China proposes AI export controls, ASML reports €11.7 billion quarter, and more - Silicon Brief #92

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Until now, our newsletters were assembled automatically: the news assigned to each newsletter went into a simple template. From this edition, our small team, Maiko, Rene and Stefan, edits every edition so it reads as one storyline: related news together, the important stories explained, the rest kept short. We still use AI tooling throughout, and we decide what goes in and how it is told.

In this edition, covering 12 to 18 October:

• China proposed export controls on 40 technologies, including AI models with at least 2 trillion parameters, AI agents and chip designs.
• ASML reported €11.7 billion in third quarter sales and expects €44 billion to €45 billion for 2026.
• Anthropic is reportedly offering Blackstone a yield above 10% on $9 billion of chip financing, and NTT Data is in final talks to build Anthropic's first data centre in Japan.

From our lists

Private AI chip companies ranked by their latest reported valuation, led by Etched at $21 billion and SambaNova Systems at $11 billion.

Private AI chip companies, by latest reported valuation

Anthropic, OpenAI and Microsoft

NTT Data is in final talks to build Anthropic's first dedicated data centre in Japan, in Osaka, Nikkei reports. The facility could cost up to 1 trillion yen, have up to 500 megawatts of power capacity and begin partial operations as early as 2028. The companies plan to sign an agreement by the end of Japan's fiscal 2026. NTT Data and Anthropic

Anthropic is offering Blackstone a yield above 10% on $9 billion in debt financing backed by five year lease payments for chips, the Financial Times reported; Reuters could not immediately verify the report. Earlier, in June, KBRA assigned Anthropic a BB+ issuer rating, the highest speculative grade and one level below investment grade. That rating supported a $35 billion chip financing led by Apollo, including about $4.4 billion in junior debt exposed to Anthropic's credit risk. Blackstone talks · KBRA rating

Microsoft says its Maia 200 inference system now serves production workloads, including Copilot, in the United States, Europe and Australia. It plans to scale Maia to multi gigawatt levels from 2027, when Maia 300 is planned to begin production deployments. At OpenAI, infrastructure and compute lead Sachin Katti leaves his role on 15 November and stays on as an advisor; Uday Ruddarraju, CTO of compute, will lead the overall compute organization. Microsoft Maia · OpenAI

Money and debt

At a conference in Singapore on 12 October, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan and Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said access to capital and rising financing costs could limit AI infrastructure growth. Demand remains strong, they said, but companies will need to show clear returns on AI investments. Intel and Broadcom

Markets showed the same strain. A global selloff and higher borrowing costs are forcing AI data centre companies to delay fundraising or accept more expensive capital, and listings linked to AirTrunk, Firmus and SB Energy were pulled or paused. Asian data centre mergers and acquisitions and debt financing remain strong. Investors also sharply sold CoreWeave bonds and raised concerns about debt linked to Oracle's delayed US data centre projects and SoftBank's large investment in OpenAI. Deal pressure · CoreWeave bonds

Gartner says AI providers could spend nearly $7 trillion on infrastructure from 2026 to 2030, while related enterprise and consumer AI revenue may reach only $3.6 trillion, and that more than 80% of neocloud providers could stop operating independently by 2030. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink told CNBC that a nationwide pause in US data center construction could cause a recession; JLL estimates capacity planned through 2030 will need $3 trillion in investment. EQT's AI Infrastructure fund reached $11.5 billion in net asset value after $0.9 billion in net inflows in the third quarter. Gartner · BlackRock · EQT

Chip equipment and manufacturing

ASML reported €11.7 billion in third quarter sales, €5.0 billion in net income and a 57.5% gross margin. The Dutch equipment maker expects 2026 sales of €44 billion to €45 billion and is reviewing ways to expand capacity for 2028 as customers raise equipment demand linked to AI investments. ASML

SEMI projects 300mm front end fab equipment spending of $149 billion in 2026, up 31% year over year, and $227 billion in 2029. It expects 20 new 300mm fabs or production lines to start construction in 2026 and 18 in 2027. Metrology company Nova reports its third quarter results on 5 November. SEMI · Nova

FIC Global's Malaysian subsidiary PRO3C opened a Johor plant with eight SMT lines for AI, HPC, data centre and semiconductor customers. Great Lakes Semiconductor launched the first project on its Great American ChipForge platform, combining design centers, modular wafer fabrication and FINPAT packaging for AI enabled vehicle sensors. QuickLogic announced a six figure eFPGA Hard IP design win for a 16nm automotive SoC for battery management, motor control and industrial robotics. FIC Global · Great Lakes Semiconductor · QuickLogic

