Daily Tech & GNSS News Digest - April 15, 2026

Semiconductor earnings dominated headlines today as ASML delivered a beat-and-raise quarter only to see its stock slide on tightening China export curbs, while Nvidia’s Jensen Huang used the Mythos moment to push for US-China AI cooperation. In GNSS, the Pentagon edged closer to pulling the plug on its troubled $8 billion GPS ground control program.

Tech News

ASML Beats Q1 Estimates but Stock Sinks on China Restrictions

ASML reported first-quarter net sales of €8.8 billion ($10.4 billion), topping the €8.5 billion consensus, and raised its full-year 2026 revenue forecast to €36–40 billion, up from prior guidance of €34–39 billion. Net profit came in at €2.8 billion, also above expectations, as memory chips accounted for 51% of new tool sales — up from 30% in Q4 2025 — driven by Samsung and SK Hynix ramping capacity for AI workloads.

Yet shares fell roughly 6% after a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers proposed a bill that would cut off ASML’s sale of DUV lithography machines to Chinese chipmakers. System sales to China already dropped to 19% of revenue in Q1, down from 36% in the December quarter. CEO Christophe Fouquet acknowledged the guidance range was sized to accommodate “potential outcomes of ongoing discussions around export controls.”

Nvidia’s Huang Calls for US-China AI Dialogue After Mythos

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Anthropic’s Mythos breakthrough underscores the need for greater AI cooperation between the United States and China. In an interview on the Dwarkesh Podcast, Huang argued that researchers in both countries should “agree on what not to use the AI for,” adding that “having a research dialogue is probably the safest thing to do.”

The comments come as Bloomberg columnist Parmy Olson warned that Mythos is a wake-up call far beyond Wall Street. The UK’s AI Security Institute found that while Mythos is most dangerous for “weakly defended” systems — putting small and medium-sized businesses at greatest risk — it can also “chain” software bugs into multi-step attacks, a capability previously limited to elite human hackers.

TSMC Earnings in Focus Ahead of Tomorrow’s Report

All eyes turn to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, which reports full Q1 2026 results on April 16. The company already disclosed quarterly revenue of roughly $35.7 billion, up 35% year over year, with March alone surging 45%. Analysts expect earnings per share of $3.30, representing growth exceeding 50% versus the year-ago quarter, powered by ramping demand for AI inference chips and the commercial rollout of TSMC’s 2-nanometer process node.

TSMC’s 2nm production began in January 2026 at Fabs 20 and 22, and Aletheia Capital has issued a street-leading price target of $600. The stock carries a unanimous Strong Buy consensus.

Additional Headlines

Asian AI stocks rebound: Taiwan and South Korea equities drew a combined $7.9 billion in net foreign buying last week as Middle East tensions eased, snapping more than a month of outflows.
China battery controls hit India: Beijing’s tightening of export controls on key battery-making technology is complicating Reliance Industries’ planned $1.1 billion battery plant, Bloomberg reports.
Kuka eyes US and Asia: German-Chinese robotics maker Kuka SE says many European industrial firms are too slow to adopt AI and is shifting its growth focus to the United States and Asia.

GNSS News

Pentagon Moves to Shelve $8 Billion GPS Ground Control System

The U.S. Space Force is moving to effectively cancel its long-troubled GPS OCX (Next-Generation Operational Control System) contract with RTX, GPS World and multiple defense outlets report. Originally awarded to Raytheon in 2010 with a $3.7 billion budget and a 2016 delivery target, total program costs had ballooned to $7.6 billion by late 2023, with software defects requiring “substantially more time than planned to resolve.”

RTX’s primary contract option expired on March 31, 2026, and rather than extend it, the Space Force has awarded Lockheed Martin a contract to manage ground control operations for GPS IIIF satellites using the existing Architecture Evolution Plan (AEP) system — an institutional admission that OCX cannot do the job it was built to do. The decision leaves the military’s anti-jam M-Code signal capability in limbo, as OCX was designed to be the system that fully operationalized it.

NRL Launches GNSS Ionospheric Sensor Into Orbit

The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory successfully launched the GNSS Orbiting Situational Awareness Sensor (GOSAS) aboard the Space Test Program’s STPSat-7 mission on April 7 from Vandenberg Space Force Base. The CubeSat-compatible, programmable dual GPS receiver will characterize the orbital GNSS environment and generate ionospheric space weather products directly relevant to GPS accuracy and integrity.

GOSAS is a direct follow-on to NRL’s GROUP-C experiment, which operated aboard the International Space Station from 2017 to 2023. The sensor is designed to improve navigation and communication reliability by monitoring conditions that affect space-based GNSS signals in real time.

Key Takeaways

China curbs reshape the chip supply chain: ASML’s strong earnings couldn’t outrun the geopolitical overhang — with China sales nearly halving and new legislation looming, the semiconductor industry’s decoupling is accelerating faster than revenue can compensate.
Mythos shifts AI governance beyond finance: Huang’s call for US-China dialogue and the UK’s finding that SMBs face the greatest risk signal that Mythos is reframing AI safety as a whole-of-economy challenge, not just a Wall Street problem.
GPS modernization hits a wall: The Pentagon’s quiet pivot away from OCX after $8 billion and 16 years of delays is one of the largest defense procurement failures in recent memory — and leaves critical anti-jam capabilities undelivered during active conflict zones.