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1.	SoftBank to Buy $2 Billion of Intel Shares By Anissa Gardizy Source: The Information

SoftBank plans to buy $2 billion of Intel stock, the companies announced on Monday, just as the Trump administration is considering taking a roughly 10% stake in the beleaguered chip giant, worth around $10.5 billion. Intel shares rose 5% in after-hours trading following the SoftBank announcement.

SoftBank has become one of the largest funders of AI chips and data centers in the U.S. It is helping to fund a potential $500 billion worth of data centers with OpenAI, dubbed Stargate, and it has an ownership stake in chip design firm Arm Holdings. SoftBank has also announced its plans to buy chip firm Ampere Computing.

Intel has been struggling to secure a major customer for its chip manufacturing business.

2.	OpenAI Launches Cheaper Subscription Tier for Indian Users By Wayne Ma Source: The Information

OpenAI has launched a special subscription tier for Indian users for 399 rupees ($4.60) a month, confirming The Information’s earlier reporting.

The new tier, called ChatGPT Go, gives Indian users higher message limits, image generations, uploads and memory, OpenAI Chief Product Officer Kevin Weil said on X on Monday. However, it doesn’t offer as many features as ChatGPT Plus, the more premium version of the chatbot that costs $20 a month.

In March, The Information reported that OpenAI leaders had told some employees that the company might charge customers in India only several dollars a month to subscribe to a premium version of the AI chatbot. India is OpenAI’s second biggest market by users and growth in the South Asian country is vital to the company’s goal of reaching 1 billion daily active users by the end of this year.

Until now, OpenAI likely didn’t generate much revenue from paid subscribers in India because the $20 monthly subscription was high relative to the median monthly salary of India’s users.

3.	Google Increases Stake in Data Center Provider TeraWulf By Anissa Gardizy Source: The Information

Google is increasing its stake in TeraWulf, a bitcoin miner that is pivoting to artificial intelligence data centers.

Google had already agreed to help finance a TeraWulf data center in New York as a “backstop.” TeraWulf said Monday that cloud computing startup Fluidstack agreed to run the facility and expand the number of servers it plans to manage. The expansion means Google’s backstop commitment roughly doubled to $3.2 billion, and its stake in TeraWulf, in the form of warrants that give it the right to buy 14% of its shares, up from 8% of shares in a deal announced last week.

TeraWulf’s stock rose 12% on Monday after rising 60% last week on the earlier deal. Google still has not disclosed whether it will rent servers from the facility, but it is one of the biggest AI developers and cloud providers, and it recently said demand for such servers is outstripping capacity.

4.	Trump Administration In Talks To Take 10% Stake in Intel By Valida Pau Source: Bloomberg

The Trump administration is considering taking a roughly 10% stake in Intel, a move that could make the US government the troubled chipmaker’s largest shareholder, Bloomberg reported Monday.

A 10% stake would be worth about $10.5 billion at Intel’s current market value. The potential deal could involve converting up to $10.9 billion grants that Intel would receive in the Chips and Science Act grants into equity. The money was slated for both commercial and military chip production.

Shares of Intel have fallen nearly 4% on the news after jumping more than 20% last week following reports of a meeting between President Donald Trump and CEO Lip-Bu Tan and the White House investment.

5.	BNY, Goldman Eye Managing Reserves for Stablecoin Issuers By Yueqi Yang Source: The Information

BNY and Goldman Sachs are aiming to manage reserve assets for stablecoin issuers, the latest move by banks to serve the sector following the passage last month of U.S. stablecoin legislation.

BNY filed on Monday seeking SEC approval to launch a fund, called “BNY Dreyfus Stablecoin Reserve Funds,” that’s intended to be held by stablecoin issuers as reserves backing their stablecoins. The fund plans to invest only in assets, such as Treasury bills, cash and repo, that were approved under the Genius Act.

Goldman also filed for a similar fund, called “Stablecoin Reserves Fund,” this month. Shares of the fund are expected to be held primarily by “one or more stablecoin issuers as all or a portion of the reserve assets that back the stablecoins,” the filing says.

The giant pool of assets underlying stablecoins are appealing for asset managers and banks. The stablecoin reserve funds are akin to the money market funds the banks’ already run, making it cheap and easy for them to offer the funds to back stablecoins. The biggest stablecoin issuers, Tether and Circle, currently have $167 billion and $68 billion in their outstanding stablecoins, respectively.

Having big banks manage the underlying assets could also help stablecoin issuers boost investor confidence. BlackRock already provides such services for Circle, the issuer of USDC, through its “Circle Reserve Fund,” which makes up about 85% of Circle’s stablecoin reserves. Tether has said its stablecoin reserves are managed by Cantor Fitzgerald.