’s rays into energy decades ago, Chinese companies are now the dominant supplier of solar panels and their key components. 
Earlier efforts to nurture a domestic solar supply chain have struggled to take root. Some critics warn new polysilicon levies are unlikely to change that dynamic, while harming American consumers instead. 
The Consumer Technology Association urged the administration to adopt non-tariff tactics, such as supply agreements with other countries and a domestic strategic reserve, to address the national security risks from reliance on foreign polysilicon. 
Because of the deeply integrated nature of the global semiconductor and electronics supply chains that depend on polysilicon, the group cautioned tariffs would be difficult to administer. 
“Any remedial action must account for practical enforceability and the cascading effects across the supply chain,” the CTA told Commerce in a filing last year. “Once polysilicon is processed into wafers, fabricated into semiconductors, and embedded into devices, its original source becomes impossible to detect. Tariffs applied to finished goods containing transformed polysilicon would require businesses to undertake burdensome tracking efforts that are not technically or commercially feasible.”

Bloomberg) -- Blackstone Inc. has held early discussions with investors to gauge interest in a second mega debt package to finance Anthropic PBC’s use of chips from Alphabet Inc.’s Google.
One initial proposal was for at least $36 billion of debt, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The details, including the size and structure and even whether Blackstone will ultimately lead the financing, are being discussed and may change, the people said, asking not to be identified because they’re not authorized to speak publicly.
If it were finalized at around that size, the deal would exceed the $35 billion of debt lined up by Apollo Global Management Inc. and Blackstone roughly two months ago to fund Anthropic’s lease of Google’s custom chips. That package was one of the biggest private credit transactions in history.
Representatives for Blackstone, Apollo, Anthropic and Google declined to comment. 
As Silicon Valley races to build AI infrastructure, leading firms have struck complicated and often circular deals with one another in a bid to secure access. Google was one of Anthropic’s earliest investors, repeatedly buying equity and now increasingly backstopping the financing that underpins data centers for the startup.

The potential new round of financing comes on the heels of Anthropic’s confidential US IPO filing, as it attempts to beat rival OpenAI to a public-market debut. The Claude creator plans to lease powerful computer chips at five data centers with help from Google as part of the earlier debt deal. 
Tech companies are tapping every corner of the credit markets to meet AI’s unprecedented capital demands, forcing Wall Street to engineer novel debt structures to keep pace. Some companies recently have also been forced to pay hefty yields on new borrowings amid concerns that AI investments won’t pay off.

Broadcom Inc., Apollo and Blackstone struck a partnership called AI XPV Platform this year to help finance compute infrastructure for leading AI companies including Anthropic. The $35 billion debt deal that wrapped up a couple of months ago was the first part of that funding.
In that deal, Broadcom backstopped payments on the largest senior portions of the debt. It was advised by Morgan Stanley, which helped arrange the transaction, Bloomberg reported.
Representatives for Broadcom didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Bloomberg) -- Draft language for a possible US-Iran resolution “has been drafted” and “is being circulated between the parties,” Qatar Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari says in a press briefing.
Current efforts are focused on preventing further escalation, reopening the Strait of Hormuz and creating conditions to resume diplomacy
Focus is on short term resolution that would restart US-Iran talks and return the sides to mediation
Says nothing in the books when it comes to direct talks
Qatar is working toward a diplomatic solution, whether in the short or medium term, to prevent any major escalation

Bloomberg) -- AstraZeneca Plc and Bristol Myers Squibb Co. have held discussions about a deal that would combine the two drugmakers into a single company, the Financial Times reported, citing people familiar with the matter. 
The discussions may still fall apart, the people told the paper, which did not detail the structure of any potential deal. 

Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump said the US will hold off new strikes against Iran after the Islamic Republic and other Middle Eastern nations told him they’re working toward a deal. 
Trump said he’d agreed to cancel the attack, “subject to being able to rapidly make a DEAL,” according to a post on Truth Social. “Get to work, everybody, and get it DONE.”
Axios reported earlier that Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had urged Trump to refrain from new strikes, citing people familiar with the conversation. The Saudi Press Agency on Sunday said the kingdom’s de facto ruler stressed the need for dialog to deescalate tensions in a call with Trump.
The US was asked “to hold off any attack in that the perimeters of a deal has been agreed to,” Trump said in his post on Saturday. “This would include the Immediate, Complete, and Total OPENING OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT, and an end to Iran’s nuclear threat.”
Israel, which wasn’t party to an initial peace deal in June, has agreed to join him in the commitment, Trump said. A member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet, Zev Alkin, told local radio the Israelis are waiting out the latest diplomatic push.
The US military had been ordered to carry out fresh attacks as soon as this weekend, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday. Trump said at a cabinet meeting the same day that the US would be hitting Iran “very hard” in an effort to bring an end to the conflict that’s entered its sixth month. 
“And at some point they’ll say we just can’t take it anymore,” he was quoted as saying.

The prospect of yet more attacks had ratcheted up worries across a Middle East roiled by waves of tit-for-tat strikes since the US and Israel launched the war on Iran in late February. The stop-start fighting has repeatedly disrupted traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil once transited, driving sharp swings in energy prices.
Brent crude ended last week above $90 a barrel, compared with below $72 a barrel at the start of July.
Major OPEC+ nations on Sunday agreed in principle to another token increase in their production quotas for September. The move would complete the theoretical revival of supplies halted in 2023 and give scope to add more barrels once the Middle East war ends.
US embassies across the Middle East on Saturday warned Americans that they should be prepared for flight cancellations, periodic airspace closures and other travel disruptions as tensions remain elevated.
A US-Iran truce brokered in June collapsed last month, though the two sides paused strikes again in late July to give diplomacy another chance. That lull ended Tuesday night when Tehran carried out what Trump described as a surprise attack, firing multiple ballistic missiles at a US military base in Jordan. 
The Israeli security cabinet’s Alkin on Sunday told Army Radio there was “some kind of vector toward an agreement between Iran and Oman.” The two nations held discussions last month that sought to reopen the Hormuz strait.
Alkin expressed skepticism: “We’ll all wait to see if this vector really does become a full agreement, and whether it will be implemented and where it’s all leading.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi held separate calls with his Saudi and Turkish counterparts and Pakistan’s army chief before Trump’s announcement on Saturday.
Araghchi warned against any “adventurous actions by the US military,” saying Iran was “fully prepared” to respond “decisively.”
He also told Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud any regional cooperation with the US would draw a decisive and appropriate response from Iran’s armed forces, according to a Telegram post from the Islamic Republic’s Foreign Ministry.
Iranian-backed Houthis rebels in Yemen have recently opened a new front in the war, threatening shipping in the Red Sea near the Bab el-Mandeb, another shipping bottleneck.

Followed Musk since the early 2000s, bought in 2018, held eight years, closed out this week. The technology is better than anything else being fielded. My issue is price, TAM, and timing.

1. A PE of 286 is too high for a company earning $4 billion. Tesla earned about $4 billion over the last twelve months on just over $100 billion in revenue, a 3.67% net margin, against a $1.23 trillion market cap. Trailing PE is 286, forward 160, PEG 5.58, price to sales 10.6. PE tells you how long it takes to earn your money back at current earnings, and 286 years is not a valuation, it's a bet on a different company than the one filing these numbers. Forward PE of 160 doesn't fix it, because forward numbers are a forecast and Tesla has missed EPS in five of the last nine quarters. PEG at 5.58 says the growth doesn't justify it either. Meanwhile Nvidia trades at 29.7 trailing and 22 forward, and Alphabet at 16.7 with a PEG of 1.75, both below their own historical averages, both actually monetizing AI today. So when I say 30x, that isn't a value-investor haircut. It's the going market price for a proven AI winner, and Tesla is asking ten times that on a fifth the return on capital. A company founded in 2003 with 135,000 employees and $100 billion in revenue has to be judged on what it earns, and $4 billion is what it earns.

2. 20 million cars a year by 2030 was the thesis, and it's been dropped without a word. That target was the entire reason a lot of us bought. Tesla is running around 1.8 million a year. Instead of an explanation of what happened to it, the goal was quietly replaced with robots. If a target that central can vanish with no accounting, what's the status of the ones being sold today?

3. Unlimited cheap energy by 2025 didn't happen, and the promise just moves outward. In 2020 the story was solar and storage delivering energy abundance by 2025. It's 2026. The same promise is now pointed another decade out, and the framing has escalated into a future where money itself supposedly won't be needed. That isn't a forecast anyone can hold him to. It's unfalsifiable, and unfalsifiable claims are exactly what a 286 PE is built on.

