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By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A subsidiary of Chinese battery company Gotion has abandoned a plan to build a $2.4 billion plant in Michigan to produce key materials for electric vehicle batteries, the state said on Thursday. The plan, first announced in October 2022, was expected to create 2,350 factory jobs but came under criticism from some lawmakers for the company's Chinese ownership. The Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) said none of a $125 million state grant for the project was ever disbursed and it will pursue repayment of another $23.6 million state award that went toward purchase of the property. Germany's Volkswagen is the largest single shareholder in Gotion Inc's parent company, owning about 30% of Gotion High-Tech. U.S. lawmakers said last month China maintains "effective control" through multiple individual shareholders. Gotion Inc's head of corporate and public affairs, Benjamin Howes, would not address specific questions on the plant but said in a statement the firm "remains firmly committed to its mission of driving America's clean energy future" including at a plant in Illinois. Volkswagen was not available to comment. In March 2024, Gotion sued Green Township in Michigan for allegedly breaching an agreement to build the plant. The MEDC last month sent Gotion a letter saying it was in default on its grant agreement because there had been no actions on the project site in more than 120 days. The state had given Gotion 30 days to resolve the default. A lawyer acting for Gotion Inc said in a letter to the MEDC seen by Reuters that it was "utterly false" to accuse the company of abandoning the project. He added because of a "barrage of attacks that Gotion has had to endure at this site" and Green Township's opposition, that a better course of action was to suspend the default for six months to have "an open and candid discussion about the viability of the project and the long-term plan for this site." Over the last year, Americans' waning enthusiasm for electric cars led automakers to delay or scrap factory projects. After recent EV policy changes by the Trump administration, automakers are further retrenching. Representative John Moolenaar, a Michigan Republican who chairs a select committee on China, praised the withdrawal of state support for the project. He had worked with residents in Green Township to oppose the project and bar U.S. government subsidies for Chinese-affiliated battery companies like Gotion. (Reporting by David Shepardson; Additional reporting by James Pomfret in Hong Kong; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle and Christopher Cushing)

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(Reuters) -Intel forecast fourth-quarter revenue just shy of estimates on Thursday, but beat expectations for September-quarter profit as CEO Lip-Bu Tan's drastic cost-cutting measures helped the chipmaker shore up its finances amid a slew of high-profile investments in the company.  This marks the Santa Clara, California-based company's first earnings announcement after multibillion-dollar investments from Nvidia and Japan's SoftBank as well as an unprecedented U.S. government stake, with investors anticipating a major cash boost.  The investments are expected to be a major lifeline for Intel, which has been struggling to maintain its dominance in the PC and server central processing unit markets as it competes with Advanced Micro Devices, while repeated attempts to break into the AI chip market commanded by Nvidia have not produced results.  After its share price dropped about 60% last year due to these concerns, Intel stock has risen nearly 90% so far in 2025 thanks to the new investments in the company, helping it outperform the stock of artificial-intelligence chip leader and Wall Street darling Nvidia.  Nvidia said last month it would invest $5 billion in Intel, giving it a stake of about 4% after new shares are issued. In August, Intel secured $2 billion from SoftBank. After U.S. President Donald Trump called for CEO Tan's resignation over China ties, a hastily arranged Washington meeting produced an unusual deal involving the U.S. government taking a 10% stake for $8.9 billion.  For the September quarter, it recorded adjusted gross margins of 40%, beating estimates of 35.7%, while adjusted profit of 23 cents per share also outperformed expectations of a profit of 1 cent per share, according to data compiled by LSEG.  The company will end the year with a workforce that is over one-fifth smaller than last year, it had said in July, while Tan has significantly pared back the expensive manufacturing ambitions of his ousted predecessor, Pat Gelsinger. Tan has aggressively cut costs and divested assets, after Gelsinger's ambitions of turning Intel into a contract manufacturer of chips that would compete against Taiwan's TSMC led to the company in 2024 recording its first annual loss since 1986.  Intel forecast current-quarter revenue between $12.8 billion and $13.8 billion, with a midpoint of $13.3 billion, compared with analysts' average estimate of $13.37 billion. (Reporting by Arsheeya Bajwa in Bengaluru and Max A. Cherney and Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Matthew Lewis)

