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By Foo Yun Chee BRUSSELS (Reuters) -Alphabet's Google has offered to make further changes to its search results in its latest attempt to avoid a European Union antitrust fine, according to a document seen by Reuters. The world's most popular internet search engine modified its July proposal following feedback and criticism from vertical search engines, which are specialised search engines with links to a specific sector such as hotels, airlines, restaurants and transport services. Price comparison sites have also criticised its previous proposals. Google has come under European Commission scrutiny since March for allegedly favouring its own services such as Google Shopping, Google Hotels and Google Flights over competitors. It risks a fine in the coming months, other sources have told Reuters. The EU case is under the landmark Digital Markets Act, which sets out a list of dos and don'ts to limit the power of Big Tech, create room for rivals and increase choice for users. Google said its latest tweaks were in response to calls that search results for third-party VSSs and Google should have the same information, functionality and features. "We will create the opportunity for each VSS to show its own box on Search. A VSS box will be populated with results from that VSS inventory," the company said in its proposal. It added the box would have the same format and information for third-party VSSs as for Google. The winning bid for the box would be based on objective and non-discriminatory criteria and it would not share its rivals' data with others, Google said. Suppliers – in essence hotels, restaurants, airlines and travel services – would be placed in a box either above or below the VSS box depending on the relevance to the user's query. Google said it was keen to find a balanced solution and bring the EU investigation to a close but warned of risks ahead. "We remain concerned that any further changes to Search would prioritise the commercial interests of a small set of intermediaries over European businesses who want to sell directly to their customers," a Google spokesperson said. (Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; editing by Barbara Lewis)

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By Max A. Cherney SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -U.S. Republican Senator Tom Cotton has asked the Commerce Department to investigate Singapore-based Megaspeed for allegedly diverting Nvidia chips used for artificial intelligence, according to a letter seen by Reuters on Monday. The letter cites an October report in The New York Times that detailed the alleged diversion of Nvidia chips by Megaspeed, a cloud computing company. According to the report, Megaspeed funneled Nvidia chips to Malaysia and Indonesia that appeared to serve customers in China remotely. Megaspeed did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Singapore Police Force said on Tuesday that "investigations are ongoing into Megaspeed for suspected breaches of our domestic laws."     A Nvidia spokesperson said it had engaged with the U.S. government regarding Megaspeed, performed its own inquiry, and had not identified any reason to believe products had been diverted.     The U.S. has blocked high-end AI chips from export to China due to national security concerns. In July, Reuters reported that demand for repairs of banned Nvidia products boomed, which was also cited by Cotton in his letter. In 2024, Reuters reported that China had obtained high-end Nvidia AI chips in spite of a ban. "As the Trump administration recently indicated, export controls are an important tool as he navigates America through perilous times against an increasingly aggressive and emboldened adversary," Cotton wrote. "The pervasiveness of chip smuggling undermines the president and allows U.S. adversaries access to advanced technology where the U.S. maintains significant leverage." Cotton said he would continue to work with U.S. President Donald Trump to curb illegal diversions of U.S. chips. His letter was addressed to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Cotton previously introduced legislation that would require location verification of chips after they are sold. Last week, Trump unveiled levies of 100% on China's U.S.-bound exports and new export controls on "any and all critical software" by November 1. On Sunday, China said the latest tariffs were hypocritical.     (Reporting by Max A. Cherney in San Francisco; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus and Nia Williams)

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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 James Oliphant WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Justice Department said on Tuesday that Meta had complied with its request to take down a page on its Facebook platform that the agency said was being used to harass ICE agents in Chicago. In a post on X, Attorney General Pam Bondi said the page was part of an effort to "dox and target" the approximately 200 Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers who have descended on the city as part of President Donald Trump's immigration enforcement drive. Doxxing is the sharing of personal information about people online. A spokesperson for Meta confirmed that the company had removed the page from the Facebook platform for "violating our policies against coordinated harm." Neither Meta nor the DOJ provided more information on the page, and Reuters was unable to review it. Apple earlier this month removed apps that allowed users to track the movements of ICE agents following pressure from the Trump administration. Google also has made similar apps unavailable. The administration has threatened to prosecute makers of the tracking apps. ICE has been central to Trump's hardline immigration agenda. Its agents have regularly raided and arrested migrants, and rights advocates say free speech and due process are often being infringed. The administration has asserted that left-wing protesters have been regularly harassing and interfering with ICE agents. Bondi did not provide evidence in her post on X of specific incidents connected to the Facebook page. Meta and other tech firms have been trying to mend their relationship with Trump since he won reelection in November. The company contributed $1 million to the president's inaugural fund and scrapped its diversity and fact-checking programs.  Meta also agreed to pay Trump $25 million to settle a lawsuit over the suspension of his accounts after the January 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol attack.  The ICE presence in Chicago has been resisted by the city's Democratic mayor, Brandon Johnson, and Illinois' Democratic governor, JB Pritzker. Earlier this month, Johnson signed an order prohibiting ICE agents from using city-owned property as staging areas for operations, and local businesses have posted signs declaring their premises off-limits to ICE. (Reporting by James Oliphant; editing by Donna Bryson and Rosalba O'Brien)

