Daily Tech & GNSS News Digest - January 23, 2026

Intel’s turnaround efforts hit a wall with manufacturing setbacks, while a major Microsoft outage disrupted businesses worldwide. The Nvidia-China chip saga took another twist, and in the positioning world, Trimble is bringing centimeter-level accuracy to luxury EVs while TrustPoint advances GPS-independent navigation.

Tech News

Intel Tumbles 16% as Manufacturing Snags Derail Comeback

Intel shares plunged 16% on Thursday after CEO Lip-Bu Tan delivered a disappointing forecast and warned of ongoing manufacturing challenges. First-quarter projections for both revenue and earnings fell well short of Wall Street estimates, sending the stock into its steepest single-day decline in months.

“It will take time and resolve to turn around the company,” Tan told analysts, acknowledging that production snags have hampered Intel’s carefully planned comeback. The setback is particularly painful given Intel’s remarkable 147% stock gain over the past 12 months, fueled by major investments from the U.S. government, Nvidia, and SoftBank.

Intel had shown promising signs at CES earlier this month, officially launching its Core Ultra Series 3 chips built on the new 18A manufacturing process. Tan had even boasted that the 18A node “over-delivered” in 2024. But analysts remain skeptical of Intel’s ability to translate CPU innovation into AI workload growth dominated by GPUs.

Microsoft 365 Outage Cripples Millions for 8 Hours

Microsoft’s productivity suite experienced a widespread outage on Thursday, leaving millions unable to access Outlook, Teams, and other Microsoft 365 services for over eight hours. The disruption began around 11:37 a.m. Pacific time, with complaints peaking at 16,000 reports for Microsoft 365 and 12,000 for Outlook alone.

Users encountered the dreaded “451 4.3.2 temporary server issue” error when attempting to send or receive emails. The outage extended beyond email to affect OneDrive, SharePoint, and Microsoft Defender. Microsoft blamed “a portion of service infrastructure in North America that is not processing traffic as expected.”

By 4:14 p.m. ET, Microsoft announced it had restored affected infrastructure to a healthy state, with full resolution confirmed around 1:30 a.m. Eastern. The incident follows a brief outage on January 21 caused by a third-party networking issue—raising questions about Microsoft’s infrastructure resilience as AI workloads surge.

Nvidia-China Chip Deal Faces Fresh Complications

The Nvidia-China H200 saga took another turn this week. While the Trump administration cleared a path for Nvidia to sell its H200 AI chips to China via revised export rules, Chinese authorities reportedly instructed customs agents to restrict imports and told domestic tech firms to avoid purchasing the chips unless necessary.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has described demand in China as “very high,” with Chinese companies reportedly placing orders for more than 2 million H200 GPUs in 2026. The company is preparing to ship up to 80,000 units before the Lunar New Year, subject to a new 25% tariff on AI semiconductors passing through the U.S. before export.

The market opportunity is significant—Huang has previously valued the China AI chip market at $50 billion annually. However, restrictions prohibit use in government agencies, military applications, and critical infrastructure, limiting the addressable market.

Additional Headlines

Stargate Project expands: OpenAI and SoftBank finalized a $1 billion investment into SB Energy for a 1.2-gigawatt solar-plus-storage site in Texas, part of the $500 billion AI infrastructure initiative now spanning six data center locations.
India’s semiconductor pivot: At VLSID 2026 in Pune, India unveiled a “product-led” semiconductor roadmap targeting global leadership by 2030, with Tata Electronics’ mega-fab in Dholera set for “First Silicon” production by December 2026.
Under Armour data breach: The company is investigating claims that customer data was accessed and posted online after a cybercriminal advertised records on a hacker forum.

GNSS News

Trimble Brings Centimeter-Level Accuracy to Lucid Gravity EVs

Trimble announced that its RTX and ProPoint Go positioning technologies will power Lucid Gravity’s navigation and driver-assistance systems, marking a significant step for precision GNSS in consumer vehicles. The system enables centimeter-level accuracy even in tunnels, parking garages, and dense urban areas where standard GPS often fails.

The solution combines Trimble’s satellite correction data with six-axis inertial sensor inputs to improve vehicle location estimates and support lane-level positioning. Unlike traditional GNSS that struggles with multipath interference in urban canyons, the integrated approach maintains positioning continuity through challenging environments.

The Trimble positioning solution will be standard on new Lucid Gravity vehicles starting in late January 2026, with existing vehicles receiving the capabilities through over-the-air software updates. The partnership reflects growing demand for high-precision positioning in automotive applications, driven by advanced driver assistance systems and the path toward autonomy.

TrustPoint announced the first successful demonstration of its Low Earth Orbit Navigation System (LEONS), transmitting time-transfer and tracking signals from a ground node to an orbiting spacecraft. The milestone advances commercial GPS-independent positioning as part of the SpaceWERX AltPNT Challenge.

The LEO PNT landscape is expanding rapidly, with more than ten entities working toward dedicated PNT constellations totaling over 2,500 planned satellites. Five companies have already launched more than 50 LEO PNT satellites collectively. These systems aim for 200-300 satellites each—roughly 10 times the number of MEO GNSS satellites needed for equivalent global coverage.

Emerging demonstrations have achieved sub-2-nanosecond timing precision, outperforming current GNSS benchmarks. As GNSS jamming and spoofing incidents multiply—with nearly 123,000 commercial flights disrupted in Europe in early 2025—LEO-based positioning offers a fundamentally different signal source that cannot be compromised in the same ways.

Key Takeaways

Intel’s turnaround stalls: Manufacturing snags sent shares tumbling 16%, reminding investors that process node leadership remains elusive despite promising chip launches.
Infrastructure reliability matters: Microsoft’s 8-hour outage affected millions, highlighting the risks as enterprises become increasingly dependent on cloud productivity tools.
Precision positioning goes mainstream: Trimble’s integration with Lucid Gravity shows centimeter-level GNSS accuracy moving from industrial applications to consumer vehicles.