TSMC expects record 2025 profit despite US tariffs, currency volatility
HSINCHU, Taiwan -- Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. on Tuesday said it expects to log a record profit for 2025 despite uncertainties brought on by geopolitical tensions, tariffs and volatile exchange rates.
Speaking after TSMC's annual general meeting, Chairman and CEO C.C. Wei said AI demand remains strong and that the only thing he fears is a global economic slowdown.
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Japan Times
an hour ago
- Japan Times
Meta taps top researchers from Google and Sesame for new AI lab
Meta has poached top engineers from multiple tech firms, including Google, for a new team focused on achieving a more advanced form of AI called artificial general intelligence. Jack Rae, a principal researcher at Google DeepMind, is expected to join Meta's "superintelligence' team, according to multiple people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity as the information is not public. Meta has also recruited Johan Schalkwyk, a machine learning lead at AI voice startup Sesame, other people said. Alexandr Wang, co-founder and chief executive officer of Scale, is also expected to be part of the team after Meta finalizes a multibillion-dollar investment in the data labeling startup that could be announced as soon as this week. The new group is part of an ambitious, and costly, effort by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to gain ground on rivals like Google and OpenAI after he was frustrated by the poor reception to the company's latest AI offering, Llama 4. Zuckerberg hopes the new hires can help improve Llama's models and build better AI tools for voice and personalization features. Meta and Zuckerberg are offering compensation packages worth tens of millions of dollars over several years, including equity, according to people familiar with the matter. A spokesperson for Meta declined to comment. Rae confirmed he's leaving Google for Meta, but declined to comment further. Schalkwyk did not respond to a request for comment. Zuckerberg has begun recruiting a brain trust of AI researchers and engineers, at times meeting with candidates at his homes in Lake Tahoe and Palo Alto, California. Often, the CEO has reached out to potential hires directly, according to people familiar with the process. Meta aims to hire around 50 people for the new team, including a chief scientist to help oversee the group, one person said. The team is coming together as Meta is also nearing a deal to invest billions of dollars in Scale to bolster its AI efforts. Scale uses an army of contractors to label the data that tech firms such as Meta and OpenAI need to train and improve their AI models. Wang, Scale's 28-year-old CEO, is an influential figure in the industry who has cultivated close ties with some in Washington. Other employees from Scale are likely to join Meta's superintelligence team after the investment is finalized, according to a person familiar with the deal. The three pillars of AI development are chips, talent and data. Meta has lots of chips. The Scale partnership may help bolster its access to quality data. And with the power of its checkbook, Meta and Zuckerberg hope to make a bigger dent in the AI talent wars. "There are very few people globally who can do those type of large AI trainings very, very efficiently,' said Vahan Petrosyan, co-founder of SuperAnnotate, an AI data platform. For that reason, he said, higher pay packages may make sense for companies like Meta. Still, not everyone is jumping at Zuckerberg's recruitment push. At least one person at a leading AI research lab rejected a lucrative offer from Zuckerberg, according to a person familiar with the matter. Meanwhile, Meta's competitors are racing to retain top talent. Google named Koray Kavukcuoglu, one of its top AI researchers, as its chief AI architect — a new senior vice president role that reports directly to Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai, according to an internal memo. Kavukcuoglu will continue to serve as the GenAI unit lead and chief technology officer of Google DeepMind, Pichai said in the memo. "Koray will help to accelerate how we bring our world-leading models into our products, with the goal of more seamless integration, faster iteration, and greater efficiency,' Pichai said. Google didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Japan Today
8 hours ago
- Japan Today
Nvidia chief calls AI ‘the greatest equalizer' — but warns Europe risks falling behind
By THOMAS ADAMSON and KELVIN CHAN Will artificial intelligence save humanity — or destroy it? Lift up the world's poorest — or tighten the grip of a tech elite? Jensen Huang, the global chip tycoon, offered his opinion on Wednesday: neither dystopia nor domination. AI, he said, is a tool for liberation. Wearing his signature biker jacket and mobbed by fans for selfies, the Nvidia CEO cut the figure of a tech rock star as he took the stage at VivaTech in Paris. 'AI is the greatest equalizer of people the world has ever created,' Huang said, kicking off one of Europe's biggest technology industry fairs. But beyond the sheeny optics, Nvidia used the Paris summit to unveil a wave of infrastructure announcements across Europe, signaling a dramatic expansion of the AI chipmaker's physical and strategic footprint on the continent. In France, the company is deploying 18,000 of its new Blackwell chips with startup Mistral AI. In Germany, it's building an industrial AI cloud to support manufacturers. Similar rollouts are underway in Italy, Spain, Finland and the UK, including a new AI lab in Britain. Other announcements include a partnership with AI startup Perplexity to bring sovereign AI models to European publishers and telecoms, a new cloud platform with Mistral AI, and work with BMW and Mercedes-Benz to train AI-powered robots for use in auto plants. The announcements reflect how central AI infrastructure has become to global strategy, and how Nvidia — the world's most valuable chipmaker — is positioning itself as the engine behind it. At the center of the debate is Huang's concept of the AI factory: not a plant that makes goods, but a vast data center that creates intelligence. These facilities train language models, simulate new drugs, detect cancer in scans, and more. Asked if such systems risk creating a 'technological priesthood' — hoarding computing power and stymying the bottom-up innovation that fueled the tech industry for the past 50 years — Huang pushed back. 'Through the velocity of our innovation, we democratize,' he told The Associated Press. 'We lower the cost of access to technology.' As Huang put it, these factories 'reason,' 'plan,' and 'spend a lot of time talking to' themselves, powering everything from ChatGPT to autonomous vehicles and diagnostics. But some critics warn that without guardrails, such all-seeing, self-reinforcing systems could go the way of Skynet in ' The Terminator ' movie — vast intelligence engines that outpace human control. 