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By Nora Eckert and Nathan Gomes (Reuters) -Stellantis announced a $13 billion investment in the U.S. on Tuesday, a move it said will bring five new models to the market and add 5,000 jobs in plants across the Midwest over the next four years. The plan, which includes some previously disclosed investments, may help buffer Stellantis from U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs, which the automaker has said would cost it around $1.7 billion this year. The investment, which Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa said is the largest in its history, comes as the automaker works to regain its sales momentum in one of its most important markets. "Tariffs are getting clearer and clearer. And we believe that tariffs will be just another variable of our business equation that we need to be ready to manage, and we will," Filosa told Reuters in an interview. U.S.-listed shares of Stellantis were up about 4% in after-hours trade. The investment will infuse new capital into plants in Michigan, Illinois, Ohio and Indiana. Some of the factories are slated to receive new models, while others will have expanded production of existing vehicles. One of the plants at the center of the company's announcement, a factory in Belvidere, Illinois, has been a sticking point for the United Auto Workers union, which last year threatened a strike against the Franco-Italian automaker. "Their decision today proves that targeted auto tariffs can, in fact, bring back thousands of good union jobs to the U.S.," UAW President Shawn Fain said in a statement. The factory, which was shuttered in 2023, is reopening and will produce two Jeep models starting in 2027, creating around 3,300 jobs, the company said. "Filling Stellantis' underutilized plants should be a welcome announcement for UAW workers," said Sam Fiorani, vice president at research firm AutoForecast Solutions. Stellantis leadership disclosed elements of the plan to employees earlier this year, including some of the investments in the Belvidere plant, and factories in Ohio and Indiana. Tuesday's announcement pegs the investment amount and the number of jobs that will be created, which is a larger figure than had been previously given. The company declined to quantify how much of the $13 billion announcement was previously laid out. Filosa, who became CEO in June, is tasked with turning around the carmaker's sagging U.S. market share. Dealers complained that the company's strategy under former CEO Carlos Tavares left them with models that were priced too high relative to competitors, and hurt sales.  Tavares abruptly resigned in December, and the automaker conducted a months-long search for his successor before appointing Filosa, an Italian national who joined the company in 1999. Filosa is expected to unveil a new strategic plan in the second quarter of next year, after recently delaying it from the first quarter. (Reporting by Nora Eckert in Detroit; Additional reporting by Nathan Gomes in Bengaluru; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Christopher Cushing)

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By Max A. Cherney (Reuters) -Intel announced on Tuesday a new artificial intelligence chip for the data center that it plans to launch next year, in a renewed push to break into the AI chip market. The new chip (GPU) will be optimized for energy efficiency and support a wide range of uses such as running AI applications, or inference, Intel Chief Technology Officer Sachin Katti said at the Open Compute Summit on Tuesday. "It emphasizes that focus that I talked about earlier, inference, optimized for AI, optimized, optimized for delivering the best token economics out there, the best performance per dollar out there," Katti said. The new chip, called Crescent Island, is the struggling U.S. chipmaker's latest attempt to capitalize on the frenzy in AI spending that has generated billions in revenue for AMD and Nvidia.  The company's plans trail behind competitors and represent the significant challenge Intel's executives and engineers face to capture a meaningful portion of the market for AI chips and systems. Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan has vowed to restart the company's stalled AI efforts after the company effectively mothballed projects such as the Gaudi line of chips and Falcon Shores processor.  Crescent Island will feature 160 gigabytes of a slower form of memory than the high bandwidth memory (HBM) that is found on AMD and Nvidia's data center AI chips. The chip will be based on a design that Intel has used for its consumer GPUs. Intel did not disclose which manufacturing process Crescent Island would use. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. MIX AND MATCH Since the generative AI boom with the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT in November 2022, startups and large cloud operators have rushed to grab GPUs that help run AI workloads on data center servers. The demand explosion has led to a supply crunch and sky-high prices for chips designed or suited for AI applications. Katti said at the San Jose trade show that the company would release new data center AI chips every year, which would match the annual cadence set by AMD, Nvidia and several of the cloud computing companies that make their own chips. Nvidia has dominated the market to build large AI models such as the one used for ChatGPT. Tan has said the company plans to focus its design efforts on building chips useful for running those AI models – which work behind the scenes to make AI software operate. "Instead of trying to build for every workload out there, our focus is increasingly going to be on inference," Katti said. Intel has taken an open and modular approach in which customers can mix and match chips from different vendors, Katti said. Nvidia said last month it would invest $5 billion in Intel, taking a roughly 4% stake and becoming one of its largest shareholders as part of a partnership to co-develop future PC and data center chips. The deal is part of Intel's effort to ensure that Intel's central processors (CPUs) are installed in every AI system that gets sold, Katti said.  (Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru and Max Cherney in San Francisco; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar and Stephen Coates)

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By Scott Murdoch SYDNEY (Reuters) -Commonwealth Bank of Australia Chief Executive Matt Comyn will remain at the helm of the country's largest lender for at least the next three years, its chair said on Wednesday, presiding over one of the most expensive banks in the world. Chairperson Paul O'Malley told the bank's annual meeting in Brisbane the search for the next chief executive would begin after his own next three-year term on the board ends. O'Malley is standing for re-election at Wednesday's meeting. His next term is due to end in 2028. "We have been pleased with the performance of Matt as CEO," O'Malley told the meeting. "Our intention and expectation is that the decision as to the appointment of the next CEO will be made by the board led by my successor as Chair." Comyn has been chief executive for seven years, meaning at least another three years would take his tenure to a decade. Australia does not impose time limits on chief executive tenures but typically their terms are between five to seven years. Chairs and chief executives typically do not leave at similar times to ensure company continuity. (Reporting by Scott Murdoch; Editing by Sonali Paul)

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