April 25, 2025

Tariff thaw, Intel tremors, and Baidu’s 30-k-chip flex

Round-up

Highlights

  1. Beijing blinks first: China began handing out exemptions to its eye-watering 125 % retaliatory duties on select U.S. semiconductors, a move mirrored by White-House back-channel signals of de-escalation12.
  2. Intel’s bad day gets worse: A down-beat Q2 outlook, looming layoffs, and a 6 % share slide erased the honeymoon for new CEO Lip-Bu Tan34; demand is tilting toward yesterday’s chips as customers hoard cheaper parts ahead of tariff swings5.
  3. Baidu lights a monster AI cluster: The Chinese giant “illuminated” a 30,000-chip Kunlun P800 super-cluster and rolled out Ernie 4.5 Turbo, claiming state-of-the-art benchmarks6.

Other developments:

  • Easing-trade optimism nudged global equity indices higher78
  • Intel outlined a home-grown AI strategy to chase Nvidia9
  • A stealth startup says it can 3-D-print wafers 90 % cheaper10
  • Memory maker Longsys pivoted to auto-grade flash at Auto Shanghai 202511
  • TrendForce spies signs that Beijing’s tariff carve-outs will exclude U.S. storage chips for now12.

Did You Know?
Baidu’s P800 cluster strings 30 thousand 150-W accelerators together; at full tilt it would pull roughly 4.5 MW — enough to power a small U.S. town for AI training night-shifts6.


In-depth

1 Government & Corporate Policy

  • Selective tariff relief in China

    • Ministry of Commerce asked firms to list “critical” U.S. parts eligible for waivers, signalling concern over supply-chain pain1.
    • Bloomberg sources say semiconductors top the draft exemption list, but storage ICs stay black-listed212.
  • Monetary hawk sounds labour alarm

    • Minneapolis Fed president Neel Kashkari warned that tariff whiplash could trigger tech-sector layoffs within months13.
    • His comments add pressure on Congress as CHIPS-Act disbursements stall.
  • Market barometer turns positive

    • Wall Street closed higher after the exemption headlines; the Philadelphia SOX joined the rebound despite Intel’s sell-off7.
    • London’s FTSE100 chalked its 10th straight gain on the same news-flow8.
  • Intel’s internal policy reset

    • CEO Tan ordered a four-day office week and deep org-chart cuts; up to 20 % of staff face redundancy, part of a $1.5 bn expense target4.

2 Economics, Finance & Business Outlook

  • Intel’s outlook shock

    • Q2 revenue guided to $11.2-12.4 bn — below Street consensus — and shares sank 6 % pre-market3.
    • FT notes Tan is deliberately under-promising after “years of bad execution”14.
  • Old silicon, new life

    • Clients are stockpiling earlier-generation PC and Xeon parts before potential 85 % Chinese levies, temporarily juicing sales but eroding margin mix5.
    • Channel checks show Raptor Lake volumes up double digits week-on-week.
  • Sentiment gauges edge higher

    • Tech-heavy U.S. benchmarks finished up 0.7 % as traders priced a slower tariff path; semicon ETF NAVs marked fresh YTD highs7811.
    • Amundi’s MSCI Semiconductors ETF reported a 0.9 % NAV jump on April 24 settlement11.
  • TrendForce on capex freeze

    • The research house says Intel will lop 10 % off 2025 capex to $18 bn and shelve M&A while it restructures4.

3 Technology & R&D

  • Baidu’s Kunlun P800 cluster

    • 30 k in-house accelerators can train “DeepSeek-class” 100-B-parameter models or serve 1-k customers fine-tuning smaller LLMs concurrently6.
    • New Ernie 4.5 Turbo posts GPT-4-level benchmarks on MMLU and CodeEval6.
  • Intel pivots to home-grown AI stack

    • After moth-balling failed acquisitions, Tan vowed to build an Nvidia-style chip-plus-software platform targeting robotics and edge agents9.
    • CFO confirms no big deals “for the foreseeable future” to conserve cash9.
  • 3-D-printed chips?

    • Stealth startup Atum Works demoed a wafer-scale “nanoprinter” claiming 90 % cost cuts versus photolithography; early yields remain <20 %10.
    • Analysts see potential in niche sensor markets if reliability improves.
  • Automotive flash from Longsys

    • Shenzhen-based Longsys rolled out in-house UFS and eMMC lines with –40 °C to +105 °C validation, chasing Tier-1 EV customers11.
    • Company says “PTM customization” slashes firmware porting time by 30 %.

Footnotes


  1. https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-considers-exempting-some-goods-us-tariffs-source-says-2025-04-25/ ↩︎ ↩︎

  2. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-25/china-weighs-exempting-some-us-goods-from-tariffs-as-costs-rise ↩︎ ↩︎

  3. https://www.reuters.com/business/intel-shares-sag-after-downbeat-forecasts-2025-04-25/ ↩︎ ↩︎

  4. https://www.trendforce.com/news/2025/04/25/news-intel-tightens-belt-amid-conservative-outlook-layoffs-in-q2-lower-2025-capex-no-acquisitions/ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  5. https://www.reuters.com/business/trade-tensions-are-giving-intels-older-chips-second-life-2025-04-25/ ↩︎ ↩︎

  6. https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-baidu-says-its-kunlun-chip-cluster-can-train-deepseek-like-models-2025-04-25/ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  7. https://www.reuters.com/business/us-stock-futures-slip-investors-assess-trade-developments-earnings-reports-2025-04-24/ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  8. https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/uk-shares-rise-us-china-trade-tensions-show-signs-easing-2025-04-25/ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  9. https://www.reuters.com/business/after-years-failed-ai-deals-intel-plans-homegrown-challenge-nvidia-2025-04-25/ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  10. https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/startup-aims-to-3d-print-chips-and-cut-production-costs-by-90-percent ↩︎ ↩︎

  11. https://markets.ft.com/data/announce/detail?dockey=600-202504250319DGAP____UKPR_____UK_Regulatory_2124274-1 ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  12. https://www.trendforce.com/news/2025/04/25/news-china-rumored-to-ease-125-tariffs-on-semiconductors-while-storage-chips-likely-off-exemption/ ↩︎ ↩︎

  13. https://www.reuters.com/business/feds-kashkari-nervous-that-trade-policy-uncertainty-will-lead-layoffs-2025-04-25/ ↩︎

  14. https://www.ft.com/content/a6ab628b-2218-439a-8ec8-25845cae117a ↩︎