4. Making shareholders money isn't in the mission statement, and it shows. Tesla's stated mission is to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy. Nothing about returns. I actually respect that as a mission. But it means shareholder capital is the fuel, not the objective, and every capital allocation decision reflects that. It's why the pivot to robots didn't require anyone's consent, and why nobody in management feels obligated to explain a dropped target. Buy the stock understanding you're funding a mission, not a claim on profits.

5. Two-thirds of last quarter's profit was not from operations. Of $1.1 billion in net income, roughly $750 million was a mark-to-market gain on the SpaceX stake. Operations produced $398 million, a 1.4% margin. SpaceX is down about 30% since the prior quarter, so that line runs the other way too.

6. The R&D defense fails on return, not spending. Google and Nvidia both spend a higher share of revenue on R&D than Tesla does. Alphabet's ROIC is 24.9%. Tesla's is 5.5%, with 4.7% ROE. Everyone is spending. Only Tesla is getting a nickel back on the dollar.

7. The company is burning cash. Free cash flow was negative $1.1 billion, capex up 142% to $5.8 billion, opex from $2.9 billion to $4.3 billion and guided higher into 2026 and beyond.

8. Optimus should have been a separate company. Every venture folds into one reporting entity, so old targets stop being measurable. Alphabet breaks out Other Bets so you can judge Search on its own terms. Tesla gives one blended number, no Optimus unit count, no robotaxi revenue line. A separate ticker would settle this in two quarters.

9. Optimus is not in production and the targets have missed by orders of magnitude. The July 22 deck says lines are being installed at Fremont, production anticipated later this year, no unit count disclosed, ramp described as flat and long. The 10,000-unit target for 2025 became a few hundred. 50,000 for 2026 became impossible to predict. V3 still hasn't been shown.

10. The AI buildout doesn't reach earnings this decade. 2026 is the biggest investment year ever: AI compute, an Austin fab, Terafab, AI5 and AI6, Megapacks pitched as AI infrastructure. AI5 taped out in April with volume production not expected until mid-to-late 2027.

11. Energy is the segment I might be underrating. Storage deployments hit 13.5 GWh last quarter, up more than 40% year over year, now pulled by data centers rather than rooftop solar.

12. Every TAM figure traces to a slide, not a model. Same for Optimus unit economics: materials, energy, actuator replacement, downtime, upkeep. Post the model if you have one.

13. The HW3 liability and the SpaceX entanglement are unpriced. Millions of cars were sold on unsupervised self-driving that HW3 can't deliver, by Musk's own admission. And Musk declined to rule out a Tesla-SpaceX merger on the July 22 call, with change-of-control language in the pay package that may trigger it.

Not short, never have been. Nvidia's multiple implies roughly $40 billion in annual operating income against the $398 million just posted. What's the path, and what year?

Bloomberg) -- US bond traders lowered their expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates at its next meeting after officials kept their benchmark steady on Wednesday, while 30-year Treasury yields surged to their highest since 2007.
Interest-rate swaps reflected a roughly 60% probability that officials led by Chairman Kevin Warshwill boost borrowing costs in September after the decision, even as some officials signaled growing conviction that a hike would be needed to control resurgent inflation. A hike is fully priced in for December.
In the Treasuries market, the 30-year yield climbed more than 10 basis points to the highest level in 19 years. Yields on two-year notes — which are most sensitive to changes in the Fed’s policy — declined by six basis points to 4.23%, while 10-year yields were up five basis points to 4.66%. The dollar dropped.
In the second policy statement released under Warsh, officials held back from offering much guidance on their plans for further policy moves, reiterating the central bank’s commitment to price stability. Policymakers voted 9-3 to hold the benchmark federal funds rate in a range of 3.5% to 3.75%. Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan, Cleveland’s Beth Hammack and Minneapolis Fed chief Neel Kashkari dissented in favor of raising rates.
“The early trade is just relief that Fed didn’t move today,” said Jack McIntyre, portfolio manager at Brandywine Global Investment Management. The dissents “show you the bias of the FOMC, and unless the inflation and employment data soften meaningfully between now and September, then that meeting is in play for a hike.”


