Tech Brew Ride Home - China’s EUV Machine?

Episode Date: December 18, 2025

Has China cracked a major puzzle for chip parity? Trump Media merges with a… Fusion Energy startup? Coinbase continues its efforts to let you trade everything. OpenAI is turning on the fundraising afterburners. And how to catch a North Korean IT infiltrator. China may have reverse engineered EUV lithography tool in covert lab, report claims — employees given fake IDs to avoid secret project being detected, prototypes expected in 2028 (Tom's Hardware) Trump media group agrees $6bn merger with Google-backed fusion energy company (FT) Coinbase adds prediction markets and stock trading in push to be one-stop trading app (CNBC) OpenAI Has Discussed Raising Tens of Billions at Valuation Around $750 Billion (The Information) Amazon Caught North Korean IT Worker By Tracing Keystroke Data (Bloomberg) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Google Fi Wireless is not subject to data traffic deprioritization during times of high network usage. Welcome to the Tech Brew Ride Home for Thursday, December 18th, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough. Today has China cracked a major puzzle for chip parity? Trump Media merges with a fusion energy startup. Coinbase continues its efforts to let you trade everything. Open AI is turning on the fundraising afterburners and how to catch a North Korean IT infiltrator. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. You may have noticed that your CRM system has become crazy with bots and agents of late at the TechBrew home we love AI, but not when it's used to commit fraud or launch ransomware. Fortunately, Momoto, the creator of continuous verification, now offers the next generation

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To learn more, head to mimoto.aI slash ride home. That's mimoto.com. One of the things that has been holding back China's homegrown AI efforts has obviously been the latest cutting edge chips, but one of the reasons they don't have access to cutting edge chips is basically because ASML has a global monopoly on cutting-edge lithography technology that enables the production of those ships. Well, sources say China built a working prototype of an EUV machine in early 2025 with a team of former ASML engineers who reverse engineered the company's EUV machines. Quoting Tom's hardware. A secret laboratory in China has quietly assembled a prototype

extreme ultraviolet lithography system and is now testing it stealthily, which means that the country may be close to replicating the most advanced technology that currently exist on Earth, reports Reuters. The tool was reportedly developed by reverse engineering existing scanners from ASML and is said to be on track to make prototype chips in 2008. If the information is correct, then Chinese scientists have made numerous breakthroughs across multiple disciplines in just a few years instead of decades, a scenario that appears extremely unlikely. Further analysis of the report indicates that China's laboratory is far from completing the tool, meaning that the country is years away from making chips using EUV lithography. The system was reportedly completed in early 2025 inside a highly

secured facility and occupies nearly an entire factory floor. The Chinese machine reportedly generates EUV light with a wavelength of 13 and a half nanometers using the same laser-produced plasma or LPP method as ASML twin scan NXC machines, not the particle accelerator-based steady-state micro-bunching or SSMB method designed at Tishinga University or Discharge-produced plasma DPP technology developed at Harbin Institute of Technology, which might prove the point that the system was reversed engineered or at least contains a substantial amount of technologies pioneered by ASML. The machine is reportedly larger than the original, but it is operational in the sense that it can generate EUV radiation. However, it has not progressed to make usable chips

as it still struggles to replicate the precision optical systems featured by twin-scan NXC systems. Furthermore, there is no word about the power of the EUV light source, a critical parameter that defines whether a tool can or cannot be used for volume production. The report clearly states that the Chinese EUV scanner cannot currently be used to make chips, but the Chinese government reportedly wants the first chip prototypes to emerge in 2028, two or three years down the road. However, a more realistic target is 2030, four or five years from. now, which is a long time. Meanwhile, from the report, it is not completely clear what stage the

Chinese team is at today. The report does not disclose which specific components of the optical system are the primary bottlenecks, as the article groups them rather generally. In particular, it is uncertain if the alleged EUV tool struggles to replicate the ultra-precise collector mirror system coated with multi-layer, I can't pronounce that word, stacks, illuminator optics, which shapes and uniforms the beam using faceted mirrors, or projection optics, a series of Assyphoric mirrors for 4x to 8x reduction imaging with non-anometer wavefront errors. ASML outsources the development and production of these components to Karl Zeiss from Germany. If the developers failed to replicate the collector itself,

then the rest of the machine can hardly be called an EUV lithography system, as technically the only thing they have is some kind of light source that they have yet to learn how to use. Yet even if the developers cannot replicate illuminator optics or projection optics, suggesting that the collector itself is there, it still means they do not have even a poorly working EUV lithography tool, but rather a set of certain components. According to Reuters' sources familiar with the effort, the Chinese EUV tool was developed by a team that includes former engineers from ASML and recent university graduates who allegedly reverse engineered the company's EUV machines. The Secret Lab was so stealthy that its employees were given fake IDs