'Just as electricity powered the last industrial revolution, AI will power the next one,' he said. 'Every country now needs a national intelligence infrastructure.' He added: 'AI factories are now part of a country's infrastructure. That's why you see me running around the world talking to heads of state — they all want AI to be part of their infrastructure. They want AI to be a growth manufacturing industry for them.' Europe, long praised for its leadership on digital rights, now finds itself at a crossroads. As Brussels pushes forward with world-first AI regulations, some warn that over-caution could cost the bloc its place in the global race. With the U.S. and China surging ahead and most major AI firms based elsewhere, the risk isn't just falling behind — it's becoming irrelevant. Huang has a different vision: sovereign AI. Not isolation, but autonomy — building national AI systems aligned with local values, independent of foreign tech giants. 'The data belongs to you,' Huang said. 'It belongs to your people, your country... your culture, your history, your common sense.' But fears over AI misuse remain potent — from surveillance and deepfake propaganda to job losses and algorithmic discrimination. Huang doesn't deny the risks. But he insists the technology can be kept in check — by itself. 'In the future, the AI that is doing the task is going to be surrounded by 70 or 80 other AIs that are supervising it, observing it, guarding it, ensuring that it doesn't go off the rails.' The VivaTech event was part of Huang's broader European tour. He had already appeared at London Tech Week and is scheduled to visit Germany. In Paris, he joined French President Emmanuel Macron and Mistral AI CEO Arthur Mensch to reinforce his message that AI is now a national priority. © Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Japan Times
20 hours ago
- Japan Times
Can Apple salvage the AI iPhone in China?
If you thought Apple's artificial intelligence woes in the U.S. were bad, just know that they could actually be worse. Look at China. The AI iPhone features haven't even arrived on the mainland. And those holding their breath for an update at this week's Worldwide Developers Conference were again let down. Despite earlier reports that Apple Intelligence could launch in the country — where demand for AI is among the highest in the world — in May, the lack of a fresh announcement isn't a total shock. The rollout has long been dodged by outsized regulatory scrutiny on both sides of the Pacific. Last week, the Financial Times reported that Apple's partnership with Alibaba Group Holding to bring its AI services to China was being further stalled by a Beijing regulator in the midst of U.S. President Donald Trump's trade war. Apple can't catch a break here. But there are reasons to hold onto hope that the service can still be salvaged, even if the window of opportunity for Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook is rapidly closing. Apple's popularity in China has undoubtedly waned amid the rise of domestic rivals such as the premium smartphone offerings from Huawei Technologies Just 21% of consumers picked it as their top choice for their next phone, according to a Bloomberg Intelligence survey released this week, compared to 29% a year ago. And perhaps more concerningly for Cook is that the marquee smartphone is losing its allure even for existing customers: 62% of iPhone users in China said they are planning on sticking with the brand, versus 81% a year earlier. But the data also reveal a bigger story. It's not just Apple losing its appeal. The popularity of homegrown titan Huawei's smartphones fell by a much larger share than Apple, with consumers across the board putting off replacing their existing phones for longer. While the West has been focused on Apple's problems in China, this is also about the pain of domestic consumers, who are holding back on spending due to deflationary pressures and macroeconomic uncertainty. As Beijing works to turn this around, it could buy much-needed time for the iPhone maker's eventual launch of an AI smartphone to a more hospitable consumer environment. Of course, the biggest hurdle is obtaining regulatory approval in Beijing. The more Cook can lean on local partner Alibaba to speed up this process and portray it to Chinese authorities as a joint win, the better chance of success. While this collaboration has already ruffled feathers in Washington, Apple should emphasize that it would still maintain control over the hardware, while its presence in China slows the global rise of firms like Huawei, which has long been a target for U.S. lawmakers. The company has been typically hush-hush about the scope of its partnership with Alibaba. But there are reasons to be bullish — perhaps even more so than for its U.S. alliance with OpenAI — that this collaboration can revitalize its AI ambitions, at least in China. While Apple's in-house efforts have sputtered, Alibaba's major investments into the technology have propelled it to be a top global player. Even Nvidia Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang last month called its Qwen offerings "among the best open-source AI models' as he touted the benefits of having it run on American hardware. Their open-source nature also means that developers can continuously optimize the Qwen models, as well as download them to run on their own servers, mitigating some of the national security concerns Washington associates with Chinese technology. Still, relying on Alibaba to do the heavy lifting in AI development would be very un-Apple-like, given its history of seeking to maintain as much control as possible. But the company must find a way to adapt. And the more AI becomes commoditized in China, having a local partner has the benefit of outsourcing some of the expensive legwork. This would also allow it to focus resources on gaining an edge in the next-generation of AI consumer devices. This area is still in its infancy, giving Apple a fighting chance to catch up and do what it does best: Release perfected versions of devices launched prematurely by competitors. The consequences of falling further behind here threatens its global hardware dominance. Much of the recent discourse on Apple's relationship with China has centered around risks from the company's reliance on the country as a manufacturing mothership. But when it comes to tapping into the consumer base, this is also an asset, proof to Beijing that it isn't just a foreign firm exploiting the market, but a partner supporting millions of jobs. It remains to be seen how tenable this precarious position is for Cook. But he's spent decades buying time and playing both sides. For Apple's sake, let's hope there are more decades to go. Catherine Thorbecke is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asia tech.
