Plus: President Trump announces a new deal between Apple and Intel. And AI-infrastructure startup Baseten to raise $1.5 billion. Imani Moise hosts.
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[00:00:16] [SPEAKER_01] Here's your Morning TNB Tech Minute for Thursday, June 18th. I'm Imani Moise for The Wall Street Journal. We exclusively report that Apple plans to raise device prices because of soaring costs for memory and storage chips. CEO Tim Cook told us that skyrocketing demand from AI companies has quadrupled the cost of chips, making consumer price hikes unavoidable.
[00:00:39] [SPEAKER_01] Analysts estimate that Apple would need to add about $270 to the price of the next iPhone Pro model in order to keep its profit margin steady. Morgan Stanley estimates smartphone and computer prices across the U.S. will increase by 15% this year. Intel stock got a boost this morning after President Trump said in a Truth Social post that Apple has agreed to work with Intel to design and build chips in the U.S. Spokespeople for Intel and Apple didn't respond to a request for comment.
[00:01:06] [SPEAKER_01] Since the federal government announced a 10% stake in Intel last August, the company's shares have surged fourfold. Over the past year, Commerce Secretary Howard Letnick has met with leaders at Apple, SpaceX and NVIDIA to try and convince them to go into business with Intel. With the Apple deal, Intel has now signed partnerships with all three.
[00:01:25] [SPEAKER_01] And in another exclusive, we report that Base 10, an AI infrastructure startup, is raising $1.5 billion to meet demand for cheaper alternatives to AI models from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. Base 10 says some investors are putting in money at an $11 billion valuation and others at $13 billion. The company helps businesses run open-source AI models by providing the computing power and software needed to deploy them at scale. And that's your TNB Tech Minute. We'll be back this afternoon with more.
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