U.S.-Backed Laser Startup Raises $350M to Challenge EUV Dominance

NVIDIA and AWS announced three integrated capabilities for production AI deployment: EC2 G7 instances powered by NVIDIA RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell GPUs offering up to 4.6x faster AI inference than G6, NVIDIA cuVS integration as the default vector search engine in Amazon OpenSearch Serverless delivering up to 10x faster indexing at a quarter of the cost, and AWS achieving NVIDIA Exemplar Cloud status for GB300 training workloads. The collaboration targets enterprises building retrieval-augmented generation, semantic search, and agentic AI applications at scale.

Groq, an AI chipmaker, confirmed a $650 million funding raise and is restructuring its business following what the article describes as Nvidia's $20 billion not-acqui-hire deal. The company is pivoting toward its neocloud business and hiring new executives to lead the repositioned strategy.

President Trump signed two executive orders on Monday focused on quantum technology development. The first order, which has circulated in draft form for months, directs federal agencies to increase research investment in quantum. The orders represent a significant policy push for quantum as a priority area, though details on implementation and funding remain limited in available reporting.

ASML, the Dutch company that dominates global chip lithography, has begun shipping a new $400 million machine capable of etching transistor features at eight nanometers, enabling chipmakers to continue shrinking components and increasing density. The machine uses extreme-ultraviolet light to pattern silicon wafers and represents the culmination of over a decade of engineering work. ASML controls roughly 90% of the global lithography tool market, making it essential infrastructure for the chip industry and a geopolitical flashpoint as governments seek to control advanced chip access.