Processors

ASML gave the clearest signal yet on Wednesday that the artificial intelligence buildout is still accelerating upstream, in the factories that make the chips themselves. The Dutch lithography giant reported third-quarter net sales of 11.662 billion euros and net income of 4.960 billion euros, with a gross margin of 57.5 percent and basic earnings per share of 12.95 euros.

Intel raised prices on its PC processors by roughly 10 percent effective October 5, 2026, according to supply-chain reporting from DIGITIMES — the company's third processor price increase since late 2025. The move follows a roughly 10 percent hike in the first quarter of 2026 and a July round that lifted select consumer and server chips by amounts ranging from tens of dollars on everyday laptops to more than 1,000 dollars on some server parts.

Microsoft and Nvidia took the stage together in San Francisco on October 7 to unveil the Surface Laptop Ultra, a premium 15-inch Windows laptop powered by Nvidia's RTX Spark — the chipmaker's first Arm-based processor built for Windows PCs. The machine starts at $2,599 and ships October 16, with a companion $5,999 Surface RTX Spark Dev Box mini PC arriving in November.

Sequoia Capital-backed chip startup Nuvacore is raising funds at a valuation of about $2.5 billion, sources told reporters on October 10, in the latest sign that investor appetite for AI hardware has fully returned after a decade of venture capital treating chips as too slow and too capital-intensive to bother with.