A report from nonprofit watchdog C4ADS outlines three main routes Chinese buyers use to obtain export-restricted Nvidia AI chips like the H100, A100 and Blackwell models: direct purchases through research institutions, rerouting shipments through third countries in Southeast Asia, and layered shell-company transactions. The group notes its findings only cover documented cases, so the real volume of smuggled hardware is likely much larger.
An investigation by The Guardian found that nearly all of the world's ten largest producers of PFAS, or 'forever chemicals,' intend to expand production to supply the booming data center industry. These chemicals are widely used in cooling systems, AI chips, circuit boards, fire suppression equipment, and cable coatings inside data centers.
Cornelis Networks, an Intel spinoff, secured $205 million in funding led by IAG Capital Partners. The company unveiled its Active Compute Fabric, a networking technology designed to reduce GPU idle time by letting chips process and transmit data simultaneously, and it has already begun shipping the product.
Z.ai's shares fell more than 10% on Monday after the Beijing-based AI firm unveiled plans to raise roughly $5 billion, combining a discounted share placement worth about $2 billion with a $3 billion zero-coupon convertible bond offering due 2027. This is the company's second major capital raise in two months, following a $4 billion placement in July. Rival Chinese AI firm MiniMax also saw its shares slide about 5% the same day.
AI chipmaker Positron secured $875 million in new funding, backers including NEA, Atreides Management, and Jim Clark, valuing the startup at $5 billion. The company designs specialized chips aimed at running AI models quickly, positioning itself against dominant GPU providers as demand for inference-focused hardware grows.
TSMC posted its highest-ever monthly revenue in August, totaling NT$514.8 billion ($16.35 billion), a 53.3% increase from a year earlier and 10.1% higher than July. This marks the fourth consecutive month of revenue growth for the chipmaker, fueled by sustained demand for AI-related chips.
Nvidia has agreed to acquire AI platform Hugging Face for roughly $12.9bn, one of its largest acquisitions to date. Hugging Face, used by over 18 million developers and hosting more than three million AI models, operates as a major hub for sharing open-source AI tools. Nvidia said the platform will remain open and won't require users to adopt its chips or services.
Nvidia's RTX Spark N1X chips, unveiled at Computex 2026 with several laptop partners, now have a firmer release window of October rather than a vague 'fall' target. The lineup includes a 20-CPU-core/6,144-GPU-core variant supporting up to 128GB unified memory for laptops and desktops, and an 18-core/5,120-GPU-core version limited to 32GB for laptops only. Nvidia has not disclosed pricing for either chip.
MediaTek stock jumped 10% on Tuesday following news that Nvidia will invest $3.5 billion in convertible bonds issued by the Taiwanese chipmaker. The deal deepens a partnership aimed at expanding MediaTek's presence in data center chips, extending a rally that has seen its shares nearly triple this year.
Nvidia is putting $3.5 billion into Taiwan's MediaTek, with the chipmaker agreeing to build custom AI silicon for cloud providers using Nvidia's NVLink Fusion technology. The arrangement lets those custom chips slot directly into Nvidia-based data centers, tying MediaTek's designs into Nvidia's broader hardware ecosystem.
Nvidia posted stronger-than-expected fiscal second-quarter results and issued a bullish forward outlook, reinforcing confidence that AI infrastructure spending remains robust. On the earnings call, Nvidia disclosed that Amazon will buy an additional 2 million of its GPUs in 2027 and 2028 even as it builds its own AI chips, and the strong report helped push the Nasdaq, S&P 500 and Dow to their best trading day since early August.
AI cloud provider Lambda has secured $1 billion in private, short-dated debt arranged by JP Morgan Chase to purchase Nvidia AI chips it plans to lease to Microsoft, according to Bloomberg. This follows a $1 billion secured credit facility Lambda closed in May and a $926 million loan this week for Nvidia GB300 GPUs tied to a separate contract with Nvidia itself.
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