April 25, 2025

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