The year 2025 is proving tumultuous for the U.S. semiconductor industry, as it navigates a shifting landscape amid fierce global competition over artificial intelligence chips. Semiconductors are at the heart of the high-stakes AI race, and the U.S. continues seeking to assert dominance—a priority underscored by a series of moves involving key industry players and the federal government.
In June, Intel shook up its executive ranks as CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who took the helm in March, pushes aggressively toward recapturing the company’s engineering excellence. On June 18, Intel announced several strategic executive hires, including a new chief revenue officer and prominent engineers, aimed at repositioning the tech giant as engineering-driven once again. Days earlier, Intel confirmed plans for substantial layoffs to streamline its foundry business, announcing cuts of between 15% and 20% of the division’s workforce, effective from July.
Nvidia, impacted heavily by U.S. restrictions on chip exports to China, announced on June 13—through CEO Jensen Huang—that it will no longer factor the Chinese market into its future financial forecasts. The prominent chipmaker also detailed significant financial setbacks caused by the restricted licensing requirements imposed on its advanced H20 AI chips, having suffered charges of $4.5 billion already, with losses expected to increase by several billion more.
AMD has aggressively expanded its presence in AI hardware through strategic acquisitions over recent months. On June 6, the company acquired the team behind Untether AI, specialists in developing AI-inference chips. In the same week, AMD also bought out Brium, a startup that optimizes AI software across different hardware, directly challenging Nvidia’s market dominance. Just a week prior, on May 28, AMD had already expanded further into cutting-edge chip tech by purchasing silicon photonics firm Enosemi, bolstering its capabilities in high-speed, photonic-enabled data transmissions.
Tensions between the United States and China intensified notably in May, particularly following the U.S. Department of Commerce guidance that using Huawei’s Ascend AI chips anywhere globally constitutes an export violation—a position fiercely contested by Beijing in a statement warning of possible legal retaliation.
Meanwhile, shortly before leaving office in January, President Joe Biden had attempted to introduce sweeping export rules aimed at limiting global proliferation of U.S.-made semiconductor technology, categorizing countries into tiers with varying levels of restrictions on AI chip purchases. However, just before the scheduled implementation, the succeeding Trump administration scrapped these measures entirely, pledging to release an alternate framework later.
Intense debates over tighter restrictions on chip exports emerged early in the year, following alarming advancements in China’s AI capabilities through DeepSeek’s public release of its highly sophisticated R1 “reasoning” model. Concerned lawmakers, notably senators Elizabeth Warren and Josh Hawley, called on the Trump administration to strengthen U.S. controls, warning explicitly about the potential exploitation of Nvidia’s H20 AI chips.
Throughout all this turmoil, Intel’s new leader Lip-Bu Tan swiftly set about streamlining company operations. In March, soon after Tan’s appointment was announced, he pledged a renewed focus on engineering prowess. By April 1, he had already set plans to spin off non-core business units and reset company priorities—including production of customized semiconductor solutions. He followed through on these intentions, subsequently exploring the sale of additional business divisions, such as networking and edge-computing hardware responsible for a significant portion of the company’s annual revenue.
In February, Intel faced another setback in production, announcing that completion of its anticipated $28 billion chip-manufacturing facility in Ohio, originally scheduled for this year, had been postponed until 2030 at the earliest. Elsewhere in the sector, rumors circulated of potential major agreements: notably a possible collaboration between Intel and TSMC involving joint operation of Intel’s facilities—a deal that, despite speculation, has yet to be confirmed by either party.
As the semiconductor saga of 2025 continues to unfold, one fact is clear: with geopolitical tensions mounting, multi-billion-dollar acquisitions reshaping the industry landscape, and strategic shifts from technology giants such as Intel, Nvidia, and AMD, the battle to shape the future of global artificial intelligence is only beginning.