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By Gram Slattery and Chris Prentice WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump has pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the convicted founder of the Binance cryptocurrency exchange, the White House said Thursday, in the latest move by Trump to boost the crypto industry and expunge its past misdeeds.  Zhao, a billionaire known as "CZ" who is one of the most influential figures in crypto, quit in 2023 as Binance chief after the company pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program and paid a penalty of $4.3 billion.  Zhao was prosecuted by the Biden administration "in their war on cryptocurrency," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. Since he returned to office, Trump's family has reaped millions of dollars from a variety of crypto ventures – moves criticized by political rivals and ethics experts citing the potential for conflicts of interest. The White House has denied those claims and on Thursday Leavitt said it carefully examined all pardons. In a post on social media platform X, Zhao said he was "deeply grateful for today’s pardon and to President Trump for upholding America’s commitment to fairness, innovation, and justice." He added: "Will do everything we can to help make America the Capital of Crypto." FULL AND UNCONDITIONAL PARDON U.S. authorities said in 2023 that Binance had failed to report suspicious transactions with organizations including Hamas and al Qaeda and with websites dedicated to selling child sexual abuse materials. Zhao, a citizen of Canada who was born in China, personally paid a $50 million fine and served nearly four months in prison last year after pleading guilty to the same charge as his company.  However, he kept his Binance stake, while one of his appointees was made chief executive.  "I made mistakes, and I must take responsibility," Zhao said when he stepped down. The full and unconditional pardon could pave the way for him to return to the business he co-founded in 2017. It may also offer the chance for Binance to expand in the United States as the crypto industry booms under the Trump administration. A spokesperson for Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange by trading volumes, thanked Trump for his leadership. News of the pardon, which Zhao told a podcaster in May he had been seeking, was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. The U.S. Constitution gives the president broad power to issue pardons to wipe away federal criminal convictions, or commutations to modify sentences. Historically, presidents have largely waited until the end of their terms to use such powers, but there is no requirement that they do so. During his second term, Trump has made sweeping use of his clemency powers and Zhao's is the latest in a series of pardons that Trump has granted to crypto executives and entrepreneurs, as well as others convicted of white-collar crimes.  The crypto sector poured money into Trump's 2024 presidential campaign, during which the Republican candidate promised to end what he called a crackdown by the Biden administration on the industry. SUPPORT FOR WORLD LIBERTY FINANCIAL Binance itself this year offered support to one of the Trump family's crypto ventures, World Liberty Financial. In May, Binance accepted World Liberty's USD1 stablecoin as payment for a $2 billion investment in the exchange by Abu Dhabi investment firm MGX. Binance's decision to accept USD1, which was launched only in March, provided a big boost to the World Liberty venture, and still accounts for most of the USD1 in circulation. Democratic U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, who previously criticized the MGX deal, said on Thursday: "First, Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to a criminal money laundering charge. Then he boosted one of Donald Trump’s crypto ventures and lobbied for a pardon. Today, Donald Trump did his part and pardoned him." A spokesperson for Binance declined to comment on Warren's criticism. In March, the president pardoned the three co-founders of crypto exchange BitMEX who had pleaded guilty in 2022 for failing to implement a Bank Secrecy Act-compliant anti-money laundering program. Trump also pardoned in January Ross Ulbricht, who was sentenced to life in prison for running the underground online marketplace Silk Road but remained a popular figure within the crypto community.     Outside crypto, Trump has pardoned the founder of electric truck company Nikola, who was convicted of fraud, and commuted the sentence of the executive behind the now-defunct startup Ozy Media.  On his first day back in office, Trump pardoned approximately 1,500 individuals charged in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. (Reporting by Gram Slattery and Chris Prentice; additional reporting by Luc Cohen and Hannah Lang in New York; writing by Tom Wilson; editing by Rami Ayyub, Doina Chiacu, Michelle Price, and Daniel Wallis)

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By Arsheeya Bajwa, Max A. Cherney and Stephen Nellis (Reuters) -Intel beat expectations for September-quarter profit as CEO Lip-Bu Tan's drastic cost-cutting measures helped the chipmaker shore up its finances amid a slew of high-profile investments in the company. Shares jumped roughly 5% in after-hours trading.   This marks the Santa Clara, California-based company's first earnings announcement after multibillion-dollar investments from Nvidia and Japan's SoftBank as well as an unprecedented U.S. government stake, with investors anticipating a major cash boost.  Intel received the SoftBank money in the third quarter but has not yet received Nvidia's cash, finance chief Dave Zinsner said in an interview with Reuters. The investments are expected to be a major lifeline for Intel, which has been struggling to maintain its dominance in the PC and server central processing unit markets as it competes with Advanced Micro Devices, while repeated attempts to break into the AI chip market commanded by Nvidia have not produced results.  After its share price dropped about 60% last year due to these concerns, Intel stock has risen nearly 90% so far in 2025 thanks to the new investments in the company, helping it outperform the stock of artificial-intelligence chip leader and Wall Street darling Nvidia.  Nvidia said last month it would invest $5 billion in Intel, giving it a stake of about 4% after new shares are issued. In August, Intel secured $2 billion from SoftBank. After U.S. President Donald Trump called for CEO Tan's resignation over China ties, a hastily arranged Washington meeting produced an unusual deal involving the U.S. government taking a 10% stake for $8.9 billion.  Demand for Intel's chips was strong enough during the third quarter that the company is tight on supply, Zinsner said. One of the factors is that data center operators have realized that they need to upgrade the central processor (CPU) in order to keep pace with the advanced AI chips, he said. Upgrading the CPU gives power and performance advantages that help build and run AI applications. "We're under shipping demand at this point, which I guess is a high-class problem," Zinsner said. For the September quarter, it recorded adjusted gross margins of 40%, beating estimates of 35.7%, while adjusted profit of 23 cents per share also outperformed expectations of a profit of 1 cent per share, according to data compiled by LSEG.  The company will end the year with a workforce that is over one-fifth smaller than last year, it had said in July, while Tan has significantly pared back the expensive manufacturing ambitions of his ousted predecessor, Pat Gelsinger. Tan has aggressively cut costs and divested assets, after Gelsinger's ambitions of turning Intel into a contract manufacturer of chips that would compete against Taiwan's TSMC led to the company in 2024 recording its first annual loss since 1986.  Intel forecast current-quarter revenue between $12.8 billion and $13.8 billion, with a midpoint of $13.3 billion, compared with analysts' average estimate of $13.37 billion. (Reporting by Arsheeya Bajwa in Bengaluru and Max A. Cherney and Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Aditya Soni in Bengaluru; Editing by Matthew Lewis)

