DELIVERCHIP（HK）LIMITED— 30 June: This Week’s News

Highlights of the Week

1. Apple executive: The company plans to use generative AI to accelerate chip design

2. Sam Altman: Meta is offering a $100 million bonus to recruit OpenAI staff

3. Bitmain and two other major Chinese mining equipment manufacturers are setting up factories in the US

4. NVIDIA to exhibit at the Blockchain Expo for the first time

Apple Executive: Company Plans to Use Generative AI to Accelerate Chip Design

According to reports, Apple’s chief hardware technology executive stated in a private speech last month that the company is interested in utilising generative artificial intelligence (AI) to help accelerate the design of the custom chips at the heart of its devices.

Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware technology, made the remarks during a speech in Belgium. During the speech, Srouji outlined the evolution of Apple’s custom chips, from the first A4 chip in the 2010 iPhone to the latest chips powering Mac desktop computers and the Vision Pro headset.

He stated that one of the key lessons Apple had learnt was that it needed to use state-of-the-art tools to design its chips, including the latest chip design software from electronic design automation (EDA) companies.

The industry’s two largest companies – Cadence and Synopsys – have been racing to incorporate artificial intelligence into their products.

“EDA companies are absolutely critical in supporting the complexity of our chip designs,” Srouji said in his address. “Generative AI technology has enormous potential to accomplish more design work in less time, and it can significantly boost productivity.”

Srouji said that another key lesson learnt whilst designing its own chips was to make a big bet and not look back.

When Apple transitioned its Mac computers – its oldest active product line – from Intel chips to its own in 2020, it did not draw up a contingency plan in case the switch did not work out.

“Migrating the Mac to Apple Silicon was a huge gamble for us. There was no fallback plan, no plan to split the line-up, so we went all in, including a massive software effort,” said Srouji.

Sam Altman: Meta offers $100 million in bonuses to recruit OpenAI staff

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has stated that Meta has offered its staff $100 million in bonuses to recruit them, as the tech giant strives to strengthen its artificial intelligence strategy.

Meta’s reported attempts to recruit OpenAI staff are the latest sign of the company’s frenzied drive to recruit top engineers to develop AI models, as it works to build up its superintelligence division to outpace its competitors.

The competition for AI talent has reached fever pitch, as the market believes that individual contributors can make or break a company; consequently, superstar researchers are in as high demand as professional sports stars.

“They [Meta] have started making huge offers to many people on our team,” Altman said on 17 June. “You know, things like a $100 million signing bonus, with annual compensation far exceeding that. At least so far, our top talent hasn’t decided to accept their offers.”

“I’ve heard that Meta considers us their biggest competitor,” said Sam Altman.

Meta recently invested $14.3 billion in the data annotation start-up Scale AI and hired its chief executive (CEO), Alexandr Wang, to lead its new superintelligence team.

Meta was once widely recognised as a leader in open-source AI models, but is now facing a wave of staff departures and has delayed the release of a new open-source AI model that could rival competitors such as Google, China’s DeepSeek and OpenAI.

China’s top three mining equipment manufacturers, including Bitmain, set up factories in the US

As US President Trump’s tariff war reshapes the cryptocurrency supply chain, the world’s three best-selling Bitcoin mining equipment manufacturers—Bitmain, Canaan and MicroBT (all from China)—are establishing factories in the US.

Bitmain, Canaan and MicroBT produce over 90 per cent of the world’s mining rigs – essentially computers designed specifically to calculate Bitcoin output. Establishing a base in the US protects them from the impact of tariffs.

Bitmain, the largest of the three companies in terms of sales, began manufacturing mining equipment in the US last December – one month after Mr Trump won the presidential election – describing it as a “strategic move”.

Leo Wang, an executive at Canaan Creative, revealed that following Trump’s announcement of the so-called ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs on 2 April, the company had commenced trial production in the US with the aim of circumventing the tariffs. He stated that, given the volatile tariff situation, it was difficult to make large-scale investments, and that the move was therefore exploratory in nature.

Bitmain, ranked third, stated in a press release that it is “actively implementing a localisation strategy in the US” to “mitigate the impact of tariffs”.

These three companies dominate the mining rig industry, which analysts estimate will be worth US$12 billion by 2028. It forms the upstream segment of the business chain that underpins the energy-intensive process of Bitcoin mining, supporting IT infrastructure and trading platforms.

Sanjay Gupta, Chief Strategy Officer at Auradin, a US competitor, said: “ ‘Although more than 30 per cent of global Bitcoin mining takes place in North America, over 90 per cent of mining hardware comes from China, which indicates a severe geographical imbalance between supply and demand.’”

NVIDIA to Exhibit at the Blockchain Expo for the First Time

According to the CCTV News app, the third Blockchain Expo will be held in Beijing from 16 to 20 July, with US-based NVIDIA, a global leader in artificial intelligence, set to exhibit at the event for the first time.

Yu Jianlong, Vice-President of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, noted that the third Blockchain Expo features many new participants, with over 230 new Chinese and international partners exhibiting for the first time; the US-based global AI leader NVIDIA will be exhibiting at the Blockchain Expo for the first time.

In April this year, during his visit to Beijing, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang stated that China is a very important market for NVIDIA and that he hopes to continue cooperating with China.

Regarding the US government’s decision to impose export controls on NVIDIA’s H20 chips destined for China, Huang Renxun noted that the US government’s tightening of chip export controls has already had a significant impact on NVIDIA’s business. He added that a fierce global race in artificial intelligence is currently underway; as the most transformative core technology of our time, AI holds vast potential for driving development across all industries. Countries around the world are accelerating the application of this technology, as well as research, development, innovation and capacity building, which will inevitably have a profound impact on the global market landscape, including that of China. As a company that has been deeply rooted in the Chinese market for three decades, we have grown alongside the Chinese market and achieved mutual success. China is not only one of the world’s largest consumer markets; its thriving industrial ecosystem and leading software capabilities have also become a key driver of our continued innovation. Our success in the Chinese market has spurred us to continually increase our investment in research and development, whilst our in-depth collaboration with Chinese enterprises has enabled us to grow into a more competitive international company. Therefore, we will continue to spare no effort in optimising a product portfolio that complies with regulatory requirements and remain steadfast in serving the Chinese market.

All news in this article is sourced from the internet.