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(Reuters) -Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has reduced the size of her stake in Amazon.com by 42% since last year, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, citing a regulatory filing. Scott, the former wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, holds 81.1 million shares in the company, according to the latest disclosure dated September 30, down 58 million from a year ago, according to the news report. Based on Amazon's closing price on Tuesday, the reduction is worth $12.55 billion. Reuters could not independently confirm the filing. A regulatory filing made with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in Bezos' name said he beneficially owned more than 964 million Amazon shares as of September 30, including 81.1 million shares over which Bezos exercises sole voting authority. Amazon did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. As part of the terms of their divorce in 2019, Scott received a 4% stake in Amazon worth $36 billion from Bezos. She has donated more than $19.25 billion to more than 2,450 non-profit teams, according to her Yield Giving website. (Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Pooja Desai)

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(Reuters) -Cathie Wood's Ark Invest-backed Solmate Infrastructure said on Tuesday that it had picked up cryptocurrency solana during last week's sharp pullback in the market for digital assets. Risk-off sentiment hit cryptocurrencies on Friday as Sino-U.S. tensions flared, triggering the sector's biggest wave of leveraged liquidations, market participants said, with solana tumbling nearly 22% in just two days to a two-month low by Saturday. "We bought the dip," said Marco Santori, CEO of Solmate Infrastructure, a solana-focused digital asset treasury company. Solmate did not disclose the size of the purchase, but Santori said the company had acquired the token at a 15% discount to the market price. Wood's Ark Investment Management was the top holder in the $1 billion market value firm Solmate as of September 30, LSEG data showed. Solmate was rebranded from Brera Holdings, an Irish holding company focused on multi-club ownership, last month following a $300 million investment from the Solana Foundation, ARK Invest, RockawayX and UAE-based Pulsar Group. (Reporting by Medha Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva)

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By Suzanne McGee (Reuters) -Investors are directing money into U.S.-based exchange-traded funds at a rapid clip, pushing inflows so far this year across the $1 trillion line, State Street Investment Management said on Tuesday. That puts U.S. ETF inflows on pace to set a new annual record of as much as $1.4 trillion by the end of 2025, State Street said, with virtually every category benefitting from the torrent of new cash as investors continue to yank money out of traditional mutual funds in favor of lower-cost and more liquid ETFs. "Any market correction might slow the pace but it wouldn't halt the trend," said Matthew Bartolini, global head of research strategists at State Street. Last year, ETF flows reached the $1 trillion mark on December 11, State Street said, marking the first year they hit that threshold. This year, the breakneck pace has accelerated, with investors steering money into everything from low-cost, plain-vanilla ETFs tied to the Standard & Poor's 500 Index to cryptocurrencies and gold, Bartolini said. Overall, assets in the U.S. ETF industry stood at $12.7 trillion at the end of September after 41 straight months of net inflows, according to data released on Tuesday from industry analysis firm ETFGI. Year-to-date, the pace of asset growth stands at nearly 23%, ETFGI said. Crossing the $1 trillion mark in flows "underscores the need for accelerating innovation, expanding market access and scaling education," said Elise Terry, head of U.S. iShares at BlackRock, the single-largest global ETF issuer. Michael Venuto, chief investment officer of Tidal Financial Group, a provider of ETFs, said the outflow of assets from mutual funds will continue to propel ETF inflows higher. Mutual fund outflows totaled $481 billion in the first nine months of 2025, according to data from Morningstar. "What's happening is impressive because it's continuing at a time when there's growing uncertainty in the markets," Venuto said. "But we're having discussions daily" with asset managers hoping to launch new ETFs or convert existing mutual funds into ETFs, he said. (Reporting by Suzanne McGee in Providence, Rhode Island; Editing by Megan Davies and Matthew Lewis)

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By Suzanne McGee (Reuters) -Investors are directing money into U.S.-based exchange-traded funds at a rapid clip, pushing inflows so far this year across the $1 trillion line, State Street Investment Management said on Tuesday. That puts U.S. ETF inflows on pace to set a new annual record of as much as $1.4 trillion by the end of 2025, State Street said, with virtually every category benefitting from the torrent of new cash as investors continue to yank money out of traditional mutual funds in favor of lower-cost and more liquid ETFs. "Any market correction might slow the pace but it wouldn't halt the trend," said Matthew Bartolini, global head of research strategists at State Street. Last year, ETF flows reached the $1 trillion mark on December 11, State Street said, marking the first year they hit that threshold. This year, the breakneck pace has accelerated, with investors steering money into everything from low-cost, plain-vanilla ETFs tied to the Standard & Poor's 500 Index to cryptocurrencies and gold, Bartolini said. Overall, assets in the U.S. ETF industry stood at $12.7 trillion at the end of September after 41 straight months of net inflows, according to data released on Tuesday from industry analysis firm ETFGI. Year-to-date, the pace of asset growth stands at nearly 23%, ETFGI said. Crossing the $1 trillion mark in flows "underscores the need for accelerating innovation, expanding market access and scaling education," said Elise Terry, head of U.S. iShares at BlackRock, the single-largest global ETF issuer. Michael Venuto, chief investment officer of Tidal Financial Group, a provider of ETFs, said the outflow of assets from mutual funds will continue to propel ETF inflows higher. Mutual fund outflows totaled $481 billion in the first nine months of 2025, according to data from Morningstar. "What's happening is impressive because it's continuing at a time when there's growing uncertainty in the markets," Venuto said. "But we're having discussions daily" with asset managers hoping to launch new ETFs or convert existing mutual funds into ETFs, he said. (Reporting by Suzanne McGee in Providence, Rhode Island; Editing by Megan Davies and Matthew Lewis)