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By Sara Merken (Reuters) -Two federal judges admitted in response to an inquiry by U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley that members of their staff used artificial intelligence to help prepare recent court orders that Grassley called "error-ridden." In letters released by Grassley's office on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate in Mississippi and U.S. District Judge Julien Xavier Neals in New Jersey said the decisions in the unrelated cases did not go through their chambers' typical review processes before they were issued. Both judges said they have since adopted measures to improve how rulings are reviewed. Neals, based in Newark, in his letter said a draft decision in a securities lawsuit "was released in error – human error – and withdrawn as soon as it was brought to the attention of my chambers." He said a law school intern used OpenAI's ChatGPT for research without authorization or disclosure. Neals said his chambers has since created a written AI policy and enhanced its review process. Reuters previously reported that research produced using AI was included in the decision, citing a person familiar with the circumstances. Wingate said in his letter that a law clerk in his court in Jackson used Perplexity "as a foundational drafting assistant to synthesize publicly available information on the docket." He said posting the draft decision "was a lapse in human oversight." Wingate had removed and replaced the original order in the civil rights lawsuit and previously declined to give an explanation, saying it contained "clerical errors." The judges did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent to their court staff. Grassley had asked the judges to explain whether AI was used in the decisions after lawyers in the cases said they contained factual inaccuracies and other serious errors. Grassley in a statement on Thursday said he commended the judges for acknowledging the mistakes and urged the judiciary to adopt stronger AI guidelines. "Each federal judge, and the judiciary as an institution, has an obligation to ensure the use of generative AI does not violate litigants' rights or prevent fair treatment under the law," Grassley said. Lawyers have also increasingly faced scrutiny from judges across the country for apparent misuse of AI. Judges have levied fines or other sanctions in dozens of cases over the past few years after lawyers failed to vet the output the technology generated. (Reporting by Sara Merken; Editing by David Bario and Marguerita Choy)

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(Reuters) -Anthropic on Thursday said it would expand the use of Google Cloud's TPU chips, providing the artificial intelligence startup access to the capacity and computing resources required to train the next generations of Claude models. (Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City and Zaheer Kachwala in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar)

