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Chips & Hardware

Lambda in talks to raise up to $3B at a $12B-plus valuation

The Arena

Lambda in talks to raise up to $3B at a $12B-plus valuation

The neocloud fundraising wave keeps rolling. Nvidia-backed Lambda is reportedly in talks to raise up to $3 billion in a pre-IPO round that would value the GPU cloud provider above $12 billion — with revenue this year already estimated to top $1.5 billion, per Bloomberg. WSJ separately reports the company has raised over $1.5 billion, putting one of the largest independent AI compute players firmly on a path to a public listing. Reuters, Bloomberg and WSJ report that Nvidia-backed neocloud…

Samsung puts HBM base dies on a logic node to reclaim bandwidth

The Stack

Samsung puts HBM base dies on a logic node to reclaim bandwidth

The memory stack feeding AI accelerators is getting a quiet overhaul. At Hot Chips 2026, Samsung laid out its plan to build High Bandwidth Memory base dies on a logic process node — a step change that frees up die area it wants to fill with memory controllers, sensors, and eventually compute. Samsung revealed it now fabricates its HBM4 and HBM4E base dies on a 4nm logic node, breaking with the long-running practice of building them on a DRAM process.

Nvidia's Groq 3 LPX inference chip enters full production

The Stack

Nvidia's Groq 3 LPX inference chip enters full production

Nvidia commercialized its largest acquisition at Hot Chips 2026 on Monday, while a New York startup betting that video games can teach robots how to move pulled in fresh capital at a $6 billion valuation. Here's what moved in AI hardware and physical AI. Nvidia said its dedicated inference accelerator Groq 3 LPX has entered full production, turning the company's record $20 billion purchase of Groq into a shipping product.

Taiwan's AI-server indictment exposes the gap in chip export controls

The Guardrails

Taiwan's AI-server indictment exposes the gap in chip export controls

Prosecutors in Keelung charged nine people — including an Nvidia employee and two Super Micro staff — with helping high-end AI servers reach China, in a scheme that leaned on forged paperwork and multi-stop transit. It is the cleanest public window yet into how the chip black market actually moves hardware, and it underscores that export controls only matter if the people holding the paperwork enforce them. What happened, and who's charged Taiwanese prosecutors on Monday indicted nine…

Cerebras CS-4 doubles accelerator performance on the same chip

The Stack

Cerebras CS-4 doubles accelerator performance on the same chip

A new rack-scale AI accelerator, a nine-figure robotics raise, and fresh evidence that chatbots quietly steer sensitive-health decisions — all in the last few hours. Cerebras has introduced the CS-4, a rack-scale AI accelerator its CEO Andrew Feldman calls the fastest system in the industry. The machine still runs on the same 5nm WSE-3 wafer as its predecessor, but Cerebras says it doubles the CS-3's performance by pushing clock speed higher through more power and better cooling.

Nvidia in talks to invest in Perplexity at $30B-plus valuation

The Arena

Nvidia in talks to invest in Perplexity at $30B-plus valuation

The funding treadmill keeps spinning, and Nvidia keeps footing the bill. This time the check is reportedly headed to Perplexity, the AI search upstart that has quietly turned itself into one of the sector's fastest-growing revenue stories. Nvidia is negotiating an investment in Perplexity at a valuation above $30 billion — more than 50 percent higher than the company's last funding round a year ago — according to a report from The Information.

Xiaomi's O3 flagships bring agent-class AI to phones and cars

The Stack

Xiaomi's O3 flagships bring agent-class AI to phones and cars

Xiaomi unveiled three self-designed XRING chips at a Beijing technical briefing today, and while the flagship phone silicon made the news, the more telling move is the board stretching from handset SoCs into cars and on-device agents. The company is positioning its own silicon — not just its phones — as the compute backbone of a full pocket-to-car AI ecosystem. The centerpiece is the 玄戒O3, Xiaomi's second flagship phone SoC and the industry's first to break five million on AnTuTu.

Xiaomi's XRING O100 brings 330 tokens-per-second LLMs to devices

The Stack

Xiaomi's XRING O100 brings 330 tokens-per-second LLMs to devices

Xiaomi used a chip event in China on Monday to unveil the XRING O100, an accelerator built specifically for running large language models on-device — no cloud round-trip required. Announced alongside two siblings (the XRING O3 flagship processor, now in mass production, and the D100 autonomous-driving chip), the O100 is what the company calls the industry's first AI accelerator to use 6nm wafer-level 3D vertical stacking, with hybrid bonding at a 1.4-micron pitch. The claimed payoff is…

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