1. Qualcomm: Arm has withdrawn its breach of contract allegations and has no plans to terminate the licensing agreement
On February 5, Qualcomm CEO Amon said that Arm has withdrawn its threat to terminate the licensing agreement between Qualcomm and technology providers. In October 2024, Arm threatened to terminate Qualcomm's licensing agreement in a dispute over the technology used in Qualcomm's personal computer chips. In December of the same year, Qualcomm won the trial of the dispute. In Qualcomm's quarterly earnings call on February 5, Amon said that Arm had withdrawn its threats and "currently has no plans" to terminate the licensing agreement with Qualcomm.
It is reported that the legal dispute between Arm and Qualcomm was heard in a Delaware court in the United States last year. Arm obtained a license for the basic technology used to design chips, and Qualcomm was one of its largest customers and a leading mobile processor designer. The key to the lawsuit is the contract dispute surrounding Qualcomm's licensing agreement for the use of Arm's intellectual property and its $1.4 billion acquisition of chip startup Nuvia in 2021, which was founded by former Apple chip engineers such as Gerard Williams.
2. AMD's data center business revenue surpassed Intel for the first time in Q4 2024
AMD announced its financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2024. As expected, the company achieved impressive results with its client and data center CPUs. Perhaps AMD's biggest achievement in the quarter was that for the first time in the company's history, sales in the data center field exceeded Intel's. However, AMD's data center GPU sales performance was slightly disappointing to market observers.
AMD's total revenue in the fourth quarter of 2024 was $7.658 billion, a year-on-year increase of 24%. The company's gross profit margin reached 51%, while net profit was $482 million. On an annual basis, 2024 was AMD's best year ever, as the company's annual revenue reached $25.8 billion, a year-on-year increase of 14%. The company's net profit was $1.641 billion and its gross profit margin reached 49%. Although the company's annual performance was impressive, some of the results in the fourth quarter were particularly worthy of AMD's pride.
3. It is reported that TSMC's advanced process prices will rise by more than 15% in 2025
Recently, US President Trump vowed to impose specific tariffs on industries such as chips, oil, and gas. With rising chip tariffs and production costs, foundry giant TSMC is likely to raise prices for advanced nodes by more than 15% in 2025, higher than the previously expected 5% to 10%.
The United States has been tightening restrictions on mainland China's access to advanced chips, and its latest move was announced in mid-January, with plans to impose stricter export controls on chips from TSMC, Intel, GlobalFoundries, Samsung and other companies, targeting processors with 30 billion transistors manufactured at 14nm, 16nm or more advanced nodes. Trump reportedly hinted at the beginning of his second term that chip tariffs were inevitable and could be implemented as early as February 18.
4. Apple reportedly begins mass production of M5 chips using TSMC's N3P process technology
Apple has begun mass production of its next-generation M5 processor for desktops, laptops and high-performance tablets. The new system-on-chip (SoC) is expected to use TSMC's performance-enhanced N3P manufacturing process, which was originally scheduled to go into mass production in the second half of 2024. This is also TSMC's third-generation 3nm process technology.
Compared with the previous generation M4 process, the M5 process has a 5-10% improvement in power efficiency and a 5% improvement in performance. It is reported that the M5 Pro product will use TSMC's SoIC-MH packaging process, a method of vertically stacking semiconductor chips, which is expected to further improve chip performance and energy efficiency. Apple's M5 is the next-generation CPU for entry-level Macs as well as high-end iPad Pro tablets. The M5 series is expected to include M5, M5 Pro, M5 Max and M5 Ultra processors, but Apple has not officially disclosed its release plans for the series.
5. South Korean government departments disable DeepSeek due to security issues
On February 5, an official from the South Korean Ministry of Industry said that for security reasons, the South Korean Ministry of Industry temporarily banned government officials from using DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence startup, and the South Korean government urged caution with generative artificial intelligence services. South Korean Ministry of Industry officials said that the South Korean government issued a notice on February 4, requiring departments and agencies to use artificial intelligence services including DeepSeek and ChatGPT with caution in their work.
The ban makes South Korea the latest government to issue warnings or impose restrictions on DeepSeek. Australia banned DeepSeek from all government devices this week over concerns that the Chinese artificial intelligence startup posed a security risk. In January, Italy's data protection agency ordered DeepSeek to block its chatbot in the country after the Chinese startup failed to address regulators' concerns about its privacy policy. In addition, some other governments in Europe, the United States and India are also studying the impact of using DeepSeek.
6. Cruise, a GM-owned smart driving company, officially announced a 50% layoff, and core executives will leave this week
Recently, Cruise, a subsidiary of GM's autonomous driving car company, announced that it will lay off about 50% of its employees in accordance with the plan to terminate the Robotaxi business. Media reports said that CEO Marc Whitten, Chief Human Resources Officer Nilka Thomas, Chief Safety Officer Steve Kenner and Global Public Policy Director Rob Grant will all leave this week.
According to public information, Cruise had nearly 2,300 employees by the end of 2024. Based on this calculation, Cruise's layoffs are expected to exceed 1,100. Cruise disclosed that after the layoffs, the company will focus on working with General Motors to promote the large-scale application of personal autonomous vehicles. According to data, General Motors acquired Cruise in 2016 and has invested more than $10 billion in Cruise. As of the end of 2024, General Motors holds approximately 90% of Cruise's shares and is expected to complete the acquisition of the remaining Cruise shares from external shareholders in early 2025.