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Arjun Kharpal

@arjunkharpal.cnbc.com
691 followers 30 following 60 posts

Senior technology correspondent at CNBC. Co-host of the Beyond the Valley podcast. Posting about everything tech.

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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 05/08/2025
#BREAKING: Trump says new semiconductor tariff plan coming as soon as next week www.cnbc.com/2025/08/05/t...
cnbc.com
Trump says new semiconductor tariff plan coming as soon as next week
Trump's announcement on CNBC's "Squawk Box" came on the heels of him unveiling new tariff rates on numerous countries, with some facing steep hikes.
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 05/08/2025
6/ We don’t know how bad the leak is yet, or who might have accessed the secrets. But insider threats at this level show just how fragile the world’s most critical tech infrastructure really is. Full story so far is here: www.cnbc.com/2025/08/05/c... #Breaking #Tech #Chips #Semiconductors
cnbc.com
World's largest chipmaker TSMC says it has discovered potential trade secret leaks
TSMC dominates the market for the manufacturing of the most advanced chips on the planet and counts major firms like Apple and Nvidia as clients.
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 05/08/2025
5/ What are the implications? A leak of TSMC's most advanced chipmaking tech could: -Undermine its competitive advantage - Shift the global chip race - Complicate already tense geopolitics over tech sovereignty - Expose new national security risks
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 05/08/2025
4/ Why this matters: TSMC isn’t just any chip company. It’s a critical supplier to Apple, Nvidia, AMD and more. It’s also a strategic asset at the center of U.S.-China tech tensions. No one else can do what TSMC does — not at its level or at its scale.
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 05/08/2025
3/ What happened? They found “unauthorized activities” inside the company that might have led to trade secret leaks. They’ve taken serious disciplinary and legal actions, but details are still under wraps.
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 05/08/2025
2/ TSMC makes the most advanced chips powering everything from your iPhone to AI data centers. It’s basically the heart of the global semiconductor supply chain and a key player in U.S.-China tech tensions.
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 05/08/2025
1/ TSMC — the world’s leading chipmaker — just revealed a potential trade secret leak. This isn’t just a company problem; it’s a big deal for global tech and geopolitics. Let me break down why. 👇
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 29/07/2025
6/ What this means strategically: For Samsung: bolstering its foundry and design reputation. Proving out its foundry business. For Rebellions: validation ahead of IPO, scaling production and global market reach. Rebellions told me it is aiming for IPO. Full story: www.cnbc.com/2025/07/29/s...
cnbc.com
Samsung backs South Korean AI chip startup Rebellions ahead of IPO
Rebellions has been working with Samsung to bring its second-generation artificial intelligence chip, called Rebel, to market.
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 29/07/2025
5/ Why it matetrs for Samsung: Samsung has its own chip manufacturing business which is hugely behind leader TSMC. This gives Samsung a new customer. If Rebellions gets bigger, it could become a major customer with Samsung getting in early
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 29/07/2025
4/ Why it matters for Rebellions: Rebellions, formed from its 2024 merger with Sapeon, is positioning itself as South Korea's answer to Nvidia. . Samsung is a major tech company wiht a chip manufacturing business. This gives Rebellions more firepower.
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 29/07/2025
2/ More details: - Rebellions is testing its second generation chip called Rebel, which is designed for AI inferencing workloads - Samsung will manufacture this on its 4 nanometer process - Rebel will be launched later this year
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 29/07/2025
1/ 🚀 Big move today: Samsung has joined a $150–200M fundraising round backing South Korea’s AI‑chip upstart Rebellions ahead of its IPO plans. Details: - Rebellions speaking to current investors and global investors for more funding - This is a series C - Valuation could go north of $1 billion
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 28/07/2025
Chinese tech giant Alibaba is planning to launch a pair of AI-powered smart glasses this year. It'll be a potential rival to Meta's Ray-Bans. Alibaba promises navigation via mapping and payments via Alipay www.cnbc.com/2025/07/28/a...
cnbc.com
Alibaba to launch AI-powered glasses creating a Chinese rival to Meta
Alibaba's Quark AI Glasses will be powered by Alibaba's Qwen large language model and its advanced AI assistant called Quark.
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 28/07/2025
There is global demand for manufacturing capacity. And Elon Musk says these Tesla chips will be manufactured in Samsung's Texas, U.S. facility. That's politically great news for the U.S. which has been pushing for leading edge chip making to happen on American soil
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 28/07/2025
Samsung will manufacture Tesla's chips using 2-nanometer (nm) process technology - this is basically the very latest manufacturing tech. It's a big deal for Samsung to prove it can handle such a contract with the hope other big names will follow
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 28/07/2025
In semiconductor manufacturing Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) holds a huge market share. Samsung is a very distant 2nd. Samsung for years has been trying to boost its own chipmaking business known as foundry. But these huge contracts have been rare
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 28/07/2025
Samsung Electronics has entered into a $16.5 billion contract for supplying semiconductors to Tesla. This is a big deal for Samsung and also a win for Amercia's reshoring efforts. Here's why🧵
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 27/05/2025
Tesla's Europe sales continue to plunge. One of its biggest issue is the brand damage caused by Elon Musk's involvement in politics. But also Tesla has an ageing lineup and needs a new car www.cnbc.com/2025/05/27/t...
cnbc.com
Tesla's Europe sales plunge 49% on brand damage, rising competition
Tesla has faced brand damage over the past few months amid CEO Elon Musk's political involvement with U.S. President Donald Trump.