The decision offered a dose of clarity to a deeply divided market that had seen traders betting on a roughly 40% chance before the decision. Warsh has committed to breaking the market’s dependence on forward guidance from Fed officials, leaving traders with less certainty than normal.
“Market participants are learning to play the ball and not the referee,” Warsh said in his press conference. “Market prices will continue to respond in the direction and magnitude they see fit. This is in my view a change for the better, and we’re just getting started.”
The $31 trillion Treasuries market has been hit hard over the past month, down more than half a percentage point in July as US President Donald Trump’s attacks on Iran pushed oil prices higher.
Inflation-adjusted Treasury yields, known as real yields, have also risen appreciably. That suggests that bond-market participants believe Fed’s neutral policy rate — a theoretical level deemed neither stimulative or restrictive for the economy — is higher.
To Brandywine’s McIntyre, those levels imply that last year’s 75 basis points worth of rate cuts will need to be reversed by officials. He expects the Fed will opt for a series of three quarter-point hikes.
“It’s clear inflation — particularly core inflation — remains at uncomfortable levels for the Fed,” Ed Hutchings, head of rates at Aviva Investors, said. “The longer interest rates are left unchanged, the more the Federal Reserve could end up having to do, even potentially removing all of the cuts delivered in 2025, if not more.”
Among major Wall Street banks, Fed forecasts have also diverged widely. Ahead of the July rate decision, Bank of America predicted three hikes this year beginning in September, while Citigroup expected a series of three cuts beginning in October. JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank and BNP Paribas have looked for a hike as the next move, and Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and TD saw cuts.
What Bloomberg Strategists say...
“The Federal Reserve is on hold with a flare-up in oil prices threatening to raise inflation already running at 4.1%, double its target, and core PCE at 3.4%. Short-term yields declined on the decision but long-term yields rose and threaten to rise further if tomorrow’s PCE data are hot.”
—Edward Harrison, Macro Strategist, Markets Live

Bloomberg) -- A selloff in semiconductor stocks deepened Tuesday, as signs of China’s progress in advanced chipmaking weighed on global rivals and concern mounted over the sustainability of the artificial intelligence spending boom.
A Bloomberg gauge of Asian semiconductor shares slumped 7.5%, on course for its worst loss since April 2025, following overnight declines in US peers. 
A report that a Chinese state-backed company has begun mass producing immersion deep ultraviolet lithography machines fueled fears of rising competition that could flood worldwide capacity. Meanwhile, Nvidia Corp.’s $750 billion in AI infrastructure deals added to worry over AI-related debt levels.
The regional benchmark MSCI AC Asia Pacific Index was poised to enter a technical correction, as investors dumped many of this year’s biggest AI winners. South Korea’s Kospi plunged nearly 11%, with memory giants Samsung Electronics Co. and SK Hynix Inc. each sliding more than 13%. Japan’s chip-heavy Nikkei 225 and Taiwan’s Taiex both dropped around 4%. 

The losses underscore how quickly sentiment has turned on one of the market’s most crowded trades. Investors are increasingly questioning whether lofty valuations and an unprecedented wave of AI investment can be sustained. The cost of protecting Nvidia’s debt against default surged by a record on Monday.
The jump in Nvidia swaps shows “the credit market noticing something the equity market hasn’t fully priced,” said Dilin Wu, a research strategist at Pepperstone Group Ltd. “The bigger immediate catalyst is the China DUV story” weighing on stocks in Japan and Korea.

Growing threats of competition from China have weighed on chipmakers this week. CXMT Corp. completed an initial public offering that will help fund its plans to expand production of memory chips, which may drive down global prices. 
The DUV report fed concerns that this could be accelerated. Mainland China-listed makers of components for chip equipment gained on the news, with Nanjing Wavelength Opto-Electronic Science & Technology Co. and Mloptic Corp. climbing as much as 20%.
“If that supply chain becomes domestically self-sufficient, the threat isn’t just DRAM oversupply, it’s the competitive moat of Northeast Asian semiconductor manufacturing getting slowly ground down,” said Pepperstone’s Wu.
Shares of Japanese chip-equipment makers Nikon Corp. and Tokyo Electron Ltd. slid about 11% each. The fact that China is ramping up its production capabilities for advanced chips is a headwind for Japanese manufacturers, said Hiroshi Namioka, chief strategist at T&D Asset Management.

