Enrique Abeyta:

AMD Teams Up With U.S. To Build AI Supercomputers

AMD just landed a $1 billion deal with the U.S. Energy Department to build two AI supercomputers designed to tackle major scientific and security challenges – everything from next-gen defense tech to cancer research.

This agreement marks a big step forward in the U.S.’s push for high-performance computing. The first supercomputer, Lux, will run on AMD’s MI355X AI chips and is expected to go live in six months, with Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Oracle Cloud pitching in. Discovery, a second machine powered by even more advanced MI430 chips, is set to arrive in 2029. 

The government hopes these tools will speed up progress in fields like nuclear fusion, defense, and medical science — setting a target to make many terminal cancers manageable within five to eight years. While AMD and the Energy Department didn’t spill all the details, AMD’s stock nudged up after the news, signaling a boost of confidence from investors.

This partnership highlights growing U.S. government faith in homegrown chipmakers, putting fresh pressure on competitors like Nvidia. The capital and backing from the Energy Department could ramp up investment and speed in the red-hot AI hardware race, making AMD an even bigger name to watch.

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Ray Blanco:

Qualcomm Announces AI Chips To Compete With AMD and Nvidia — Stock Soars 15%

Qualcomm announced Monday that it will release new AI accelerator chips, marking new competition for Nvidia, which has so far dominated the market for AI semiconductors. The stock soared 15% following the news.

The AI chips are a shift from Qualcomm, which has thus far focused on semiconductors for wireless connectivity and mobile devices, not massive data centers.

Qualcomm said that both the AI200, which will go on sale in 2026, and the AI250, planned for 2027, can come in a system that fills up a full, liquid-cooled server rack.

Qualcomm is matching Nvidia and AMD, which offer their graphics processing units, or GPUs, in full-rack systems that allow as many as 72 chips to act as one computer. AI labs need that computing power to run the most advanced models.

Qualcomm’s data center chips are based on the AI parts in Qualcomm’s smartphone chips called Hexagon neural processing units, or NPUs.

“We first wanted to prove ourselves in other domains, and once we built our strength over there, it was pretty easy for us to go up a notch into the data center level,” Durga Malladi, Qualcomm’s general manager for data center and edge, said to reporters last week.

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Greg Guenthner:

Bitcoin Reclaims $115,000 as U.S.–China Trade Hopes Lift Markets

Bitcoin and the broader crypto market surged over the weekend, fueled by potential de-escalation in the U.S.-China trade war.

Bitcoin gained 3.5% on Sunday, rising from $110,960 to $115,400, before cooling slightly. The asset is currently trading at $115,235. Bitcoin is still down about 6.5% from its October 6 all-time high $126,000.

The renewed rally comes amid easing trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies. The U.S. and Chinese officials met in Malaysia over the weekend, resulting in a preliminary framework agreement described by both sides as a constructive step toward cooling the trade war.

“Bitcoin’s weekend rally underscores how macro sentiment continues to steer digital assets,” Daniel Liu, CEO of Republic Technologies, said. “The renewed optimism around U.S.-China trade talks has temporarily lifted risk appetite across markets, and Bitcoin, increasingly viewed as a high-beta macro asset, followed suit.”

“What we’re really seeing is a reflexive move of traders pricing in a softer macro environment and looser financial conditions, not a structural shift in the U.S.–China dynamic,” Liu added.

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