Andrew here. Which of these American chipmaker’s shares have performed the best this year: A) Nvidia B) Broadcom C) Intel? The answer is C, and it’s not even close despite concerns about its business outlook.
Much of Intel’s appeal with investors appears to be its sale of a stake to the U.S. government, which preceded billions more in announced strategic investments, potentially including from Apple. We break it all down below.
Will Apple get inside Intel?
Intel’s extraordinary agreement last month to sell a stake to the U.S. government set off all kinds of questions about the future of the embattled chipmaker and American-style capitalism in the Trump era.
It’s not clear whether the plan will bolster the Silicon Valley pioneer’s turnaround efforts. But it may prod more investment in Intel by fellow American tech companies, including those trying to stay in President Trump’s good graces.
The latest: Intel’s shares soared on Wednesday (and were up again in premarket trading on Thursday) on reports by Bloomberg and others that the company had held discussions with Apple about a possible investment. The companies have talked multiple times, according to The Times, including before the government agreed to invest $8.9 billion in Intel.
Since then, Nvidia has said it would invest $5 billion in the chipmaker and SoftBank about $2 billion. Other companies are said to be in talks with Intel, too, according to Bloomberg.
The Trump administration has taken a special interest in Intel. In January, months before the deal for a government stake was struck, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick sounded out TSMC, Intel’s rival, about potentially taking over the American company’s foundry business (which makes chips for other customers) after it was spun off, The Times reports.
Another scenario to help its manufacturing business was to have Apple, Nvidia and other tech companies take stakes in that division.
How would Apple and Intel work together if there’s a deal? The tech giant was once a major Intel customer before it switched MacBooks over to its own line of chips — reportedly over frustration with Intel semiconductor performance — and more broadly has sought to use its own silicon in iPhones, AirPods and more.
Could the two find new ways to collaborate again? One potential way is for Intel to make some of the Apple-designed chips, giving the foundry business a potentially crucial customer. Or Intel could make chips for Apple’s data centers.
Some on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley are wondering about the political angle. Are companies willing to invest in Intel because they’ve bought into the vision of the chipmaker’s C.E.O., Lip-Bu Tan — or is it because they’re seeking favor with the Trump administration?
Recall that Tim Cook of Apple promised last month at a White House event to spend $600 billion domestically to bolster American manufacturing. How would an Intel deal factor into that?
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In other Apple news: The tech giant on Thursday asked E.U. antitrust watchdogs to scrap sweeping digital privacy rules, arguing that they could stymie innovation.
HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING
Jimmy Kimmel’s return scores big ratings. “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” averaged 6.2 million viewers for its Tuesday episode, according to Nielsen, nearly four times as much as its usual audience. (These are preliminary figures, and do not count streaming numbers.) But Kimmel’s show remains off the air on the roughly 70 ABC affiliates owned by Nexstar and Sinclair, which haven’t said when they would resume airing the program; the question is how long their standoff with Disney will last.
The U.S. prepares to offer Argentina significant financial aid. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the Trump administration could take steps including offering the Argentine central bank a $20 billion swap line and buying Argentina’s U.S. dollar-denominated bonds. Such moves would help bolster Argentina’s embattled economy, though President Trump said this week that he didn’t think it needed “a bailout.”
The White House warns of mass firings if the government shuts down. The Trump administration told federal agencies to prepare for more layoffs if lawmakers don’t approve a funding deal by next week’s deadline. An impasse remains between the parties, with Trump refusing to meet with Democrats. Some analysts are worried that a shutdown could result in consequences for the economy.
Starbucks plans to close stores and lay off hundreds. The coffee giant’s C.E.O., Brian Niccol, told workers that the company would shut about 1 percent of its North American stores and cut about 900 nonretail jobs. The effort, which Starbucks said would cost about $1 billion, is part of its latest effort to turn around its fortunes.
Exclusive: Using A.I. to catch A.I. song copyright abuse
Music labels have an increasingly complicated relationship with artificial intelligence. The technology can help promote their artists and inspire new kinds of creativity — but, executives and musicians fear, also rip off their work.
The start-up SoundPatrol, whose founders include Michael Ovitz, the former Hollywood superagent and former Disney president, says it has a tool to guard against copyright infringement. And the company has signed up two of the three biggest record labels, Universal Music Group and Sony Music, as partners, Michael de la Merced is first to report.
The backdrop: Artists and labels have argued that A.I.-generated music robs from existing artists, creatively and financially. Universal Music, Sony Music and Warner Records have joined lawsuits against two popular A.I. music generators, Suno and Udio.
“We have to protect our I.P. and our copyrights,” Lucian Grainge, Universal Music’s C.E.O., told DealBook. He added that for his business, music and intellectual property and copyrights are “the blood that runs through its veins.”
The rise of A.I. comes as the music industry recovers from a time of widespread piracy in the early 2000s, with global revenues last year topping the CD-era level of 1999.
