Good morning. Andrew Nusca here, back in the saddle after the birth of my second son.
Thanks for all the kind notes. I’m especially grateful to colleagues Alexei, Allie, Jason, Jeremy, and Jessica for keeping the lights on in my absence. (You’re the best.)
So what’d I miss? Kidding. Today’s tech news below. —Andrew Nusca
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U.S. wants to move half its chip production needs stateside
Why is the White House so obsessed with making advanced computer chips in the United States?
Because China may very well invade Taiwan, according to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. And Taiwanese producers make two of every three semiconductors found around the globe, per most industry estimates.
In an interview with the U.S. news outlet NewsNation, Lutnick said that Washington wants more leverage as China threatens to invade Taiwan, a self-ruled island that Beijing has long viewed as its own. (Don’t know your cross-strait history? Brush up here.)
“That’s been the conversation we had with Taiwan, that you have to understand it’s vital for you to have us produce 50%,” Lutnick said, adding that the U.S. objective is “maybe 50% market share of producing the chip and the wafers—the semiconductors—we need for American consumption.”
Whichever way the political winds blow, it won’t happen overnight. The amount of capital and infrastructure and training required to make such a move is, in a word, substantial. Lutnick isn’t concerned. “It will shock everybody how successful we are.” —AN
Anthropic debuts ‘best coding model in the world’
I’m losing track of all the new AI model versions, as I’m sure you are—it feels a bit like the CPU clock speed wars of the 1990s.
But right on cue, another has arrived today, this time from Anthropic.
It’s called Claude Sonnet 4.5 and it is, according to its maker, “the strongest model for building complex agents” and “the best model at using computers.”
One reason for that? It has the ability to run autonomously. The new model sustains its focus for 30 hours, topping Anthropic Opus 4’s seven-hour runtime.
It’s also notably good at some of the things businesses want to use AI for right now: filling spreadsheets, completing tasks, and navigating the web.
My favorite feature? Improved performance as it pertains to “sycophancy, deception, power-seeking, and the tendency to encourage delusional thinking,” as Anthropic puts it. Three cheers for no AI revenge, I say. —AN
Confirmed: Electronic Arts goes private
Last week’s rumors proved true.
American gaming giant Electronic Arts has officially agreed to be acquired by a group of investors for $210 per share, which takes EA (Apex Legends, Battlefield, Need for Speed, The Sims, and of course, Madden NFL) private at a roughly $55 billion valuation.
The winning buyers include Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, the private equity firm Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners, the Jared Kushner investment firm.
The deal, to close in FY2027, is believed to be the largest leveraged buyout on record. The company is expected to remain in the San Francisco Bay Area with longtime CEO Andrew Wilson at the helm.
Lots of takeaways from this one. Finance types will see tailwinds for major deals after years of the opposite. Tech types will note the continued, years-long consolidation in the global gaming industry. And geopolitics geeks will note Saudi Arabia’s increasing share of the biz—the PIF owns LA-based Scopely, Niantic’s former gaming assets, and stakes in Nintendo, Capcom, Take-Two, and others. —AN
More tech
—Jaguar Land Rover hits the skids. That cyberattack that knocked out its production for one month and counting? Bad enough to prompt London to underwrite a £1.5B loan.
—Tired: Vibe coding. Wired: “Vibe working,” according to Microsoft.
—Marissa Mayer dissolves Sunshine. The AI startup, founded in 2018, sells its assets to Dazzle, which Mayer also owns.
—Memories don’t come free. Snap will charge users for preserving more than 5GB’s worth.
—Swift is building a blockchain-based ledger with more than 30 financial institutions.
—YouTube settles with Trump. The Google-owned video giant will pay $24.5 million to settle a 2021 lawsuit about the suspension of Trump’s account.
—California AI safety law signed. It requires frontier AI developers to disclose their standards frameworks.
Introducing the Fortune AIQ 50 ranking
Today, we published the Fortune AIQ 50, a new ranking that evaluates how Fortune 500 companies are actually deploying AI, and how technology leaders value those investments relative to industry peers. The ranking is a record of how 18 sectors across the Fortune 500, including financials, health care, and retailing, are utilizing AI to personalize customer experiences, provide groundbreaking data analysis, optimize supply chains, and more. Explore the list, and catch up on our ongoing Fortune AIQ series.
