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丨Monday, August 5, 2024丨

NO.1 Intel's biggest drop since 1982

On the evening of August 2, Beijing time, the stock price of the veteran chip giant Intel fell 26%, and its market value evaporated by about US$32 billion, setting the largest single-day drop since at least 1982. Before the opening, Intel announced its second-quarter results for 2024: revenue of US$12.8 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 1%; net loss of US$1.6 billion, and predicted that third-quarter revenue will be lower than expected. In response to the current crisis, Intel plans to increase its cost-saving efforts, announced a 15% layoff, and suspended dividends to shareholders from the fourth fiscal quarter.

Comments:Intel currently has two main focuses. The first is what it has been trying to do three years ago, relying on high-end chip manufacturing to "regain glory". This year, it also separated its chip foundry business. The large losses of the foundry business have caused a lot of discussion. However, while the foundry business is "burning money", the competitive pressure is also not small, and it has to "challenge" companies such as TSMC and Samsung. Second, Intel is also actively deploying artificial intelligence, but due to the high cost and low profit of AI, it has not yet fully benefited from it.

NO.2 Nvidia delays shipment of B200

According to the US technology website The Information, due to design defects, the shipment time of Nvidia's next-generation Blackwell architecture series AI flagship chip GB200 will be delayed by at least three months. This delay has undoubtedly disrupted the plans of Nvidia's customers, especially for giants such as Microsoft, Google and Meta. Google has ordered more than 400,000 GB200 chips, and with server hardware, the order cost may far exceed $10 billion. Meta has also placed an order worth at least $10 billion.

Comments:This delayed shipment may trigger a series of effects, and Nvidia's quarterly earnings will be affected. In addition, some AI companies originally planned to run large clusters powered by Blackwell series chips in their data centers in the first quarter of 2025, but with the adjustment of Nvidia's shipment plan, the leap in computing power also needs to be adjusted accordingly.

NO.3 Google acquires Character.AI and recruits the team

In the early morning of August 3rd, Beijing time, Character.AI announced that Google has agreed to pay model licensing fees to AI digital human unicorn company Character.AI, and will allow Character.AI co-founder and CEO Noam Shazeer and President Daniel De Freitas, as well as Character employees engaged in model training and voice artificial intelligence (30 of about 130 employees) to join Google to participate in the Gemini AI project.

Comments:Previously, Character.AI was reported to have difficulty in raising funds and was seeking mergers and acquisitions from Meta and other large companies. Musk's xAI was reported to be one of the important acquirers, but was later denied by Musk. Character.AI's development momentum was very rapid, with a valuation exceeding US$1 billion in March 2023, and it was disclosed in September last year that its valuation exceeded US$5 billion, but based on the current acquisition price, its valuation has shrunk by about 50%.

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