How SoundPatrol works: The company uses what it calls “neural fingerprinting,” A.I. technology that can identify distinctive elements of a song — voice, lyrics, melody, chords, timbre and other factors, according to Walter De Brouwer, SoundPatrol’s other founder — and catalogs them. That will help SoundPatrol create a dashboard where customers can see where potential infringement is happening and where it’s coming from, he added.
“For the first time, there will be a trackable, reportable system of I.P. breaches, even if they’re minor,” Ovitz told DealBook. “We can pick up bits and pieces of every song.”
Universal Music and Sony Music will help train SoundPatrol’s systems, giving the start-up access to their libraries. “It’s my job and my duty to do everything I can from my vantage point to make sure that music is protected and monetized and respected,” Grainge told DealBook.
“Our collaboration with SoundPatrol is about respecting artists’ rights to build a sustainable and equitable ecosystem for everyone,” Dennis Kooker, the president of Sony Music’s global digital business, added.
A.I.-generated music is growing in popularity. Just look at the summertime phenomenon that was the Velvet Sundown, a band that amassed more than one million streams on Spotify but was eventually revealed to be an A.I. creation.
Deezer, the French streaming service, recently reported that fully A.I.-generated music now accounted for more than 30,000 of the tracks it receives daily (about 28 percent of total daily song volume). The streaming platform identified up to 70 percent of them as fraudulent, meant just to rack up streams and royalties.
“The noise and chaos is deafening! Who wants to make a business decision in this unstable environment?”
— An unnamed oil executive who responded to a survey by the Dallas Fed about the state of the energy industry. Producers worry that the Trump administration’s unpredictable trade policies and heavy focus on lowering the price of crude oil are hurting their business.
Seen and Heard, climate edition
The planet’s health was front and center on Wednesday at a United Nations climate summit, with many of the world’s nations pledging to lower greenhouse gas emissions.
But the U.S. absence became a main talking point for the business leaders and politicians at The New York Times’s annual Climate Forward event.
A recap:
Xi Jinping vowed landmark cuts at the U.N. gathering. The Chinese leader promised to reduce Beijing’s planet-warming emissions by up to 10 percent over the next decade. Such a commitment from the world’s largest carbon polluter would be a big deal, and potentially bolster the country’s global lead in producing electric vehicles and solar panels.
“Green and low carbon transition is the trend of our time,” said Xi, adding, “some countries are against it.” His comments were in stark contrast to those of President Trump, who on Tuesday warned world leaders at the U.N. to “get away from the green energy scam.”
A mining mogul pushed back on Trump. “I feel real pain when I hear your president saying global warming is a great big con,” Andrew Forrest, the executive chair of the mining company Fortescue, said at The Times’s Climate Forward event.
The company recently scrapped its plan to build a $210 million electric vehicle battery factory in Detroit, citing Republicans’s decision to scrap E.V. tax credits. “All those plans to employ thousands of people to produce batteries for the American people — you know, shattered,” Forrest said.
But the Trump administration dug in. Chris Wright, the energy secretary, urged countries to follow Washington in withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, the accord to reduce planet-warming emissions. He called the treaty’s supporters “a club of people that have lost sight of the interests of their own people.” For good measure, he said that Trump, who withdrew the U.S. from the accord, deserved a “hero of the climate award.”
THE SPEED READ
Deals
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Shares in Lithium Americas, which owns what is set to be the Western Hemisphere’s biggest source of lithium, nearly doubled on Wednesday on a report that the Trump administration was seeking a stake in the Canadian company. (Reuters)
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The Chicago Bears were valued at nearly $9 billion in a recent stake sale, setting an N.F.L. record. (CNBC)
Politics, policy and regulation
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Democratic lawmakers are investigating whether law firms that had cut deals with President Trump have been pressed into illegally providing free legal work for his administration. (NYT)
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“RFK Jr.’s Team Wanted to Tout an Autism Therapy. He Went After Tylenol Instead.” (WSJ)
Best of the rest
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Is Trump’s U-turn on Ukraine a “negotiating tactic,” or potentially an effort to wash his hands of the war? (WaPo, NYT)
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“The Billionaire, the Psychedelics and the Best-Selling Memoir” (NYT)
We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to [email protected].
Andrew Ross Sorkin is a columnist and the founder of DealBook, the flagship business and policy newsletter at The Times and an annual conference.
Bernhard Warner is a senior editor for DealBook, a newsletter from The Times, covering business trends, the economy and the markets.
Sarah Kessler is the weekend edition editor of the DealBook newsletter and writes features on business.
Michael J. de la Merced has covered global business and finance news for The Times since 2006.
Niko Gallogly is a Times reporter, covering business for the DealBook newsletter.
The post Apple, Intel and a Potential Trump Factor appeared first on New York Times.
