Stocks were on course for a banner day amid signs of progress on inflation. The Dow rose 700 points, and the Nasdaq jumped 2%. Fresh inflation data looks to keep the Fed on hold this month — but it should curb any talk of potential rate hikes, experts say.

Intel's shares have risen by almost 9% after rumors of a possible acquisition surfaced, based on an email that suggested a well-funded company might be interested in a full takeover.

Qualcomm launched its first Arm-based PC CPUs last year, and although they haven't exactly been a smash hit, partly because of compatibility problems, Arm-based PC are likely to be here to stay. Qualcomm is now seemingly looking to re-enter the server CPU market with new chips.

Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSM) edged lower in mid-day trade on Friday after a surge in pre-market session, while other semiconductor stocks headed higher. However, according to a report by TheFly,

Intel (INTC) is climbing 8% today based on a report of a company potentially being interested in acquiring the chipmaker. News website SemiAccurate today reported that “about two months ago” it “was read an email about a company trying to acquire (all of) Intel.

Qualcomm has rounded up its lineup of AI-powered Snapdragon X series chips with its announcement of the Snapdragon X, making Copilot+ PCs more affordable. Today, the company showed off the performance of its CPUs compared to Intel Lunar Lake devices, and there's a huge difference in performance.

Sailesh Kottapalli, a 28-year Intel veteran and a senior fellow and chief architect for the company’s Xeon processors, made the announcement on LinkedIn on January 13, stating that he joined Qualcomm as a senior vice president.

Intel Corp. shares jumped as much as 9.5% Friday morning after a report on a technology news site said the beleaguered chipmaker is an acquisition target.

In 2022, it was reported that Qualcomm had approached cloud and data center companies about testing an Arm chip for the server market. The chip was built by Nuvia, a company Qualcomm acquired for $1.4 billion the previous year.

Former Intel Xeon chief architect Sailesh Kottapalli said he has joined Qualcomm as the chip designer builds out a team to enter the data center CPU market.

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon says the company will be targeting high-performance PCs and is looking at the graphics space.