Amazon Alexa is back online after suffering outages across Europe on Friday, leaving users unable to get responses from their Echo devices.

Users in the UK, France and Germany reported the outages and the website Down Detector also showed there was a spike in reports of problems with Amazon Alexa devices on Friday morning.

The site detected some 8,000 reports of users being locked out of the service. 

The virtual assistant was back online after a two-hour blackout that started around 8 am CET.

“This morning we had an issue that impacted some Alexa customers’ ability to interact with the service,” confirmed an Amazon spokesperson.

“The Alexa service is now operating normally”.

What went wrong?

Many users were left confused on Friday as the gadget would not respond to voice commands or would reply with a message saying that “something went wrong”.

Social media was also ablaze with posts from Alexa owners who were unable to converse with their electronic companions.

UK chipmaker Arm said on Monday it plans to cut up to 15 per cent of its workforce, just over a month after the collapse of the firm’s $40 billion sale (€36 billion) to US giant Nvidia Corp.

Most of the job losses would be in the UK and the United States, the Cambridge-based company said. 

Arm employs close to 6,400 people worldwide.

“Like any business, Arm is continually reviewing its business plan to ensure the company has the right balance between opportunities and cost discipline,” a spokesperson for Arm told Euronews Next in an emailed statement.

“Unfortunately, this process includes proposed redundancies across Arm’s global workforce,” the company added.

The world has been facing a shortage of computer chips ever since sales of electronic devices soared during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Arm’s owner, the Japanese conglomerate Softbank, had planned to sell the firm to Nvidia. But in February, it called off the sale, citing regulatory hurdles and saying it would instead seek to list the company. 

The value of the proposed sale, which depended on Nvidia’s stock price, was originally pegged at about €36 billion but rose with Nvidia’s stock price to about €73 billion late last year.

Intel has unveiled plans for a massive chipmaking site in Germany as part of a planned €80 billion investment in Europe over the next decade.

The US company said the goal is to create “a next-generation European chip ecosystem” and help tackle the ongoing global shortage of semiconductors, which has plagued the continent’s carmaking industry.

With an initial investment of €33 billion, including €17 billion for the German plans, Intel’s spending will help meet surging demand for chips used in computers, cars, smartphones, and other gadgets, as well as reduce in the long run Europe’s reliance on Asian suppliers.

The chipmaker is spreading its investments around half a dozen countries, boosting its existing factory in Ireland, setting up a design and research facility in France, and a packaging and assembly site in Italy.

Last month, the European Commission set out plans to encourage chip manufacturing in the European Union, with proposed new legislation to ease state aid rules for chip factories and enable €15 billion in additional public and private investment.

The Commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, welcomed Intel’s latest announcement, and said the bloc’s new Chips Act would make the continent “a leader in the global semiconductor production”.

Where will the new chip plants be built?

Intel will set up two factories in the German city of Magdeburg, creating 7,000 construction jobs, 3,000 permanent jobs at the company, and tens of thousands of additional jobs across suppliers and partners, it said.

The company will invest an additional €12 billion in an Irish facility which will take its total investment in Ireland to more than €30 billion.

It is also in talks with Italy for a back-end manufacturing facility for a potential investment of up to €4.5 billion and plans to start operations between 2025 and 2027.

In France, Intel plans to build its new European research hub, creating 1,000 new high-tech jobs.

The company will also increase its lab space in Poland and plans to establish joint labs with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center in Spain for advanced computing.