The US Commerce Department awarded $389 million in R&D funding to four companies working on semiconductor development, under the government’s CHIPS and Science Act.
In a statement, commerce secretary Howard Lutnick explained the funding “will accelerate American semiconductor innovation to enhance our domestic energy and power resources”.
As a condition of the close to $400 million outlay, the US government will receive minority, non-controlling and non-equity stakes in the four companies.
Washington-based Helion, which develops high-voltage power semiconductors and advanced energy power modules, will receive the biggest investment at $175 million.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems is in line for an $85 million investment, which it will use to develop semiconductor technologies for robotic maintenance.
Meanwhile, Vertical Semiconductors will get $73 million for its work across AI data centre racks and Sibelco North America will receive $56 million.
Bill Frauenhofer, executive director of Semiconductor Investment and Innovation at the Commerce Department added: “Accelerating domestic R&D across these technologies will strengthen America’s ability to convert and deliver power for the grid, advanced data centres, defence systems, and emerging fusion energy.”
Reuters reported the Commerce Department has awarded a total of 19 R&D grants to semiconductor companies, as part of the $10 billion fund under the CHIPS and Science Act approved by the government in 2022.
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Bell Canada flagged cybersecurity credentials as increasingly important in consumers’ choice of businesses after research found almost 40% would shun a company if its protections were doubtful.
A survey of 1,523 adults conducted by the telecoms player’s Cyber division found nearly 60% would stop using a business if personal data was exposed and just shy of 80% reported being the target of an attack in the past 12 months.
Bell Cyber conducted its survey across seven days, beginning on 29 July. The research revealed growing public concern over the role AI is playing in cyberattacks, with 76% believing the technology is contributing to an increase in the sophistication of swindles.
Canadians believe companies are struggling to keep pace with the cyber scams AI is contributing to.
Confidence in companies’ ability to fend off attacks is low: 31% believe businesses can protect personal information from incidents involving AI.
Bell’s research highlighted worries over workplace cybersecurity training, with many staff saying they have taken the initiative by seeking information themselves.
Localisation is one confidence-boosting method the company suggests businesses adopt, with the research indicating trust is greater when information is stored on domestic servers and security overseen by Canadian companies.
The former may be a welcome statistic given Bell is investing heavily in domestic data centre capacity.
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Meta Platforms plans to expand its Muse personal agent and charge businesses for transactions it handles, CEO Mark Zuckerberg (pictured) stated on the company’s Q3 earnings call.
He said more than 10 million people in the US and Canada have set up Muse in a month and a half, and about 25% use it on any given day
Zuckerberg stated Muse had a “clear product-market fit” and that Meta will focus on attracting more users, increasing revenue and optimising compute costs.
“We expect to grow Muse to serve billions of people,” he said, calling the goal as “both our mission and our strategy”.
The Muse line began in April with Muse Spark, the first model from Meta’s Superintelligence Labs. This month Meta followed with Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full.
Shopping is Muse’s most common use, with more than a quarter of users shopping through the agent.
Zuckerberg said Muse “should be free” for most people, with Meta taking a fee on transactions it facilitates for businesses. Subscriptions would cover access to the most advanced models or extra tokens, and business owners could also subscribe directly.
“We have been discussing our vision for personal superintelligence for more than a year now,” he said. “We want every person [to] have an extremely capable personal agent that understands your goals and can help you achieve them,” he said.
Meta Q3 metrics
Meta’s quarterly revenue rose 26% year over year to $64.6 billion.
Costs climbed 68% to $51.6 billion, including a $9.89 billion charge from an August agreement with 52 attorneys general over teen mental health claims.
Operating income fell 37% to $13 billion and the operating margin halved to 20%. Net income rose to $9.9 billion from $2.7 billion a year earlier, when a one-time $15.9 billion tax charge reduced profit.
Capital spending totalled $34.9 billion, with Meta forecasting $135 billion to $145 billion for 2026.
Its apps reach 3.64 billion people a day, up 3% from a year ago but just below the 3.65 billion analysts expected, according to StreetAccount. Zuckerberg said Threads has overtaken X in monthly users.
Reality Labs, which makes the Quest headsets and the Ray-Ban and Oakley AI glasses, lost $4.1 billion on $443 million of revenue, compared to a $4.4 billion loss a year ago.
Meta CFO Susan Li said the company expects Reality Labs to lose $18 billion to $19 billion in 2026, down slightly from $19.2 billion in 2025.