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By Arsheeya Bajwa, Max A. Cherney and Stephen Nellis (Reuters) -Intel beat expectations for September-quarter profit as CEO Lip-Bu Tan's drastic cost-cutting measures helped the chipmaker shore up its finances amid a slew of high-profile investments in the company. Shares jumped more than 8% in after-hours trading.   This marks the Santa Clara, California-based company's first earnings announcement after multibillion-dollar investments from Nvidia and Japan's SoftBank as well as an unprecedented U.S. government stake, with investors anticipating a major cash boost.  Intel received the SoftBank money in the third quarter but has not yet received Nvidia's cash, finance chief Dave Zinsner said in an interview with Reuters. The investments are expected to be a major lifeline for Intel, which has been struggling to maintain its dominance in the PC and server central processing unit markets as it competes with Advanced Micro Devices, while repeated attempts to break into the AI chip market commanded by Nvidia have not produced results.  After its share price dropped about 60% last year due to these concerns, Intel stock has risen nearly 90% so far in 2025 thanks to the new investments in the company, helping it outperform the stock of artificial-intelligence chip leader and Wall Street darling Nvidia.  "Shares popped after-hours based on better-than-feared guidance ex-Altera, visible cost and gross margin progress, AI-PC buzz, and $15B of fresh strategic funding that shores the balance sheet," said Michael Schulman, chief investment officer at Running Point Capital.  Nvidia said last month it would invest $5 billion in Intel, giving it a stake of about 4% after new shares are issued. In August, Intel secured $2 billion from SoftBank. After U.S. President Donald Trump called for CEO Tan's resignation over China ties, a hastily arranged Washington meeting produced an unusual deal involving the U.S. government taking a 10% stake for $8.9 billion.  Demand for Intel's chips was strong enough during the third quarter that the company is tight on supply, Zinsner said. One of the factors is that data center operators have realized that they need to upgrade the central processor (CPU) in order to keep pace with the advanced AI chips, he said. Upgrading the CPU gives power and performance advantages that help build and run AI applications. "We're under shipping demand at this point, which I guess is a high-class problem," Zinsner said. For the September quarter, it recorded adjusted gross margins of 40%, beating estimates of 35.7%, while adjusted profit of 23 cents per share also outperformed expectations of a profit of 1 cent per share, according to data compiled by LSEG.  The company will end the year with a workforce that is over one-fifth smaller than last year, it had said in July, while Tan has significantly pared back the expensive manufacturing ambitions of his ousted predecessor, Pat Gelsinger. Tan has aggressively cut costs and divested assets, after Gelsinger's ambitions of turning Intel into a contract manufacturer of chips that would compete against Taiwan's TSMC led to the company in 2024 recording its first annual loss since 1986.  Intel forecast current-quarter revenue between $12.8 billion and $13.8 billion, with a midpoint of $13.3 billion, compared with analysts' average estimate of $13.37 billion. (Reporting by Arsheeya Bajwa in Bengaluru and Max A. Cherney and Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Aditya Soni in Bengaluru; Editing by Sayantani Ghosh and Matthew Lewis)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)

By Arsheeya Bajwa, Max A. Cherney and Stephen Nellis (Reuters) -Intel beat expectations for September-quarter profit as CEO Lip-Bu Tan's drastic cost-cutting measures helped the chipmaker shore up its finances amid a slew of high-profile investments in the company. Shares jumped more than 8% in after-hours trading.   This marks the Santa Clara, California-based company's first earnings announcement after multibillion-dollar investments from Nvidia and Japan's SoftBank as well as an unprecedented U.S. government stake, with investors anticipating a major cash boost.  Intel received the SoftBank money in the third quarter but has not yet received Nvidia's cash, finance chief Dave Zinsner said in an interview with Reuters. The investments are expected to be a major lifeline for Intel, which has been struggling to maintain its dominance in the PC and server central processing unit markets as it competes with Advanced Micro Devices, while repeated attempts to break into the AI chip market commanded by Nvidia have not produced results.  After its share price dropped about 60% last year due to these concerns, Intel stock has risen nearly 90% so far in 2025 thanks to the new investments in the company, helping it outperform the stock of artificial-intelligence chip leader and Wall Street darling Nvidia.  "Shares popped after-hours based on better-than-feared guidance ex-Altera, visible cost and gross margin progress, AI-PC buzz, and $15B of fresh strategic funding that shores the balance sheet," said Michael Schulman, chief investment officer at Running Point Capital.  Nvidia said last month it would invest $5 billion in Intel, giving it a stake of about 4% after new shares are issued. In August, Intel secured $2 billion from SoftBank. After U.S. President Donald Trump called for CEO Tan's resignation over China ties, a hastily arranged Washington meeting produced an unusual deal involving the U.S. government taking a 10% stake for $8.9 billion.  Demand for Intel's chips was strong enough during the third quarter that the company is tight on supply, Zinsner said. One of the factors is that data center operators have realized that they need to upgrade the central processor (CPU) in order to keep pace with the advanced AI chips, he said. Upgrading the CPU gives power and performance advantages that help build and run AI applications. "We're under shipping demand at this point, which I guess is a high-class problem," Zinsner said. For the September quarter, it recorded adjusted gross margins of 40%, beating estimates of 35.7%, while adjusted profit of 23 cents per share also outperformed expectations of a profit of 1 cent per share, according to data compiled by LSEG.  The company will end the year with a workforce that is over one-fifth smaller than last year, it had said in July, while Tan has significantly pared back the expensive manufacturing ambitions of his ousted predecessor, Pat Gelsinger. Tan has aggressively cut costs and divested assets, after Gelsinger's ambitions of turning Intel into a contract manufacturer of chips that would compete against Taiwan's TSMC led to the company in 2024 recording its first annual loss since 1986.  Intel forecast current-quarter revenue between $12.8 billion and $13.8 billion, with a midpoint of $13.3 billion, compared with analysts' average estimate of $13.37 billion. (Reporting by Arsheeya Bajwa in Bengaluru and Max A. Cherney and Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Aditya Soni in Bengaluru; Editing by Sayantani Ghosh and Matthew Lewis)

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