Intel chief executive Pat Gelsinger announced plans to build two semiconductor factories in Europe valued up to $95 billion, as part of an effort to ease the current worldwide chip shortage. Gelsinger added that Intel could expand the investment over a decade to the equivalent of “as much as €80 billion.” At an auto event in Munich, Gelsinger said, “this new era of sustained demand for semiconductors needs bold, big thinking.” Meanwhile, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. also plans to spend $100 billion in the next three years to increase chip production and Samsung is making similar moves. Read more

NBCUniversal announced that it has been selling 30-second ad spots for the NFL’s Super Bowl LVI for as much as $6.5 million, marking an 18 percent increase over the last Super Bowl and establishing a new rate record. Notably, the ad rate suggests that advertiser demand remains strong for the live broadcast despite shrinking audiences. The game is slated for February 13, 2022, at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California. In addition, NBC has nearly sold out its advertising for the Beijing Winter Olympics, also scheduled for February. The Super Bowl and Winter Olympics have a schedule overlap for the first time. Read more

Tesla veteran Doug Field joined Apple in 2018 to lead the tech giant’s self-driving car initiative. Now, his abrupt departure to join Ford Motor Company as its chief advanced technology officer brings the future of Apple’s project into question, including the progress it has made thus far. Field is Apple’s fourth executive to lead the project in its seven-year history. Other notable manufacturers pursuing autonomous vehicles — including Tesla, Alphabet’s Waymo and Uber Technologies — have had a difficult time advancing the technology. Read more

U.S. District judge Leonie Brinkema just ruled that an artificial intelligence-enabled computer cannot be listed as an inventor on patents and that only humans can be inventors under U.S. law. That’s because, according to Federal law, an “individual” must take an oath that he/she is the inventor and the term “individual” is legally defined as a natural person. The ruling was in response to University of Surrey law professor Ryan Abbott’s effort, the Artificial Inventor Project, to get a computer listed as an inventor. Read more

The chip shortage has highlighted the role of substrates that connect chips to circuit boards and the companies that make them. Substrate manufacturing offers low profit margins, so investment in this sector has also been low. Now, the lack of substrates has added to the problems of churning out enough chips to serve the global market. Substrates — panels of resin embedded with wiring onto which chips are affixed — connects the die at the heart of a chip to the motherboard, delivering power and data. Read more