to avoid detection of their concentration in one place by foreign spies. Yet is unclear how any engineers from China could reverse engineer an EUV lithography scanner, as the Dutch company has never supplied one to China and hardly taught personnel from China how to service its EUV systems that are not allowed to be shipped to the People's Republic. Reverts engineering, a machine that contains over 100,000 parts is a hard task that takes hundreds of engineers with knowledge of the matter, which is why the secret entity led by the government of China hired not only former engineers from ASML China, but also former employees of the Dutch company from elsewhere, presumably from Europe, Taiwan, and the U.S. For example, Lin-NAN, formerly responsible for EUV light source technology at ASML now leads a team at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Shanghai Institute of Optics that has filed eight EUV-related patents in just 18 months.

Yet this may mean that he uses his experience and knowledge rather than trying to replicate what he did at ASML or reverse engineer what he did at ASML due to the absence of an EUV scanner in his lab. The report says around 100 recent university graduates are tasked with reverse engineering parts from EUV and DUV lithography tools with each workplace monitored by a dedicated camera that records the disassembly and reassembly process. Employees who successfully put components back together receive bonuses. Yet again, a twin-scan NXE tool is a mechanism consisting of over 100,000 parts working together, not just a sum of all parts, end quote. Trump Media has agreed to merge with Google-backed Fusion Energy Company T.A.E. in a $6 billion deal to build the world's first utility scale fusion power plant in 2026, quoting the F.T. The All-Stock deal will merge Trump Media and Technology Group's access to capital with T.A.E's fusion technology in an effort to meet the soaring power demands of AI. The two groups said on Thursday, the unusual deal highlights the changing nature of dealmaking

in America under U.S. President Donald Trump. It brings together two industries rarely seen at the same table. Trump Media built on right-leaning online politics and a Google-backed fusion company rooted in Silicon Valley's long bet on breakthrough energy tech. The combined group plans to start construction in 26 on what they described as the world's first utility scale fusion power plant. They initially plan a 50 megawatts facility and later up to 500 megawatts. Trump in May signed four executive orders aimed at reinvigorating the U.S. nuclear reactor construction. The order has propelled U.S. nuclear energy stocks to record highs as investors hope to profit from a construction boom. Some people involved in the transaction are presenting the merger as expediting TAE technology's ability

to develop its fusion power technologies given TMTG's political connections, according to a person briefed on the deal. TMTG, quote, thinks this company has the killer fusion technology, said the person. TA.E. has raised about $1.3 billion from investors, including Google and Chevron, amid growing interest from technology groups seeking long-term carbon-free power for energy-intensive uses, such as data centers. Shareholders of the two companies will each own 50% of the new combined group. Shares in TMTG, which is controlled by U.S. President Donald Trump's family, rose as much as 37 and a half percent in pre-market trading following the announcement, giving the group an implied market valuation of around $3 billion. However, shares in TMTG, which went public via a special-purpose

acquisition company in March 2024 are still down nearly 70% over the past year. In December, TAE Technologies announced a joint venture with the UK Atomic Energy Authority to commercialize elements of its fusion technology for both fusion and non-energy uses, including medical applications, backed by a 5.6 million pound equity contribution from the UK government's atomic laboratory. The Oxfordshire-based venture aims to deliver its first such products by 2027. At the time, UK business secretary Peter Kyle said the deal underscored the country's position at the heart of the international fusion supply chain. This landmark partnership shows our technology prosperity deal with the U.S. in action and demonstrates our shared

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At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. Coinbase is rolling out stock trading, more advanced trading tools, prediction markets via Kalshi, and a whole bunch of other features amid a push to become a one-stop financial app. Quoting CNBC, while many of these offerings have been telegraphed for months, Coinbase says the products are now built and ready to go. CEO Brian Armstrong is looking to make his platform the place to trade everything. That includes stocks, a streamlined futures and perpetuals experience,

and prediction markets through Kalshi alongside. a tokenization roadmap aimed at eventually bringing more traditional assets on chain, including equities. The area of prediction markets in particular is quickly getting crowded. Draft Kings has moved to buy its own exchange. Fanduil is teaming up with CME, and Polly Market is entering the U.S. through a newly approved venue. Robin Hood, meanwhile, is putting Ledger X at the center of its regulated push. The defining rivalry in the space remains Kalshi versus Polly Market, regulated rails versus crypto-native liquidity. Armstrong said the category's appeal isn't just trade, but its insight into sentiment and what people think will happen next on any given topic.