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By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss NEW YORK (Reuters) -Bitcoin and ether tumbled on Tuesday as U.S.-China tension ramped up, wiping out a rally the day before that was fueled by President Donald Trump's conciliatory trade remarks. The U.S. and China on Tuesday began charging additional port fees on ocean shipping firms that move everything from holiday toys to crude oil, making the high seas a key front in the trade war between the world's two largest economies. In afternoon trading, bitcoin fell to as low as $110,023.78 and was last down 2.3% at $113,129. The world's largest cryptocurrency hit a record high above $126,000 on October 6. Ether, the second-biggest digital currency, slid to a trough of $3,900.80 and was last down 3.7% at $4,128.47. Last Friday, it dropped 12% from the day's high to a low of $3,436.29. Altcoins, a term for all cryptocurrencies other than market-leader bitcoin, bore the brunt of the move, with many falling 80% on some exchanges, analysts said. Exchanges amplified Friday's selloff by automatically forcing some leveraged investors to close their positions after their collateral fell below certain thresholds, analysts said. "As long as China's relationship with the U.S. is shaky and stocks too concentrated in tech, crypto will be struggling as it tends to enjoy good times when other established assets are holding up well," said Juan Perez, director of trading at Monex USA in Washington. "But when the fundamentals are not great, crypto struggles to find a base for its value whether it's bitcoin or ether." Tuesday's price action came days after the crypto market experienced the largest liquidations in history, with more than $19 billion wiped out across leveraged positions late on Friday. The crash came after Trump said he would impose 100% tariffs on Chinese imports, in response to China announcing a major expansion of its rare earths export controls. (Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss; Editing by Michelle Price and Lisa Shumaker)

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By Max A. Cherney SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -Broadcom is launching a new networking chip on Tuesday that will help companies build artificial intelligence computing systems by stringing together hundreds of thousands of chips that crunch data, deepening its rivalry with Nvidia. The chip, called the Thor Ultra, enables computing infrastructure operators to deploy far more chips than they otherwise could, allowing them to build and run the large models used to power AI apps such as ChatGPT. The Thor Ultra will battle Nvidia's networking interface chips and aim to further entrench Broadcom's control of network communications inside data centers designed for AI applications. It comes after Broadcom on Monday unveiled a deal to roll out 10 gigawatts worth of custom chips for ChatGPT maker OpenAI beginning in the second half of 2026, challenging Nvidia's grip on the AI accelerator market. AI represents a big opportunity for Broadcom. Chief executive Hock Tan said late last year the market the company is going after for its various AI chips is in the range of $60 billion to $90 billion in 2027, divided between its networking chips and the data center processors it helps Alphabet's Google and OpenAI make. Broadcom reported AI revenue of $12.2 billion in fiscal 2024. In September, it announced a new, unnamed $10 billion customer for its custom data center AI chips. The Thor Ultra chip, part of Broadcom's growing catalog of networking chips, operates as a critical link between an AI system and the rest of the data center. The networking chips help data center operators move information around inside a facility. "In the distributed computing system, network plays an extremely important role in building these large clusters," Ram Velaga, a Broadcom senior vice president, told Reuters. "So I'm not surprised that anybody who's in the GPU business wants to make sure that they are participating in the networking." FOCUSING ON CHIP DESIGN While networking chips are crucial to the company's plans, the AI chips Broadcom helps design for large cloud computing companies such as Google are lucrative. Broadcom has worked on multiple generations of Google's Tensor processor, which Google began designing more than a decade ago. The Tensor chips have generated billions of dollars in revenue for Broadcom, according to analyst estimates. During a tour in September of Broadcom's San Jose network chip-testing labs where engineers work on current and forthcoming designs of its networking chips, company executives detailed measures taken to construct and test new networking processors. Towards that end, Broadcom's engineers doubled the bandwidth on Thor Ultra compared with the prior version. They put the chips through rigorous testing and evaluation from the earliest stages of production. To make a chip like the Thor Ultra or flagship series of Tomahawk networking switches, the engineers build an entire system around the chip. With the hardware system team, the engineers will discuss what kind of package the chip uses, how much power it will need and how much heat it will emit, Velaga said. Broadcom does not sell servers itself but offers the designs for components and systems it creates for testing to its customers in order to give them a reference point to construct the networking infrastructure around it. "For every dollar we invest in our silicon, there is at least $6 to $10 that our ecosystem partners are investing," Velaga said. "So a lot of our focus is on design, as if we are almost ready to take it to production." (Reporting by Max A. Cherney in San Francisco; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

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