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US trade deficit hits a record $1.2 trillion as AI hardware imports surge under the Trump administration β€” massive demand for chips from Asia outpaces domestic production, fueling a 60% increase in imports in 12 months

AI-related imports across the computing and electronics sector have led to a big increase in the U.S. trade deficit, hitting a record $1.2 trillion in 2025, despite efforts from the Trump administration to reduce the gap.

Researchers reach superconductivity at ambient pressure, record high temperature β€” milestone of -122Β°C reached by using pressure quenching, still 140 degrees off room temperature target

Researchers from the University of Houston managed to increase the critical temperature for superconductivity by about 18 K at ambient pressure, but at βˆ’122Β°C, they are still 140Β°C away from the target.

Global chip supply chain under threat as US-Iran conflict enters third week β€” Strait of Hormuz blockade is days away from crippling Taiwan's semiconductor industry

Taiwan imports almost all of its energy and requires large amounts of LNG to sustain its electrical grid. That grid is then used by local chipmakers β€” like TSMC who is responsible for making most of the world's high-end chips. Fabrication for these chips requires helium, which Taiwan also imports and right now, the Iran-U.S. conflict has made it difficult to acquire both.

Meta's new MTIA lineup joins hyperscalers' unified push for dedicated inferencing chips β€” companies diversify AI chips in effort to diversify from sole reliance on Nvidia

As Meta introduces its lineup of new AI chips, the company joins other tech giants in diversifying the AI accelerators used for specific workloads, and says that mainstream GPUs built for large-scale pre-training are less cost-effective for inference workloads.

US gov't revokes controversial AI hardware export rule that would mandate investments from foreign companies β€” new export rules are still in the works, though

U.S. Department of Commerce withdraws draft export rule for AI accelerators that would give the U.S. government ultimate power over export controls and mandate investments of foreign firms in the U.S. AI sector.

Tech titans team up to form optical interconnect alliance to solve the AI buildout's big data bottleneck β€” Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom & more set sights on building PHY to break through the limitations of copper

AMD, Nvidia, Microsoft, Broadcom, and Meta have formed an Optical Compute Interconnect Multi-Source Agreement (OCI MSA) to develop a standardized optical interconnect for AI data centers, with the aspiration to build a PHY capable of handling speeds of up to 3.2 Tb/s.

The ongoing Strait of Hormuz blockage will impact the semiconductor and AI industries with Aluminum, Helium and LNG shortages β€” and with no timeline for re-opening, supply chains face significant challenges

As global oil prices spike due to the ongoing pseudo-blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, other shortages are looming, and they could hit the chip and AI industries dramatically. Aluminum and helium for chip production have been impacted, but shortages of LNG could also cause problems for gas turbines powering many AI data centers.

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