Also yesterday, Reuters reported a New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay the state $25 billion after a jury found it misled consumers in a case tied to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The tech giant said it will appeal.
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Intel heralded a construction milestone at a long-planned semiconductor manufacturing facility in the US state of Ohio after installing the first major structural truss years after it was announced.
“This represents another significant step toward expanded US leading-edge semiconductor capacity,” Intel Foundry head Naga Chandrasekaran wrote in a post on the company’s website.
Former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger announced the factory in 2022 with a target production target date of 2025. CNBC reported Intel now expects to finish construction in 2030 while also building a second facility in Ohio with a completion date of 2031.
In 2021, Gelsinger revealed a plan to build two new factories in the state of Arizona boost the company’s foundry business.
Chandrasekaran also announced operations at its next fab in Arizona are expected to start by the end of 2028, but CNBC noted the company is yet to land a major external customer for the 18A chips being built in the state and noted it is using the chips to make its own processors for devices
In September, SK Hynix told Reuters it conducted talks with Intel about a deal to make memory chips in the US for the first time, an arrangement which could include leasing part of Intel’s Ohio facility.
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AT&T CEO John Stankey (pictured) outlined the advantages he sees over the potential threat of a direct-to-device (D2D) service by SpaceX during a Q3 earnings call, which included much more low-band spectrum, a scaled network and the ability to penetrate buildings with its mobile service.
During yesterday’s (20 October) SpaceX earnings call, president Gwynne Shotwell said the low-band spectrum her company agreed to buy earlier this month can be paired with Wi-Fi for mobile connectivity indoors, along with devices in towers and Starlink installs across businesses and consumers’ homes.
Shotwell said Wi-Fi accounts for the vast majority of mobile connectivity, estimating its share at between 85% and 93% without providing details on how portals and passwords will be used.
“There are significant loads, even with robust Wi-Fi networks, that are out there,” AT&T’s Stankey countered on the operator’s own financial call today (21 October). “I think it takes a lot of years and a huge level of investment to get to the kind of performance levels that customers have become accustomed to in scaled networks that are running on the infrastructure that most of the incumbent providers have today.”
SpaceX has touted the nationwide low-band spectrum portfolio it bought from Grain Management as the means to enable in-building penetration for its D2D service, which Musk said yesterday will generate billions of dollars in revenue on a yearly basis.
“I wouldn’t over-rotate on what I would call one carrier of low-band spectrum,” Stankey said. “Let’s put this in perspective.”
By contrast, Stankey said AT&T operates six to eight carriers of low-band spectrum, deploying it not only at macro sites but also across every indoor building system in high-rises, hospitals and stadiums.
“We’ve got the scale where the scale matters,” he said. “98% of the traffic is where we’ve already built and where we already have capabilities and customers have become accustomed to a level of service that is pretty high.”
He added: “I feel really good about where we’re at.”
Q3 metrics
AT&T revenue grew 5.3% to $32.3 billion in the quarter ended 30 September, up from $30.7 billion a year ago.
Total service revenue increased 3.8%, its best consolidated growth in more than four years, reaching $26.3 billion. Wireless, fibre and the Lumen mass markets fibre business all contributed. Equipment revenue rose 12.1% year-on-year to $6 billion.
Income from continuing operations came in at $1.3 billion compared with $9.7 billion in the year-ago quarter, which benefited from the DirecTV transaction gain.
Post-paid phone net adds were 379,000, down 6.4% from 405,000 a year ago, with churn flat. The post-paid phone base now stands at 75.283 million, up 2%. Prepaid phone lost 21,000 customers.
Consumer and business internet net additions rose 25.4% to a record 769,000 from 613,000 a year earlier. Fibre net additions increased to 442,000 from 309,000, while fixed wireless access additions climbed to 327,000 from 304,000.
Total internet connections increased 29.3% to 16.2 million. Combined with phone additions, this pushed AT&T’s Advanced Connectivity net additions above 1 million for the second consecutive quarter. Advanced Connectivity service revenue reached $23.9 billion, up 6.1%.
AT&T added approximately 350,000 converged customers, with 42.8% of households using its fibre or Internet Air service also taking its mobile service.
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SpaceX plans to turn on its direct-to-device (D2D) service in early 2028 after launching the second generation Starlink Mobile constellation during 2027 and integrating spectrum it is acquiring.
