Intel

Open Weights AI Raises Policy and Safety Questions

An opinion piece examines the debate over "open weights" AI — models whose trained weights are publicly released like open-source software. A recent open letter signed by major tech companies (including Microsoft, NVIDIA, OpenAI, Intel, Amazon, Meta, and Hugging Face) supports open weights. Supporters argue open weights protect user ownership and innovation; opponents warn the same openness enables misuse (hacking, harassment, bioterrorism) and removes centralized gatekeeping. Anthropic notably did not sign and issued an ambiguous statement favoring only non-dangerous open-weights models. The author takes a neutral stance, arguing preemptive bans would be politically costly and that governments will likely react after initial harmful incidents rather than accept indefinite risks in advance.

SoftBank boosted by $8.2B Intel gain

SoftBank reported fiscal first-quarter profit driven largely by a 1.3 trillion yen (about $8.2 billion) gain on its stake in Intel and a rise in the value of its stake in ByteDance. The company posted net profit of 347.3 billion yen for the June quarter, beating analyst expectations, while its Vision Funds saw a $1.7 billion gain led by a $2.2 billion increase in ByteDance's valuation. SoftBank recorded no investment gain or loss tied to OpenAI. Its AI computing segment posted a larger loss year-on-year, with higher R&D costs at owned chip companies such as Arm, Graphcore and Ampere cited as a reason.

AMD Stock Falls After Disappointing Guidance

AMD reported stronger-than-expected second-quarter results driven by sustained server-processor demand, but warned that growth momentum will slow. Q2 revenue rose about 50% to $11.54 billion and adjusted EPS increased 246% to $1.66. Shares fell roughly 9% in after-hours trading despite the gains. AMD said it expects next-quarter revenue between $12.7 billion and $13.3 billion and a maintained adjusted gross margin near 56%. The company is preparing shipments of a second generation of AI servers and has business ties with AI developer Anthropic (including chip orders totaling two gigawatts and an equity commitment of up to $5 billion). AMD remains the world’s second-largest AI-processor supplier after Nvidia.