South Korean President Lee Jae Myung delivers a speech on June 25. SEOUL - South Korea is set to unveil three "mega-projects" to fuel its next growth phase, including a new semiconductor hub in the southwest that local media say could attract investments by Samsung and SK spanning hundreds of billions of dollars over several years. The announcement would mark President Lee Jae Myung's boldest push yet to align South Korea's AI and chip ambitions with his pledge to narrow regional disparities and revive economies beyond the Seoul metropolitan area. Lee will preside over the event, framed as a national "great leap" due to be unveiled around 2 p.m., his office said, with ministries covering industry, science, climate and transport set to outline policy support. Samsung Electronics and SK are expected to present investment plans, and their chairmen, Jay Y. Lee and Chey Tae-won, are among business leaders tipped to attend by local media. Representatives of other firms including LG Electronics, HD Hyundai Robotics, Korea Electric Power Corp. and Korea Water Resources Corp. are also attending, Lee's office said.

World's largest chipmaker does not rule out price rises as costs increase The world's largest chipmaker has told the BBC that inflation is pushing up the cost of doing business, and did not rule out price rises. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) makes the most advanced chips designed by companies such as Nvidia, AMD and Apple, so any increase in pricing could ripple through to the cost of AI infrastructure, and potentially over time, the prices customers pay for their electronic devices. However, the firm's chief financial officer, Wendell Huang, said it would not introduce sudden fourfold, fivefold price rises. We reflect our value, he said, pointing to its technology leadership and manufacturing excellence. In an exclusive and wide-ranging interview, Huang also denied that the AI boom was a bubble and that the firm's global expansion was due to geopolitical pressure.

Samsung averted fears of a strike after the deal was made to pay special bonuses to employees at the world's largest memory chipmaker. Samsung averted fears of a strike after the deal was made to pay special bonuses to employees at the world's largest memory chipmaker. Employees at Samsung Electronics's memory chip division are to receive bonuses averaging about £310,000 each through a landmark profit-sharing agreement, as the AI boom drives up chipmakers' profits. Fears of a strike at Samsung were averted on Wednesday after two unions for the world's largest memory chipmaker said that 74% of the 62,616 workers who cast their votes had backed the deal. The agreement, mediated by South Korea's government, means Samsung will set aside 10.5% of operating profits at its semiconductor division to pay special bonuses to its chip workers.

The long-awaited V4 is more efficient and a win for Chinese chipmakers. On Friday, Chinese AI firm DeepSeek released a preview of V4, its long-awaited new flagship model. Notably, the model can process much longer prompts than its last generation, thanks to a new design that helps it handle large amounts of text more efficiently. Like DeepSeek's previous models, V4 is open source, meaning it is available for anyone to download, use, and modify. V4 marks DeepSeek's most significant release since R1, the reasoning model it launched in January 2025. R1, which was trained on limited computing resources, stunned the global AI industry with its strong performance and efficiency, turning DeepSeek from a little-known research team into China's best-known AI company almost overnight.

'Physical AI' Is Coming for Your Car What the latest tech-marketing buzzword has to say about the future of automotive. The systems powering the autonomous features in the Afeela 1 and Afeela prototype, both announced at CES, are the embodiment of "physical AI." Courtesy of Sony Honda Mobility Physical AI sounds like a contradiction in terms. But for the marketing architects, it's the latest term of art, a buzzword meant to point us citizens toward a bright and promising technological future. Back here on earth, the term is maybe most useful as a way to understand how automotive companies are thinking about themselves right now: as tech pioneers. It's also a handy shortcut to understanding how appetizing the automotive industry is for the companies that make chips-- what could be a $123 billion opportunity by 2032, up some 85 percent from 2023. The giant CES consumer tech showcase that just took place in Las Vegas always has its share of goofy robot demos, but this year's presentations showed how the world of robots, cars, and chipsets are growing ever closer.

The world's top chipmaker wants open source AI to succeed--perhaps because closed models increasingly run on its rivals' silicon. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang arrives for a meeting with lawmakers in Washington, DC. Nvidia has made a fortune supplying chips to companies working on artificial intelligence, but today the chipmaker took a step toward becoming a more serious model maker itself by releasing a series of cutting-edge open models, along with data and tools to help engineers use them. The move, which comes at a moment when AI companies like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic are developing increasingly capable chips of their own, could be a hedge against these firms veering away from Nvidia's technology over time. Open models are already a crucial part of the AI ecosystem with many researchers and startups using them to experiment, prototype, and build.

What are the implications of Trump's Somali'garbage' comments? What happens if the US attacks Venezuela? Does'America First' make the US weaker? What we know about the DC pipe bomb suspect Brian Cole Jr. US President Donald Trump has cleared the way for tech giant Nvidia to sell its advanced H200 chip to China, in a significant easing of Washington's export controls targeting Chinese tech. Trump said on Monday that he had informed Chinese President Xi Jinping of the decision to allow the export of the chip under an arrangement that will see 25 percent of sales paid to the US government.

Micron to invest $9.6 billion in western Japan plant, report says Signage at the Micron Technology booth at the China International Import Expo in Shanghai is seen on Nov. 6. Micron Technology will spend ¥1.5 trillion ($9.6 billion) to build a plant in western Japan to make memory chips for artificial intelligence applications, Nikkei newspaper reported. The move comes as Micron looks to diversify advanced chip production outside of Taiwan, Nikkei said, citing people familiar with the matter. The new factory will manufacture high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component for working with AI processors such as those made by Nvidia, according to the report. Micron will build the facility within the compound of its Hiroshima plant, starting in May, with plans to launch HBM shipments around 2028, Nikkei said. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry will subsidize up to ¥500 billion of the costs for the project, the newspaper said.

The struggling American chipmaker is betting that a new plant and fresh product line will help turn around its fortunes. After four years of construction, Intel said on Thursday that its Fab 52 semiconductor plant in Chandler, Arizona is now turning out its first chips. The company also shared more details about the long-awaited CPUs that it will be producing in the facility using Intel's brand new 18A process technology. The announcement comes just six weeks after the Trump administration acquired a 9.9 percent stake in Intel in exchange for $8.9 billion in stock. The fab opening, while long in the works, is the first major opportunity for the struggling American chip maker to convince the broader tech industry that it can produce some of the world's most advanced chips at scale--and that the White House's investment might pay off.

AMD's shares surge on deal to supply AI chips to OpenAI United States chipmaker AMD will supply artificial intelligence chips to OpenAI in a multi-year deal that would bring in tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue and give the ChatGPT creator the option to buy up to roughly 10 percent of the company. Shares of the chipmaker surged more than 34 percent on Monday when the deal was announced, putting them on track for their biggest one-day gain in more than nine years and adding roughly $80bn to the company's market value. "We view this deal as certainly transformative, not just for AMD, but for the dynamics of the industry," AMD executive vice president Forrest Norrod told the Reuters news agency. The agreement closely ties the startup at the centre of the AI boom to AMD, one of the strongest rivals of Nvidia, which recently agreed to make substantial investments in OpenAI. Analysts said it was a significant vote of confidence in AMD's AI chips and software but is unlikely to dent Nvidia's dominance, as the market leader continues to sell every AI chip it can make.