Good morning, tech enthusiasts. Apple CEO Tim Cook just told The Wall Street Journal that price increases are unavoidable, as AI's appetite for memory drives chip costs higher.
He didn't say which products or when. If even Apple can't absorb the hit, how much more will your next phone or laptop cost?
In today's recap:
Tim Cook warns Apple price hikes are coming
Hackers compromise about 75,000 Fortinet devices
Trump says Apple will make chips with Intel
APPLE
Apple says price increases are now unavoidable
Source: The Verge
Recaply: Apple CEO Tim Cook just told The Wall Street Journal that price increases are unavoidable as memory costs soar. He says Apple has tried to shield customers, but the situation has become unsustainable.
Key details:
AI data centers are soaking up memory, and suppliers are shifting more output to high-bandwidth memory for AI servers. Cook says that leaves less supply for consumer devices, with DRAM a particular worry.
Apple already raised the Mac Mini's starting price to $799 after dropping the $599 model. The WSJ estimates the iPhone 18 Pro could cost $1,299, up from $1,099 for the iPhone 17 Pro.
Cook told the WSJ that Apple is willing to use its balance sheet to help boost memory supply, Reuters reported. He ruled out building Apple's own memory factories.
Cook, who hands the CEO job to John Ternus in September, didn't say when prices will rise or which products will change. Apple's next iPhones are due later this year.
Why it matters: Apple has tried to absorb rising memory costs, and Cook now says that's no longer possible. Game consoles, laptops and other devices have already gotten pricier during the shortage. Apple's move suggests the AI boom's demand for memory is reaching everyday buyers. Cook says pricing and supply need to return to reasonable levels for consumer products.
FORTINET
Hacking campaign hits 75,000 Fortinet firewalls and VPNs
Source: Hudson Rock
Recaply: Researchers just uncovered a hacking campaign that compromised about 75,000 Fortinet firewall and VPN devices, Hudson Rock says. There's evidence of password theft at Fortune 500 companies and government agencies in more than 15 countries.
Key details:
Hackers used data from earlier incidents and guessed passwords over and over, a technique called bruteforcing, Fortinet says. Stolen logins could let them move deeper into networks and steal data.
Most affected devices are in the US, India and Taiwan, per Hudson Rock. Nearly 120 credentials from five government entities in Puerto Rico were swept up too.
Hudson Rock says the attackers made an estimated 1.16 billion login attempts against over 320,000 FortiGate targets. They cracked VPN password hashes on a dedicated 45-GPU cluster.
Hudson Rock published its findings Wednesday, after researcher Bob Diachenko found the data on an open server. Russian-language scripts in it suggest a Russian cybercrime group may be behind it.
Why it matters: Firewalls and VPNs are the front door to company networks, so stolen admin logins are especially dangerous. Fortinet says the activity isn't tied to any recent incident or advisory. Hudson Rock calls the scale "staggering" and urges teams to rotate passwords, turn on MFA and keep management interfaces off the internet.
INTEL
Trump says Apple will build chips with Intel
Source: Reuters
Recaply: President Trump just said Apple has agreed to work with Intel to design and build its chips in the US. Neither company commented right away, and Trump didn't say which chips are involved.
Key details:
An Apple contract would give Intel steady demand as it tries to close the gap with TSMC. Apple would gain extra chip capacity while TSMC is stretched by AI chipmakers like Nvidia.
Intel shares rose 7% to a record on the news, adding to a threefold gain this year. The US government owns a 10% stake in Intel.
Trump posted that "stupid Presidents" let Taiwan and others "steal our Semiconductor Factories," CNBC reported. Intel's stock has surged 464% in the past 12 months.
Intel supplied Mac processors for about 15 years until 2020, when Apple switched to its own M-series chips built by TSMC. The WSJ reported a preliminary Apple-Intel deal in May.
Why it matters: A deal would be a major boost for Intel's turnaround and its chipmaking business, which has long waited for a big outside customer. For Apple, it means less reliance on TSMC alone. It also fits the Trump administration's push to secure chip supply chains at home, including taking stakes in companies. Until either company confirms it, the details stay unclear.
NEWS
Beyond the big stories in tech today
SK Hynix shipped samples of its 12-layer HBM4E memory chips to major customers. The chips reach up to 16 gigabits per second per pin with over 20% better power efficiency. SK Hynix is Nvidia's main HBM supplier.
AMD's consumer Ryzen chips lost a memory encryption feature called TSME after firmware update AGESA 1.2.7.0, Ars Technica reported. AMD would only say TSME "is a security feature only applied to PRO CPUs," without explaining the change.
Telegram asked the Delhi High Court to quash India's block on the app, which runs until June 22, calling it a threat to free speech. India's solicitor general said the government had repeatedly asked Telegram to fix its systems.
JPMorgan stopped its Hong Kong staff from using Anthropic's AI models, the Financial Times reported. The wording of Anthropic's usage terms prompted the move, and Goldman Sachs made a similar call in April.
Valve released SteamOS 3.8.10 to all users, the first stable update since 3.7. It adds initial support for upcoming Steam Machine hardware. It also improves third-party handhelds like the Legion Go 2 and ROG Xbox Ally.
Australia's ACMA set new rules requiring organizations to register branded sender IDs, the names shown at the top of texts, from July 1. Texts from unregistered ones may show as "Unverified," helping people spot scams that impersonate brands.
BESI raised its long-term revenue target to between €1.7 billion and €2.2 billion, citing data center and photonics demand. It also lifted the low end of its margin target to 45%. ING called the increase largely anticipated.
Snap debuted its $2,195 Specs AR glasses, and The Verge's Victoria Song asks whether anyone can look cool in them. The 47mm version weighs 132 grams, nearly twice the 69-gram Meta Ray-Ban Display.
Vodafone Australia said an outage at one of its network hubs caused intermittent problems, with more than 8,000 customers reporting issues on Downdetector. Most services are back, though some devices may still have trouble reconnecting.
Jeff Bezos told VivaTech in Paris that AI will create a labor shortage, not make humans redundant. His comments come as US employers announced 97,006 job cuts in May, with AI linked to 40%, per Challenger.
Huawei lost a bid to keep CFO Meng Wanzhou's admission out of its upcoming US criminal trial, a Brooklyn judge ruled. Meng admitted Huawei illegally did business in Iran as part of a 2021 deal to drop her charges.
Meta product leader Emily Dalton Smith is leaving, about two months after taking charge of product work on internal AI tools. Meta's AI overhaul, which cut 10% of staff, has drawn open criticism from employees.
The x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group published its AI Compute Extensions (ACE) spec for x86 chips. ACE adds tile registers and matrix multiplication instructions that work alongside AVX, aimed at reduced-precision formats used in machine learning.
China's 618 shopping festival is drawing to a subdued close amid weak consumer confidence and a government push against heavy discounting. Platforms are also using it to test AI shopping tools, like Alibaba's Qwen agent on Taobao.
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