If you look at things like economic indicators or elections, people are using prediction markets to try to figure out what is going to happen next month, Armstrong told CNBC. Maybe 1% of people use it as an asset class to trade, and 99% of people are using it as a way to figure out what's going to happen, almost like a competitor to traditional media or maybe even entertainment. Coinbase is pairing the trading explosion with a tokenization roadmap that signals where it wants the platform to go next, bringing more traditional assets on chain, including equities. The company is launching Coinbase tokenize, an institutional stack intended to support real-world

asset tokenization. Armstrong framed the expansion as a bridge to something bigger. Trading stocks, he said, is a good first step, but the real goal is tokenized equities. If Coinbase can get tokenized equity live, he said, it could democratize access for people all over the world and unlock new market structures in the U.S., including more robust professional futures markets tied to equities. So this is the starting point, he said, end quote. The information says OpenAI has held preliminary discussions with investors about raising tens of billions of dollars and as much as $100 billion at evaluation of around $750 billion. Before your ears glaze over, I'm pointing this out because to date, Open AI has only raised

$60 billion lifetime, so this represents them starting to pull out the stops. Quote, it's not clear which investors besides Amazon are considering investing in whether that valuation would include the new money. For a round of that size, Open AI would likely need to tap a mix of strategic investors and sovereign wealth funds. It has already raised funds from the United Arab Emirates MGX and chip giant Nvidia. OpenAI has also talked to Saudi Arabia's giant public investment fund when it was raising money for its $41 billion soft bank led round earlier this year, though OpenAI never disclosed any investment from PIF. The decade-old AI developer can tell that revenue has been growing quickly by last month. It was generating

$19 billion in annualized revenue, putting it on track to hit its goal of $20 billion in annualized revenue by the end of the year. The company is also on track to beat its 2025 total revenue goal of $13 billion up from around $4 billion last year, according to one of the people. That figure should rise to $30 billion next year and around $200 billion by 2030 on increased sales of chat GPT subscriptions and new products which could include advertising. However, the company has forecast it will burn about $26 billion this year and next on route to more than $100 billion in cash burn over the next four years as it spends money on servers and talent to develop and run its AI, end quote. Finally today, chain analysis says that North Korean hackers stole a record $2.02 billion in

crypto in 2025, a 51% year-on-year rise that takes the cumulative stolen, total by North Korea to $6.75 billion in crypto. Individual wallet hacks hit $158,000. But this segment is not about that. It's about how you can catch them. Amazon CSO, Stefan Schmidt, says subtle keystroke data lag measuring 110 milliseconds instead of the expected tens of milliseconds, helped catch a North Korean IT worker, quoting Bloomberg. Keystroke data from the laptop of a worker who was supposed to be in the U.S. should have taken tens of milliseconds to reach Amazon's Seattle headquarters. Instead, the flow from the machine was more than 110 milliseconds, Amazon's chief security officer, Stefan Schmidt, told me. The barely perceptible

lag suggested the worker was half a world away. The person who Schmidt said was hired by an Amazon contractor was part of the surge in recent years of North Koreans skirting strict sanctions by the U.S. and other countries to con their way into remote jobs, often in IT. The purpose is to raise money for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea or DPRK, including for its weapons program. The pattern of impostors has raised legal and security concerns for small businesses and major corporations alike. Since April 2024, Amazon staff have found and foiled more than 1,800 attempts to be hired by North Koreans, Schmidt said during a security event at the company's New York City office this week. This year, the number of such attempts has gone up 27 percent on average from one quarter to the

next, the company says. Amazon didn't hire any North Koreans direct. Exactly, Schmidt told me, but he said the number of times that imposter's tried to get hired by the company and the fact that Amazon shipped a company computer to a contractor who turned out to be a proxy for North Korea should stand as a warning. If we hadn't been looking for the DPRK workers, Schmidt said, we would not have found them. This year, Amazon security staff began looking closely at the systems administrator brought on by the outside firm after monitoring systems on the person's Amazon laptop sent an alert for unusual behavior, Schmidt said. Amazon found the machine was being remotely controlled, he said, and traced the traffic back as far as they could to China.

The machine didn't have access to anything interesting, Schmidt said, so security staff spent some time observing the imposter. When they got the application and resume, the person had submitted to the contractor, what was happening became clear, he said. This looks like somebody who had used the same playbook as other North Koreans that we've seen to get this job, end quote. Nothing more for you today. Talk to you tomorrow. All. Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly Big Board Buckslot machine by Aristocrat Gaming,

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