A crunchy week for chipmakers
FT News Briefing
Forhecz Topher
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 6 February 2026
⏱️ 13 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Amazon’s new AI spending blitz sent shares tumbling, chipmakers got swept up in a wider tech equities sell-off, Sir Keir Starmer has apologised to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein for appointing Peter Mandelson as Britain’s ambassador to the US, and American snack companies are lowering prices ahead of the Super Bowl. Plus, can Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi win this weekend’s election on star power alone?
Mentioned in this podcast:
Amazon stock slumps as it prepares $200bn AI spending blitz
Arm CEO says AI software sell-off is ‘micro-hysteria’
Nvidia AI chip sales to China stalled by US security review
Keir Starmer apologises to victims of Jeffrey Epstein
Food and drink companies suffer as US shopper sentiment sinks
Can Sanae Takaichi govern Japan on star power alone?
Note: The FT does not use generative AI to voice its podcasts
Today’s FT News Briefing was hosted and edited by Marc Filippino, and produced by Victoria Craig and Sonja Hutson. Our show was mixed by Kelly Garry. Additional help from Michael Lello. Our executive producer is Topher Forhecz. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s Global Head of Audio. The show’s theme music is by Metaphor Music.
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Friday, February 6th, and this is your FT News briefing. |
| 0:08.8 | Amazon's capital expenditure plans are giving investors the jitters, and then the rest of the show is all that and a bag of chips. |
| 0:15.8 | We'll take a look at America's snacking industry and why semiconductor chip makers had such a bad week. |
| 0:22.6 | I'm Mark Filipino, and here's the news you need to start your day. |
| 0:29.6 | Investors were not happy with Amazon. |
| 0:36.6 | The company's shares fell as much as double digits in |
| 0:39.7 | after hours trading yesterday. The sell-off happened after Amazon announced plans to spend |
| 0:44.5 | $200 billion on capital expenditure this year. That's roughly a third more than what Wall Street |
| 0:50.7 | was expecting, and it comes as the tech giant increases its bet on artificial |
| 0:55.0 | intelligence. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told investors the spending was justified for two reasons. |
| 1:01.7 | One, there's strong demand for existing services, and two, the company has plans to expand |
| 1:06.5 | products like its Leo satellite internet network. But just to put it into context, Amazon's funding commitment is way more than what its rivals, |
| 1:15.3 | like Google and Microsoft are spending. |
| 1:23.7 | U.S. tech stocks have fallen for three days in a row now. The NASDAQ composite is on track for its worst week since November. |
| 1:32.5 | Software stocks and chipmakers have been hit particularly hard over the past few days. So today, |
| 1:37.5 | we're going to hone in on how chipmakers are faring. Just a quick recap, in addition to getting caught up in the wider sell-off, Arm, AMD, and Qualcomm put out some disappointing earnings results. |
| 1:48.2 | And the FT reported that sales of NVIDIA's H-200 AI chips to China are still awaiting final approval from Washington. |
| 1:55.6 | Here to tell us more is the FTs Michael Acton in San Francisco. |
| 1:58.7 | Hi, Michael. |
| 1:59.5 | Hi, Mike. |
| 2:00.4 | Okay, so I just threw a lot out there. |
| 2:02.3 | Let's start with Nvidia and these H200 chips. So in December, there was this huge breakthrough. |
... |
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