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 15/05/2025
Trump says he doesn’t want Apple building products in India: ‘I had a little problem with Tim Cook’ www.cnbc.com/2025/05/15/t...
cnbc.com
Trump says he doesn't want Apple building products in India: 'I had a little problem with Tim Cook'
Apple has been ramping up production in India with the aim of making around 25% of global iPhones in the country in the next few years.
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 08/05/2025
Nintendo expects to sell 15 million units of the Switch 2, in its first forecast for the console. It's a pretty strong start and this company has been a master of keeping users hooked into its franchises and characters like Mario, Zelda and Pokemon. Here's my analysis
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 08/05/2025
4) The Trump administration prepared to rescind what’s known as the “AI diffusion rule,” effectively stopping a set of artificial intelligence chip controls from taking effect later this month www.cnbc.com/2025/05/07/t...
cnbc.com
Nvidia shares climb as Trump administration prepares to end chip export restrictions
AMD CEO Lisa Su and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang have both opposed the semiconductor export controls.
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 08/05/2025
3) Arm shares are tanking on weak guidance. This is a company that could be impacted by tariffs in a big way due to end customers: www.cnbc.com/2025/05/07/a...
cnbc.com
Arm shares drop on weak forecast
Arm beat on earnings and revenue but issued a disappointing forecast in its quarterly report on Wednesday.
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 08/05/2025
2) Apple exec Eddy Cue says AI will replace search engines. This highlights some long-term challenges for Google www.cnbc.com/2025/05/07/a...
cnbc.com
Alphabet shares sink 7% after Apple’s Cue says AI will replace search engines
Eddy Cue, Apple's services chief, said he believes AI services will eventually replace standard search engines such as Google, according to a report Wednesday.
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 08/05/2025
Here's some of the key tech stories to catch up on this morning: 1) #Nintendo forecasts sales of 15 million Switch 2 but warns that tariffs could have an impact. #NintendoSwitch2 is looking strong out the gates www.cnbc.com/2025/05/08/n...
cnbc.com
Nintendo forecasts sales of 15 million Switch 2 consoles as it gears up for launch
Nintendo said it expects to sell 15 million units of its new Switch 2 console in the fiscal year ending March 2026.
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 03/04/2025
CHINA: True tariff rate = 54% - 80% of all Apple products assembled in China - 90% of iPhones assembled in China - 55% of Apple’s Mac products and 80% of iPads INDIA: 26% tariff - 10-15% of iPhone production VIETNAM: 46% tariff - 20% of iPad production - 90% of Apple’s wearable production
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 03/04/2025
#Apple stock down nearly 7% in pre-market. If losses hold at the close, it will be the worst one-day drop since 2020. All of this is over Trump's tariffs which will impact all of Apple's manufacturing hubs. I'll try and break it down $AAPL
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 18/02/2025
Huawei launches the Mate XT trifold phone outside of China as it charts and international comeback www.cnbc.com/2025/02/18/h...
cnbc.com
Huawei launches $3,660 trifold phone outside of China as it charts international comeback
Huawei has made a comeback in China and is hoping to bring that momentum to overseas markets where its business has been badly hurt.
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 17/02/2025
The key will be following through now. Over the past few years, we have seen short-lived rallies in Chinese tech stocks on hopes that Beijing might warm to private business. This feels slightly different. The rare meeting with Xi is a sign of that.
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 17/02/2025
The Chinese economy has been under pressure. Funding to private tech businesses has fallen off a cliff. Without that, where does the next Alibaba, Tencent or Baidu come from? Xi's meeting is designed to also bring investor confidence back into private markets too
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 17/02/2025
So that's why everyone is focusing on the meeting today held between Xi Jinping and tech bosses, including Jack Ma. The fact Ma was invited signals that perhaps relations between Xi and private business is entering a new, more friendly era, one in which these companies can grow
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 17/02/2025
In my view, it was an own goal from Xi. Chinese regulators would come out with new regulation overnight, sometimes on weekends, giving investors very little time to understand what was going on, even if the rules weren't that bad. It shook confidence.
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 17/02/2025
Whilst there has been debate over the other reasons behind Beijing's tightening, Ma became the poster child of Xi's clampdown on private tech firms and its high profile entrepreneurs. Ma disappeared from public view for a while. Other tech bosses laid low.
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 17/02/2025
What followed was a years long crackdown on the Chinese tech sector with tightening regulation and uncertainty coinciding with an economy under pressure because of Covid. Billions of dollars of value were wiped off Chinese tech stocks. Investors wanted nothing to do with them.