The overall declines in Asian chip shares show a lack of confidence at the start of a crucial week of earnings reports from major global technology companies. Plans for expenditures by the likes of Meta Platforms Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. will hold sway over which way stocks move from here.
“The latest selloff in chipmakers shows that doubts over spending, returns and valuations are still deepening rather than fading,” said Hebe Chen, a senior market analyst for Vantage Global Prime. “With several major catalysts approaching, the hesitation to buy the dip suggests investors are waiting for stronger proof before rebuilding exposure.”

Memory and storage stocks have held much sway over the momentum of the AI trade this year, as the surge in chip prices has driven record profits. With doubts rising over the longer term outlook, big gains are rapidly paring.
Kioxia Holdings Corp. slid 18% Tuesday, further paring the rally that briefly made it Japan’s most valuablecompany last month. SK Hynix has shed close to $600 billion in market value since the stock hit a record high in June.
Results due later this week from Samsung, SK Hynix and Kioxia may offer further clues for investors after big leverage-fueled swings in their stocks.

Wall Street Journal) -- Intel's business continues to turn around, demonstrated by a second quarter earnings report that came in well ahead of investors' expectations.
On Thursday, the chip maker reported sales of $16.1 billion for the June quarter, up 25% from the year-earlier period and beating estimates from analysts by 11%.
Intel projected that September quarter revenue will come in between $15.8 billion to $16.8 billion, well above the $15.1 billion analysts had projected. Shares traded up 8% after markets closed.
"Our Q2 results represent our strongest revenue growth in more than fifteen years," said Intel's Chief Executive, Lip-Bu Tan, in a statement. "AI is driving unprecedented demand for compute, and as we continue to execute, Intel is well-positioned to capture sustainable growth."
"It's a big beat, no doubt," Intel Chief Financial Officer David Zinsner said in an interview. He added that the company was able to catch up in fulfilling demand in the second quarter after leaving business on the table in the first. He also pointed to strong average prices for Intel's products: "From a pricing perspective, things held up better than we expected," he said.
The artificial-intelligence revolution has begun to benefit Intel because the next wave to AI technology -- AI agents completing tasks for users -- relies on the central processing units, or CPUs, that are the company's specialty. Intel had fallen behind because the development and use of the most sophisticated models is primarily powered by graphics processing units, or GPUs, made by companies such as Nvidia.
With data centers packed with CPUs, the turnaround is seen in Intel's data center-revenue, which grew 59% compared with the prior year period, continuing a recent trend.
Intel isn't yet seeing the full negative impact from the AI boom that is poised to weigh on the other side of its business, selling chips that power personal computers, which grew 13% in the quarter. That impact will make itself felt in the business in coming quarters, said Zinsner.
Huge demand for AI servers in data centers is causing a shortage in memory chips, made by other companies, that are crucial components inside PCs. As a result, memory-chip prices have exploded, forcing PC makers to raise prices and reducing sales to consumers.
Meantime, Intel's business manufacturing chips for others is also seeing its growth accelerate. Sales for that unit rose 31% in the quarter after rising 16% last quarter.
Intel is one of the few American companies that operates chip-fabrication plants, a strategically important business that the Trump administration has sought to build up to reduce American dependence on Asian chip makers. The U.S. took a 10% stake in the company as part of the effort.
Apple, a key buyer of chips, recently signed a deal with Intel to have the company make some of Apple's chips, an important signal to the market that Intel is finally becoming more competitive with market leader Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing.
Zinsner said that Intel's most sophisticated chipmaking process, which it calls 14A and which is still under development, will move into volume production in 2028.

Bloomberg) -- Brent crude hit $100 a barrel for the first time in two months after Iran-backed Houthi militants said they attacked two Saudi Arabian tankers in the Red Sea, escalating the Middle East conflict and threatening deeper supply disruptions.
The strikes by the Yemen-based group open a new front in a regional conflict that had already snarled traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the gateway to the Persian Gulf, following a flare-up in hostilities between the US and Iran. Exports through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the bottom of the Red Sea have been a lifeline for oil exports since the beginning of the conflict.
Washington and Tehran in recent days have both played down the prospect of peace talks, raising the possibility of prolonged hostilities.
Brent futures, an international benchmark, climbed as high as $100 a barrel in London.