China, Russia and policy

China's commerce and science ministries proposed export controls on 40 technologies, 23 of them in AI, including models with at least 2 trillion parameters, AI agents, chip designs and computing clusters. Open source technology and overseas access through apps, websites and APIs would be exempt. A temporary registration rule began on 16 October, and public comments close on 15 November. China export controls

Ukrainian drones struck Sberbank's Balakovo data center in Russia on 14 October; the bank said its systems remained operational. Strikes on Yandex data centres between 8 and 11 October disrupted taxi, delivery and related services in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Western sanctions also limit Russia's access to advanced chips. Sberbank · Yandex

Seven Senate Democrats led by Ron Wyden asked Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to explain whether Meta improperly claims federal research credits for AI data center construction. Meta says its AI data centers require testing and experimentation that qualify. In Brussels, an ECIPE study funded by CCIA Europe estimates the proposed Cloud and AI Development Act could cost €115bn from 2027 to 2036; the European Commission's upper estimate was €18bn, and the study does not value the law's possible security, resilience or strategic autonomy benefits. Meta tax credits · EU cloud law

Nvidia

RTX Spark laptops are now available worldwide from ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft and MSI, starting at $2,599, NVIDIA says. The Windows PCs combine Blackwell RTX graphics, a Grace CPU and up to 128GB of unified memory for local AI. RTX Spark

Cisco and NVIDIA plan an open industry specification for Ultra Dense Small Form Factor pluggable optics at 400G per lane. Cisco also introduced the 51.2T Silicon One G302, said its 102.4T G300 systems are shipping, and reported production deployments of P200 powered systems at Microsoft and Alibaba. Cisco and NVIDIA

Vera Rubin systems featured across the OCP Global Summit in San Jose. Wistron and Wiwynn showed the Vera Rubin NVL72, a Vera CPU rack, CMX context memory storage, Spectrum X Ethernet Photonics and HGX Rubin NVL8, and Wiwynn added AMD Helios racks and co packaged optics. Pegatron brought Vera Rubin NVL72, NVIDIA Groq 3 LPX and AMD EPYC 9006 systems. ASUS launched the 2U XA P2N-E2 server with Vera CPUs and up to two RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs, and LITEON showed 800 VDC power, backup and a 2.6MW cooling distribution unit for Vera Rubin, MGX and ORv3 racks. Wistron and Wiwynn · Wiwynn and AMD · Pegatron · ASUS · LITEON

Servers and racks

IDC forecasts spending on IT infrastructure that follows Open Compute Project standards will reach $800 billion in 2029, about 2.7 times its previous forecast, and $892 billion in 2030, including $628 billion linked to AI. The OCP Foundation commissioned the study. IDC

Supermicro expanded its OCP portfolio with integrated systems, racks, 48V DC power, networking, liquid cooling and management software. MiTAC Computing previewed the C2611Z6 liquid cooled OCP server and showed the G4520G6E3BC N GPU platform for inference. xFusion presented liquid cooled racks, the DaYu 2.0 Super Node and an 800V HVDC Sidecar. Senao Networks launched five x86 servers, the SR810, SR710, SR610, SE210 and SE110, with some configurations supporting NVIDIA RTX GPUs. Supermicro · MiTAC · xFusion · Senao

Optics and networking

Lightmatter unveiled a 204.8 Tbps co packaged optics switch tray developed with Flex and a 102.4 Tbps XPU tray with four accelerators and two CPUs, using optical interconnects from Lightmatter, Corning and SENKO in an Open Rack Version 3 design. Vuzix is offering evaluation units of its Causeway optical interconnect, which demonstrates 19,200 parallel optical pathways, to qualified partners. Lightmatter · Vuzix

CyberTAN introduced its Pallas Series 1.6T Ethernet switch platform, built on Marvell's 102.4 Tbps Teralynx T100 with direct to chip liquid cooling. UfiSpace demonstrated a live liquid cooled 1.6T AI networking platform. Linktel showed 1.6T linear pluggable optics with power consumption as low as 10W and says its 1.6T products are in volume production. CyberTAN and Marvell · UfiSpace · Linktel

In Vienna, Huawei outlined a network strategy organized around AI data centers and proposed a next generation OTN with 800G to 2T capacities and quantum encryption. insidepacket launched an AI Access Platform that connects enterprises to GPU and neocloud providers over private network paths, starting in Europe with Zayo Europe. Huawei strategy · Huawei OTN · insidepacket

Power

Hitachi Energy and Ansaldo Energia signed a memorandum of understanding to develop and market integrated power generation and grid solutions for large electricity users, including data centres, for both 50 Hz and 60 Hz markets. Mainspring Energy agreed to supply American Electric Power with up to 1.6 GW of Linear Generators through 2034; the first order covers 190 MW, with deliveries from 2027. ThinkLabs AI, which builds grid planning software for utilities facing data centre demand, named Dragos CEO Robert M. Lee to its board. Hitachi Energy · Mainspring and AEP · ThinkLabs AI