On its Q3 earnings call, president Gwynne Shotwell said the low-band spectrum SpaceX agreed to buy earlier this month and the Federal Communications Commission’s approval to launch 15,000 next generation V2 birds “pave the way for Starlink Mobile to become a major mobile carrier in the US”.
On 8 October, SpaceX struck a deal to buy up to 14MHz of paired spectrum in the 800MHz band to support its plans. The agreement with Grain Management is expected to close in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory approval.
Shotwell indicated comments on the previous quarter’s call covered smaller radios for the D2D service, which she described as not quite tower capable, that SpaceX could place on homes and businesses where Starlink is already installed.
“So, it’s not just the spectrum that we’ve talked about with the S-band,” she said on yesterday’s (20 October) earnings call. “We will basically leverage the real estate from Starlink installs and other towers.”
SpaceX plans to pair its satellites with ground-based radios to provide 5G mobile coverage, a plan many executives in the industry consider far-fetched.
When asked about the roles the satellite and terrestrial networks will play for the D2D service, CEO Elon Musk said a more detailed presentation may be needed to explain Starlink’s connectivity strategy and why the company believes it could eventually generate several hundred billion dollars in annual revenue.
“You are missing some of the pieces that we know about internally,” he said. “I can say we do see a clear path to several hundred billion dollars a year in connectivity revenue, but I think we should probably describe that in more detail in a forum that’s not limited to a few minutes at an earnings call.”
Q3 numbers
SpaceX reported net income of $4.4 billion for Q3 (ending 30 September), compared with a $1.1 billion loss a year earlier, as revenue more than doubled to $14.6 billion, driven largely by its AI business.
It was the company’s second earnings report since its June stock market listing. Revenue was up 161% year-on-year.
The Super Intelligence segment, previously reported as AI, accounted for around $6.7 billion of the roughly $9 billion increase, with revenue rising to $7.6 billion from $813 million. SpaceX attributed the segment’s growth to new cloud services agreements, the Cursor acquisition and growing use of Grok.
Income from operations was $2.8 billion, compared with a $273 million loss a year ago, and adjusted EBITDA was $8.8 billion, up 306%.
Connectivity revenue rose 69% to $5.2 billion and operating income climbed 99% to $2.4 billion.
Starlink had 13.6 million consumer broadband subscribers, up 1.6 million in the quarter and from 7.2 million in Q3 2025.
For its direct-to-device service, Shotwell said Starlink Mobile surpassed 22 million monthly users at the end of the quarter, up 37% from the previous quarter.
SpaceX remains loss-making for the year to date, with a nine-month net loss of $413 million.
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A coalition of press freedom and civil liberties organizations is calling on the House Ways and Means Committee to abandon its threat to subpoena staffers at BreakThrough News. The House committee has demanded that BreakThrough employees testify before Congress unless the outlet withdraws its First Amendment and other objections to the committee’s earlier subpoenas and document requests by October 20.
The committee says its inquiry is part of a tax-related investigation into one of BreakThrough’s donors. But the committee and its chairman, Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., have also accused the outlet of “anti-American rhetoric” and “messaging that mirrors hostile government propaganda,” pointing to its criticism of immigration enforcement and of US and Israeli foreign policy. The letter outlines that such statements make clear the investigation is targeting BreakThrough for its viewpoints. The coalition warns that letting Congress interrogate a newsroom over its editorial positions sets a dangerous precedent for journalists of every political persuasion.
Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) Chief of Advocacy Seth Stern stated: “Rep. Smith’s shameless targeting of BreakThrough News for editorial viewpoints that he dislikes shows a complete disregard of the First Amendment. Congress has many more important things to do than interrogate an entire nonprofit newsroom because lawmakers speculate that disagreement with their opinions must evidence a conspiracy. The committee has not identified any alleged unlawful conduct by BreakThrough or any legitimate legislative purpose for its investigation. People who themselves hold controversial political views should understand the risk of normalizing fishing expeditions targeting dissent.”
Read the full letter below:
Dear Chairman Smith,
We are a coalition of press freedom and civil liberties organizations. We are alarmed by your recent correspondence threatening to issue subpoenas to BreakThrough News, a nonprofit organization that publishes news reporting and commentary. Your letter indicates that you plan to demand that virtually every individual associated with BreakThrough’s newsroom, from its editor-in-chief to its social media manager, appear before Congress unless BreakThrough rescinds its well-founded First Amendment and other objections to your prior invasive demands.
