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Aug 07, 2025
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Happy Thursday! Apple plans to invest an additional $100 billion in U.S. manufacturing. Uber CEO discusses flywheel behind a strong second quarter. Share prices of TSMC and South Korean chipmakers rise on Trump's chip tariff proposal.
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Apple announced it will invest an additional $100 billion into U.S. manufacturing over the next four years on Wednesday. With the pledge, the iPhone maker is likely hoping to avoid costly tariffs by helping Trump with his goal of bringing manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. The company already announced a $500 billion commitment to U.S. manufacturing earlier this year. Despite Apple’s earlier commitments, Trump has continued going after Apple’s lack of manufacturing footprint in the U.S., criticizing its relocation of iPhone final assembly of iPhones bound for the U.S. market from China to India. Last week during Apple’s quarterly earnings call, Cook said that the vast majority of its phones now sold in the U.S. were made in India. Tariffs have already taken
a toll on Apple. The company said that it incurred an $800 million charge due to tariffs for the June quarter, and it expects another $1.1 billion in tariff costs to hit its current quarter that ends in September.
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In an interview with The Information’s TITV, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said that the company is growing quickly by leveraging its unique position as both a ride and delivery platform. And he laid out a fresh prediction around when autonomous drivers could match the number of human drivers on the road. His interview came as Uber reported that revenue grew 18 percent in the second quarter, beating expectations. The company also announced an additional $20 billion share buyback. In the interview, Khosrowshahi said he wasn’t in a rush to do large M&A, despite others doing so. “I think the organic path is the most likely path that we’re going to take,” he said. You can read and watch the full interview here and here.
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Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix closed higher on Thursday, as all the companies appear to emerge unscathed in President Donald Trump’s proposed 100% tariffs on all imported semiconductors. TSMC, the world’s largest chipmaker with an ambitious plan to expand its manufacturing facilities in the U.S., will be exempted from any additional tariffs. The company’s shares closed 4.89% higher in Taipei to NT$1,180, according to data from S&P Capital IQ. Shares of Samsung and SK Hynix also ended higher after a South Korean trade envoy confirmed the country’s memory chip duo will not be subject to any new duties under a trade agreement between Seoul and Washington.
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President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he will impose tariffs of about 100% on chips imported into the country, although the charge will not apply to companies who are “building” in the United States including Apple. “We’re going to be putting a very large tariff on chips and semiconductors, but the good news for companies like Apple is, if you’re building in the United States, or have committed to build, without question, committed to build in the United States, there will be no charge,” he said “So in other words, we’ll be putting a tariff of approximately 100% on chips and semiconductors,” he added. The comments came as Apple announced a new $100 billion investment in the U.S. on Wednesday. Earlier this year Nvidia also said it planned to
work with other companies to manufacture some of its supercomputers in America. A spokesperson for Nvidia declined to comment. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which makes chips for prominent U.S. tech firms, has also pledged to invest tens of billions of dollars in America to build manufacturig plants.
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Airbnb posted 13% higher revenue for the second quarter, more than double the growth rate of the first quarter and the fastest the travel bookings firm has grown since the start of last year. Airbnb’s free cash flow was $1 billion, in line with a year earlier. The revenue lift was despite a slight drop in growth of bookings of “nights and seats” from the first quarter, although Airbnb said its business grew in double digit terms outside of North America where “broader macro uncertainty” early in the quarter depressed business. Airbnb said, however, that growth accelerated through the quarter. It noted that travel from Canada to the U.S. “remained soft” in the quarter. Airbnb stock fell 5.6% in after-hours trading. Airbnb said “mid-teens” growth in bookings in Asia Pacific and “high-teens growth”
in Latin America.
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Elon Musk’s X is using parent company xAI’s Grok artificial intelligence tools to handle more of the social media site’s advertising business, Musk and other xAI executives said Wednesday. X is using Grok to improve targeting based on user data, Musk and xAI’s head of ads engineering Roman Grachev said during a livestreamed question-and-answer session with advertisers. Grok will also evaluate whether ads look good or bad, and X will give greater priority to ads it deems to be more visually pleasing, the X executives said. In addition, Musk said it’s likely that ads will eventually appear in chatbot answers, though he did not say when this could happen. X merged with xAI in March and X CEO Linda Yaccarino left the company in July. Additionally, X is using Grok to detect whether or not content on X is brand
safe, another X executive said. Musk also said that X is working on a way to charge advertisers based on the degree of brand safety they need, allowing the most sensitive advertisers to pay more for maximum safety, while companies that can tolerate their ads sometimes appearing close to racy or controversial content would pay lower rates.
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