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 17/02/2025
A few days before, Jack Ma had made some public comments that seemingly criticized financial regulators, which are an extension of Chinese President Xi Jinping's government. This did not sit well. Many observers blamed Ma's comments for the cancelled IPO.
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 17/02/2025
In November 2020, I flew to Shanghai to cover the IPO of Ant Group, an affiliate of Alibaba that was founded by billionaire Jack Ma. It was a dual listing set to be the biggest IPO of all time. I put my bags down in my hotel room, my phone was popping off. The IPO was suspended at the 11th hour.
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 17/02/2025
Xi Jinping and China’s tech billionaires: A short story on where we are now and why investors are getting excited again. Context: I reported from China between October 2018 and December 2021 while Beijing was tightening its grip on the tech sector.
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 27/01/2025
This feels important from DeepSeek. They're saying that the models can get better and the limitation is "hardware" - presuming this means chips more broadly. So isn't this counter to the panic hitting AI infrastructure stocks today? It seems spending will have to continue
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Reposted by Arjun Kharpal
Florent Daudens @fdaudens.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
Watch the full discussion btw @thomwolf.bsky.social and @arjunkharpal.bsky.social at Davos: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qUT...
youtube.com
Hugging Face co-founder: The next step in AI will be applications
YouTube video by CNBC International Live
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 20/01/2025
I'm at #Davos and will be in The Sanctuary. Speaking to CEOs of Circle, Binance, Qualcomm and Volvo Cars. Plus AI firms Cohere, Hugging Face, SambaNova and Databricks. AGI with Max Tegmark and Yoshua Bengio. Plus Bertrand Piccard's big mission. Agenda: www.cnbcevents.com/wef2025/
cnbcevents.com
World Economic Forum 2025
As business and political leaders gather for the 2024 World Economic Forum in Davos, CNBC has curated an insightful agenda of fireside chats and panels to address this year’s theme of ‘Rebuilding Trus...
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 16/01/2025
5) TSMC said 2 nanometer volume production is well on track for the second half of the year. Apple is usually among the first customers to use TSMC's latest process technology. This could signal Apple is thinking about 2nm chips for its next iPhone $AAPL
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 16/01/2025
4) TSMC's comments suggest that memory prices may recover this year. It may also hint at Samsung potentially improving its HBM product. So keep an eye out for share price reaction on Samsung and SK Hynix in the South Korea markets tomorrow
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 16/01/2025
3) TSMC said global memory business will grow this year. Samsung and SK Hynix are the two biggest memory players. Memory is a chip that goes into loads of devices. SK Hynix has become the leader in high-bandwidth memory which it sells to Nvidia. Samsung is playing catch up
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 16/01/2025
2) Smartphone revenue - TSMC makes chips for Apple and other smartphone semiconductor players like Qualcomm. Smartphone revenue rose 17% QoQ as the market recovers. This potentially bodes well for smartphone market into 2025 with the ramp up of AI features on device
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 16/01/2025
1) High performance computing, i.e. AI-focused chips like those designed by Nvidia. HPC segment of TSMC's revenue rose 19% QoQ in Q4. Accounts for 53% of total revenue. That signals demand for AI chips remains strong. TSMC CEO said that the company sees robust AI demand this year.
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 16/01/2025
TSMC, the world's biggest chipmaker, posted record profit in Q4. Here's some of the biggest takeaways and what the results potentially signal about Apple, Samsung, memory demand and AI:
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 10/01/2025
TSMC, the world's biggest chipmaker, posted record revenue for 2024. The company is benefitting from the continued AI boom from customers like Nvidia www.cnbc.com/2025/01/10/t...
cnbc.com
World's biggest chipmaker TSMC posts record 2024 revenue as AI boost continues
TSMC manufacturers semiconductors for some of the world's biggest companies from Apple to Nvidia.
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 09/01/2025
China too wants to be a global standards setter which it has done with varying degrees of success, most notably in 5G technology. In 2020, I wrote about China's ambitions around standards if you're interested in learning more www.cnbc.com/2020/04/27/c...
cnbc.com
Power is 'up for grabs': Behind China's plan to shape the future of next-generation tech
China is set to release a new plan this year called "China Standards 2035" with the aim of influencing how the next-generation of technologies will work.
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 09/01/2025
Since the U.S. has been key to global tech standards and has a strong position in semiconductors and AI, this is a natural move, and one that looks to push back against China's advances. This is the next stage in the US-China tech battle
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 09/01/2025
The BBG article says the Biden admin will have an export tier that allows nations to get unlimited access to U.S. chips "by agreeing to a set of US government security requirements and human rights standards". You get our chips if you play by our rules/standards, is the message
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Arjun Kharpal @arjunkharpal.cnbc.com · 09/01/2025
Standards are often a set of rules around tech that define how they work globally. Think about mobile networks, as an example. Standards are also seen in some spheres as a power play - control the standards, control the technology
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