Inside the data centre, Delta showed a prefabricated solid state transformer based DC power system with claimed efficiency of up to 98.5%. Texas Instruments introduced the ADC34DSO75, a 3 GSPS ADC that monitors power rail glitches at nanosecond resolution, and an 800V hot swap controller. Solidion says company tests show its PEAK UPS systems can cut UPS space by up to 30%, and Americase International joined an OCP panel on conflicting national rules for data center batteries. Delta · Texas Instruments · Solidion · Americase

Cooling and facilities

Midea's Clivet presented a magnetic bearing centrifugal compressor and liquid cooling architecture for GW scale AI data centres and says its dual shaft system can cut compressor power by up to 40%. Rika Sensor supplied 86 water quality monitoring units for a Dubai hyperscale cloud centre with 2,000 liquid cooled cabinets, and Envalior showed materials for power distribution, cooling and switchgear at Fakuma 2026. Clivet · Rika Sensor · Envalior

3C and Datalec merged into 3C Datalec, a liquid cooling, engineering and facilities company that forecasts more than US$400 million in 2026 revenue, has about 1,000 employees and plans to hire 200 engineers. Dell'Oro Group says data center physical infrastructure revenue reached $14 billion in the second quarter, up 27% year over year, with thermal management growing fastest. TIA released the first draft of DCE 9000, a certifiable data center quality standard, with comments due by 30 November, and Vertiv and Deloitte published a guide for moving AI workloads from pilots to production. 3C Datalec · Dell'Oro · TIA · Vertiv

Data center projects

VOLT says Nebius signed a letter of intent to become the first off taker at its planned AI Gigafactory in Rotterdam, a six building campus planned for 600 MW of IT capacity. The first two buildings would provide 200 MW and need an estimated €7 billion; the project still depends on final agreements, financing, permits and grid capacity. VOLT and Nebius

EverWind Fuels plans a 420 MW AI data centre at Point Tupper, Nova Scotia, with 95 MW by the end of 2027 and 325 MW in 2028. An unnamed AI company will lease the first phase for at least 20 years, and EverWind is raising $8 billion for the data centre and $2 billion for four wind farms. Colt DCS and RMZ started building the 64MW Mumbai 3 data centre in Navi Mumbai, part of their $1.7 billion Indian joint venture, which already has a hyperscale customer. EverWind · Colt DCS and RMZ

DayOne raised the syndicated financing for its Johor, Malaysia platform to about US$7.2 billion and says 1GW of IT capacity is generating income under customer contracts. KONST raised $30 million in a Series B led by ADATA Technology to expand AI data center capacity across Asia. Among smaller plans, Brightray signed a nonbinding letter of intent for a 10 MW prefabricated data center in Indiana, Hyperscale Data plans a tokenized offering of up to $33.5 million in 13% Series D preferred stock for its Michigan campus, and Italy's ALPS named Brian Turnbow chief technical officer for AI to lead its data centre plans. DayOne · KONST · Brightray · Hyperscale Data · ALPS

Chip startups

Salience Labs raised $125 million in an oversubscribed Series B led by Bullhound Capital, with AMD Ventures and Intel Capital among the backers, for its all optical circuit switching. Mueon raised $65 million in a Series A led by Maverick Silicon, also with Intel Capital, to move its Cubelets modular compute and memory platform toward production. Ubitium raised $14 million in seed funding led by Ibex Investors for its UB410 reconfigurable processor for robots, drones and vehicles, with evaluation units planned for 2027. Salience Labs · Mueon · Ubitium

Ricursive Intelligence founders Anna Goldie and Azalia Mirhoseini said at TechCrunch Disrupt that the company is developing AI that designs entire chips and learns from each version. Rocket One signed a one year sponsored research agreement with Virginia Commonwealth University on SKYMRAM, a skyrmion based magnetic memory; the program does not establish a completed processor or validated performance. Ricursive Intelligence · Rocket One

Also

SmartSens showed automotive image sensors and camera modules at AutoSens Europe in Barcelona. Altair Semiconductor is integrating Iridium NTN Direct satellite connectivity into its ALT1350 and ALT1550 IoT chipsets. PUFsecurity argues that AI agents need hardware Roots of Trust for device identity and attestation. Orbius and Armada combined multi LEO satellite connectivity and modular edge computing in StarEDGE for remote sites. SmartSens · Altair · PUFsecurity · Orbius and Armada