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It ’s already been a troubled year for the U.S. semiconductor industry .
The semiconductor industry fiddle a sizable character in the “ AI race ” that the U.S. seems compulsive to win , which is why this context is worth pay up care to : from Intel ’s assignment of Lip - Bu Tan to CEO — who waste no time getting to process trying to revitalize the legacy company — to Joe Biden purpose sweeping new AI chip exportation rules on his agency out of office that may or may not actually dumbfound .
Here ’s a look at what ’s happened since the beginning of the year .
May
A last-minute reversal
May 7 : Just a week before the “ Framework for Artificial Intelligence Diffusion ” was set to go into place , the Trump administration plans on taking a different path . According to multiple media outlets , includingAxiosandBloomberg , the judicature wo n’t impose the restrictions when they were supposed to start on May 15 and is rather working on its own framework .
April
Anthropic doubles down on its support of chip export restrictions
April 30 : Anthropicdoubled down on its supportfor restricting U.S.-made chip exports , let in some tweak to the Framework for Artificial Intelligence Diffusion , like inflict further restriction on grade 2 countries and dedicate resources to enforcement . An Nvidia spokesperson snap back , suppose , “ American firm should sharpen on innovation and rise to the challenge , rather than order tall tales that large , heavy , and sensitive electronics are somehow smuggle in ‘ baby bumps ’ or ‘ alongside live lobsters . ’ ”
Planned layoffs at Intel
April 22 : forwards of its Q1 wage call , Intel enunciate it was planning to lay off more than21,000 employee . The layoffs were imply to streamline management , something CEO Lip - Bu Tan has long said Intel need to do , and aid reconstruct the companionship ’s engineering science focus .
The Trump administration further restricts chip exports
April 15 : Nvidia ’s H20 AI chipping got run into with an exportlicensing requirement , the fellowship discover in an SEC filing . The ship’s company append it expects $ 5.5 billion in electric charge related to this new requirement in the first twenty-five percent of its 2026 fiscal year . The H20 is the most advanced AI chip Nvidia can still export to China in some form or manner . TSMC and Intel report similar expenses the same week .
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Nvidia appears to talk its way out of further chip exports
April 9 : Nvidia ’s CEOJensen Huang was spotted attending dinner at Donald Trump ’s Mar - a - Lagoresort , agree to reports . At the time , NPR reportedHuang may have been able to save Nvidia ’s H20 AI chips from export restrictions upon agreeing to invest in AI data centers in the U.S.
An alleged agreement between Intel and TSMC
April 3 : Intel and TSMCallegedly reached a tentative agreementto launch a joint chipmaking venture . This joint speculation would operate Intel ’s chipmaking facility , and TSMC would have a 20 % bet in the new venture . Both company declined to comment or confirm . If this deal does n’t come to realisation , this is likely a comely preview of possible deal in this industriousness to come .
Intel spins off noncore assets, announces new initiative
April 1 : CEO Lip - Bu Tan vex to work correctly off . Just weeks after he joined Intel , the company denote that it was going tospin off noncore assetsso it could focus . He also said the company would launch unexampled products , include tradition semiconducting material for customers .
March
Intel names a new CEO
March 12 : Intel announced that diligence stager , and former board member , Lip - Bu Tan would come back to the fellowship as CEOon March 18 . At the time of his appointment , Tan said Intel would be an “ engineering - pore company ” under his leadership .
February
Intel’s Ohio chip plant gets delayed again
February 28 : Intel was supposed to get down operate its first chip fabrication plant life in Ohio this year . Instead , the company slowed down constructionon the plant for the second meter in February . Now the $ 28 billion semiconductor undertaking wo n’t wrap up construction until 2030 and may not even open until 2031 .
Senators call for more chip export restrictions
February 3 : U.S. senators , include Elizabeth Warren ( D - Mass ) and Josh Hawley ( R - Mo ) , write a letter of the alphabet to Commerce Secretary Nominee - Designate Howard Lutnickurging the Trump giving medication to further restrictAI scrap exportation . The letter specifically come to to Nvidia ’s H20 AI fleck , which were used in the training of DeepSeek ’s R1 “ reasoning ” model .
January
DeepSeek releases its open “reasoning” model
January 27 : Chinese AI startupDeepSeekcaused quite the stir in Silicon Valley when it unfreeze theopen version of its R1 “ reasoning ” manikin . While this is n’t semiconductor news specifically , the sheer consternation in the AI and semiconductor manufacture DeepSeek ’s release caused continue to have ripple effects on the chip industry .
Joe Biden’s executive order on chip exports
January 13 : With just a week left in office , former president Joe Bidenproposed sweeping new export restrictionson U.S.-made AI chipping . This monastic order created a three - tier structure that set how many U.S. chips can be exported to each country . Under this proposition , grade 1 state faced no restrictions ; Tier 2 rural area had a Saratoga chip purchase limit for the first time ; and tier up 3 countries got additional restriction .
Anthropic’s Dario Amodei weighs in on chip export restrictions
January 6 : Anthropic co - founder and CEO Dario Amodei co - wrote an op - ed inThe Wall Street Journalendorsing subsist AI chip exportation controls and pointing to them as a reason why China ’s AI grocery was behind the U.S. ’ . He also squall on incoming president Donald Trump to bring down further restrictions and to close loopholes that have allow AI companies in China to still get their hand on these chip .