The Committee first demanded records from BreakThrough in February, claiming to be pursuing a tax-related probe into donations from Neville Roy Singham, a U.S. citizen based in Shanghai. Those demands and subsequent ones were outrageous in and of themselves, but serially subpoenaing employees of a small left-wing news outlet to compel them to personally appear before you, for no reason other than to further a vindictive political stunt, is beyond the pale and reminiscent of some of the darkest chapters in our nation’s history.
Although your justifications have repeatedly shifted in your various letters and subpoenas to date, you have admitted the true impetus for the inquiry is the groups’ viewpoints, stating they have “amplified anti-American, foreign-aligned narratives on social media, and pushed messaging that mirrors hostile government propaganda.” You further stated, “I will absolutely not stand by and allow our tax code to be abused to push anti-American rhetoric on our home soil.”
The First Amendment protects those who voice even controversial opinions shared by hostile governments abroad, but your primary examples of BreakThrough’s “anti-American” views are criticism of ICE’s tactics and Israel’s U.S.-funded wars – policies that many millions of Americans who have never received funding from or even heard of Mr. Singham also dislike.The fact that foreigners also dislike those policies might underscore their unpopularity, but it does not diminish BreakThrough’s right to share similar views.
Your letter also raises BreakThrough’s alleged connections to a lawfully organized domestic political party, the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Such connections are not illegal and, like receiving donations from a U.S. citizen living abroad, cannot come close to supporting broad subpoenas seeking a news entity’s internal documents or depositions from its entire staff.
Beyond the blatant unconstitutionality of targeting news outlets for their political views, House subpoenas must serve a legislative purpose. Fishing expeditions do not suffice.
BreakThrough News’s reporting and commentary, no matter how distasteful you may find it, is protected by the First Amendment, just as your own views are protected no matter how distasteful others may find them. As the Supreme Court wrote over 80 years ago, “if there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.”
The First Amendment exists to protect people with politically disfavored views from people like you. Speech that politicians approve of is not in need of constitutional protection.
The threatened subpoenas are clearly designed to target BreakThrough for reporting and editorial viewpoints with which the Committee disagrees. Subpoenas of journalists and newsrooms obstruct First Amendment activity by forcing cash-strapped news outlets to spend time and money defending their rights, and by intimidating not only reporters but also sources, donors, and readers.
We demand that you refrain from issuing further unlawful and retaliatory subpoenas, and drop your entire unconstitutional inquiry into BreakThrough News.
Sincerely,
Freedom of the Press Foundation
American Society of Journalists and Authors
Defending Rights & Dissent
First Amendment Foundation
National Coalition Against Censorship
National Press Photographers Association (NPPA)
PEN America
Society of Environmental Journalists
Society of Professional Journalists
The Media and Democracy Project
Apple added a US titanium supplier for the iPhone Duo, committing up to $100 million to Pennsylvania-based Perryman Company while expanding domestic production of camera technology for the iPhone 18 Pro.
As part of its American Manufacturing Program (AMP), Apple said today (20 October) the deal with Perryman is over the next three years for titanium used in its products, including the iPhone Duo, which starts at $1,999.
The announcement follows reports of tight supply for Apple’s first foldable. The phone is due in stores on 23 October, but online delivery estimates slipped to January 2027 within minutes of preorders opening on 16 October.
Apple stated Perryman will melt, forge, and roll grade 5 titanium, which it said will contain at least 80% recycled material. Titanium is used for the Duo’s enclosure, providing durability, according to the iPhone maker.
It is also expanding its partnership with Qnity Electronics, headquartered in the US state of Delaware, to produce technology for the new variable aperture in the iPhone 18 Pro camera system.
Apple said nearly 100 components used in the iPhone Duo and iPhone 18 Pro, from wireless chips to the silicon which powers key functions across the devices, are produced by US companies across more than a dozen states.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s (TSMC) Arizona plant will produce more than 100 million chips for Apple in 2026, while Corning’s Kentucky facility will make all cover glass for iPhones and Apple Watches sold worldwide by year end.
Apple also highlighted investments with other AMP partners, including Broadcom for US-made chips and Amkor Technology, which is building a semiconductor packaging and testing facility in Peoria, Arizona.
“We’re thrilled to expand our work with companies producing advanced materials and components for our newest iPhone lineup right here in America,” stated Apple COO Sabih Khan.
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