Intel

Microsoft’s DLSS competitor isn’t just for Qualcomm laptops and Xbox Ally X anymore — the MSI Claw EX handheld and anything else Intel Core Ultra Series 3 should now qualify. Microsoft claims it’s enough to play at ultra instead of high, among other examples, and I see the hard-to-find Claw EX is now back in stock at B&H, MSI, and ExcaliberPC.

A Reuters report claims SK Hynix is considering leasing part of Intel’s Ohio chip factory or forming a venture with Intel and other companies.

The massive $16.8 billion chip facility, which is being built by Tesla and SpaceX with help from Intel, will be located in Grimes County, population 29,268. After securing over a billion dollars in tax breaks from two rural school districts, SpaceX says it will break ground later this year. The fab will supply AI chips to power Musk’s plans to build a “robot army” that includes self-driving cars and humanoid robots, as well as for the data centers he plans on launching into space.

The partially government-owned chipmaker’s Q2 2026 revenue increased 25 percent from last year, with data center and AI revenue up 59 percent. CEO Lip-Bu Tan:

Intel has put chips in many a spacecraft. Until 2012, the International Space Station had 16MHz Intel 8086 chips as its primary brains, then received an “EPIC” upgrade to 266MHz Intel Pentium. Now, Intel is publicly marketing cut-down Panther Lake chips for private space industry too.

Following capacity shortages at TSMC, Intel will “manufacture more than three million Tensor Processing Units in 2028,” half the estimated 6 million TPUs Google’s expected to make in the next two years, The Information reports. Nvidia and SK Hynix are also reportedly testing Intel’s tech for manufacturing their chips.

It was reported last week that Intel and Apple struck a deal for unknown chips. Now supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reports Intel is manufacturing “low-end/legacy” chips for iPhones, iPads, and Macs, the majority for the phones. The scale is small though, with TSMC set to retain 90 percent of Apple’s chip supply.

It seems that x86 hardware will be part of Google’s new laptop platform, although Intel doesn’t specify what processors it’ll be using:

Data center sales are now “the primary driver of our revenue and earnings growth,” according to CEO Lisa Su. AI agents are increasing demands for CPUs, and AMD and Intel’s x86 industry group recently announced a new instruction set, AI Compute Extensions (ACE), to help close the performance gap with GPUs.

Bloomberg reports that Apple has held “exploratory discussions” with the chipmakers to produce the main processors for certain devices in the US, though the Cupertino company still has concerns about using non-TSMC technology. Perhaps Intel really will return to Macs next year?

Intel is announcing its new Arc Pro B70 “Big Battlemage” desktop GPU with 32GB of VRAM and up to 32 Xe2 cores. It costs $949 for an Intel reference design, while partner designed cards will vary in price. There’s also a B65 Pro with 20 Xe2 cores, but it’s only made by partners.

During an earnings call on Thursday, Intel CFO David Zisner says the company was “relatively aggressive in terms of getting memory” ahead of the global shortage for its previous-gen Lunar Lake chips, which come with integrated RAM.

The chipmaker’s Q4 2025 earnings report reveals that it earned $13.7 billion in revenue over the past few months, a dip from the $14.3 billion it made at the same time last year.

In the spring, Reuters broke the news that Nvidia and Broadcom were testing Intel’s 18A process for chip production, but in a profile today of Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, the outlet now says Nvidia’s test has ended, regardless of their new $5 billion deal.

Two revolving doors in a single press release? Robin Colwell, an economic advisor during both Trump terms (and a lobbyist between them) is now Intel’s SVP of Government Affairs, after Trump shook down Intel for 10 percent. Annie Weckesser is now SVP of marketing and communications — she was CMO at SambaNova, a AI chip startup that Intel’s reportedly about to buy.

Back in the mists of time, in ancient 2009, the European Union fined Intel €1.06 billion ($1.2 billion) for anticompetitive behaviors. The two have been in court ever since, and after Intel got the fine cut to €376 million, it’s now dropped again to €237.1 million ($275 million). How low can it go?

The ex-Intel CEO said in a recent speech that he believes Jesus appeared “because of the Roman roads.” Now, his mission is to work on tech that would “...hasten the coming of Christ’s return,” with a startup that filed for its IPO this week.

While we wait to see if Intel’s all-important 18A Panther Lake chips make a dent, the company is temporarily back in black, thanks to $5.7B of the money Trump used to shake down Intel for a stake, $5.2B from selling Altera, and $2B from Softbank. Foundry is still losing money.