00:00So, Intel is one of the major US microchip makers, okay?
00:04And the huge irony of this is that it lives in Santa Clara in California,
00:08which is where NVIDIA set up shop.
00:11Intel's going, what the hell are you doing here?
00:13Anyway, they live rather uneasily side by side now.
00:16And as you know, NVIDIA is the microchip making company of our era
00:20because it's the one making these very advanced, very expensive AI microchips.
00:24But Intel, if you go back 20 years,
00:26I was present when they launched the Centrino mobile chip,
00:29which is very exciting, down on 34th Street there.
00:32And what that did, it allowed laptops to be mobile for the very first time.
00:37Up until that point, laptops had to have a cord into the wall,
00:40but the Centrino changed all that.
00:42So, Intel, very, very important company.
00:44Under the Biden administration in the last four years,
00:46they drummed up something called the Chips Act,
00:48which was to support companies like Intel
00:50and also to prevent no more supply chain issues.
00:53Because if you remember, we had real microchip supply chain issues
00:56in and around the COVID thing that happened.
00:58So yesterday, the New York Times,
01:01which is just even today when it lands on your doorstep,
01:04it's that thick. It's a thick newspaper.
01:06And the New York Times is reporting that the administration in Washington, D.C.,
01:10is about to trim the money it was going to give to Intel by quite a lot.
01:14And the reason is there are woes about Intel.
01:16There are concerns about its competitiveness in the market today
01:20and its failure to build some factories,
01:22which it apparently promised it would do.
01:24So they're presumably going to lose some of the funds and the credits
01:29and the tax breaks associated with the Chips Act, according to the Times.
01:32Now, it's a blow for Intel.
01:34As you said, they're axing 15,000 jobs to cut costs.
01:37They're splitting their design division from their foundry,
01:40which is where they actually make the microchips.
01:42But now this is where it gets complicated,
01:44because late news is reaching me here.
01:46Other people are now reporting that Intel is close to agreeing
01:50an $8 billion deal with the federal government.
01:53So that would seem more than the New York Times was indicating yesterday.
01:57So we'll watch it very closely.
01:58But for that reason, Intel shares are up about 3 percent right now,
02:02whereas you might have expected them to be down.
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