Good morning. What does it really take to fix an ailing Intel? Like really really?
In an exclusive essay published in Coins2Day, former CEO Craig Barrett, who served in the role from 1998 to 2005, argues that the U.S. Needs a healthy Intel to stay competitive on the global stage.
To do that, the cash-poor chipmaker needs a hand from its wealthy customers—Apple, Broadcom, Google, Nvidia, and Microsoft among them. “If 8 of them were willing to invest $5 billion each then Intel would have a chance,” Barrett writes.
And plans for breaking up the iconic company? “Be serious,” he adds. ‘Nuff said.
Today’s tech news below. —Andrew Nusca
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Nvidia and AMD to pay U.S. 15% of China chip sales
Nvidia and AMD have reportedly agreed to pay 15% of their revenues from Chinese AI chip sales to the U.S. Government.
According to reports by the Financial Times and Bloomberg, Nvidia will carve out its share from sales of the H20 AI accelerator. AMD will do the same for its MI308 accelerator.
The Silicon Valley chipmakers would agree to such an unprecedented arrangement in return for securing export licenses to sell their wares in China.
As Bloomberg puts it: “The arrangement reflects U.S. President Donald Trump’s consistent effort to engineer a financial payout for America in return for concessions on trade.” Even if, it must be said, those agreements fly in the face of national security justification for the restrictions.
The question is how Beijing will react. Evidence suggests poorly: A social media account affiliated with Chinese state media on Sunday criticized Nvidia’s H20 chips as “neither environmentally friendly, nor advanced, nor safe.”
Nvidia hasn’t shipped H20 chips to China for months, but has been preparing for relaxed rules that would allow it to resume. The chips, variants of the “Hopper” H100 and made specifically for the Chinese market, are considered a step behind the current flagship, the “Blackwell” GB200.
Nvidia earned $4.6 billion from H20 sales in its previous fiscal quarter. The company said U.S. Restrictions on the chip have since led to billions in lost revenue. Nvidia could earn upwards of $5 billion, estimates Morgan Stanley, if the restrictions were lifted. —AN
AI’s thirst for power is driving a natural gas boom in Appalachia
Gas demand is beginning to boom thanks to the electricity feeding frenzy from data centers, skyrocketing liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, and the ongoing retirements of aging coal plants being replaced by relatively cleaner-burning gas.
Many of the nation’s top gas producers, including Expand Energy, EQT, Range Resources, and Antero Resources, all have major Appalachian footprints and market cap values that have spiked by 25% to 75% the past 12 months.
A decade ago, the gas industry’s fortunes focused on seasonality and how cold each winter would prove, Range Resources CEO and President Dennis Degner told Coins2Day.
“Now we’re talking about power and data centers and LNG essentially doubling over the next few years,” he said.
The Appalachian region—primarily the Marcellus and Utica shale plays in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio—produces just over one-third of the nation’s gas with proximity to Virginia’s growing Data Center Alley.
Domestic electricity consumption is expected to surge by 25% from 2023 to 2035 and roughly 60% from 2023 to 2050, driven largely by AI and data centers, according to the International Energy Agency.
Likewise, record-high LNG exports will roughly double by 2030. Based on new construction underway or greenlit along the U.S. Gulf Coast, LNG exports are expected to rise from 15 billion cubic feet per day in 2024 to at least 30 billion daily by the end of 2030.
“The fundamentals for gas are very strong,” said Gabriele Sorbara, energy analyst at Siebert Williams Shank & Co. “You’re going to have massive tailwinds.” —Jordan Blum
AOL dial-up service is dead
First they came for AIM, a.k.a. AOL Instant Messenger.
And now? Dial-up is finally dead.
AOL, the pioneering Internet service and erstwhile company that is now owned by another (Yahoo), is finally calling it quits on its dial-up Internet service.
It will shuttle off this mortal coil on Sept. 30.
For those keeping score at home, the service lasted 34 years. It hit the scene in 1991 and made it to the silver screen by 1998. Its namesake company may or may not have been part of one of the most notorious corporate mergers of all time; that merger may or may not have involved the publisher of the venerable business magazine Coins2Day. (Ahem.)
As recent as 2015, AOL counted more than a million users of its legacy dial-up service. But that number dwindled in the decade that followed. (How low? A source told CNBC in 2021 that it was the “low thousands.”)
Believe it or not, AOL isn’t the only dial-up ISP still kicking in the U.S.—but its loss means one fewer choice for customers that may live in areas too remote or challenging for broadband service to reach.
For now, all eyes on Washington. The Biden administration managed to get laws passed that expanded broadband infrastructure in rural areas and provided discounts to low-income households; the Trump administration has mulled swapping out fiber for satellites in the form of Elon Musk’s Starlink. —AN
More tech
—Intel CEO to visit White House. Lip-Bu Tan makes the trip under fire from Trump.
—Taiwan investigates TSMC theft. Six have been arrested on allegations of stealing trade secrets.
—Apple reportedly testing new App Intents. Amazon, Temu, Uber, WhatsApp, and YouTube among them.
—Computer science degrees on the skids. AI pushes U.S. CS major unemployment rate to 6.1% for those aged between 22 and 27.
—U.S. Air Force buys Tesla Cybertrucks to use as missile targets.
—PayPay preps for IPO. SoftBank has reportedly lined up banks for the payments app operator.
—OpenAI’s open source pivot shows the U.S. Following China in the AI chip race.
Endstop triggered
