USA vs China – Annual Event

Aiming for a coalition of like-minded countries. Clamping down on technology exports to China has now become an annual event and this year takes aim at quantum computing and offers incentives for other countries indicating that the USA increasingly needs other countries to help it limit China’s rise as a technical, economic and geopolitical world power. The Bureau of Industry...

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Automotive Ecosystems – Electric Dreams

Where the companies go, the governments will follow.   Yet another delay to the EV transition comes as no surprise as the criteria for mass adoption is still far away meaning that the EV targets set by governments across the world will also be pushed back significantly. Volvo Cars has pushed back its target to be fully electric indefinitely from...

Windows on Arm – The Empire Strikes Back pt. II

Intel takes the fight to Qualcomm and AMD.   Intel has formally launched its answer to the Qualcomm X Elite and AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 series and if its benchmarks are to be believed, the fight for the laptop market will be closer than anyone expected (including me). Lunar Lake was originally supposed to be released in 2025 but with...

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Artificial Intelligence – Race to the bottom

Price and feature erosion are bad signs.   One would have expected Anthropic’s latest innovation to be part of its premium tier, but the fact that it is free from the start is a sign that the race to the bottom kicked off by Meta is already beginning, which in turn may herald the bursting of the AI bubble. Anthropic...

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USA vs. China – PR Game

USA gets revenge for Raimondo’s embarrassment.   The Netherlands turned the screw on semiconductor equipment exports to China just as the US National Security Advisor was meeting with President Xi in what looks like perfect timing to remind China that it is not alone in being able to play the PR game. The government of The Netherlands has a relatively...

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Nvidia FQ2 25 – Full steam ahead

Beat but no real raise. Excellent results and guidance were met with disappointment from the fickle market which wanted to see yet another beat and raise and so while the AI boom remains very much on track, its failure to get even bigger has allowed a sliver of doubt to creep in. FQ2 25 revenues / EPS were $30.0bn /...

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Artificial Intelligence – Silicon Game

Cerebras admits it can’t compete in training. Cerebras’ pivot towards inference is both an indication of where the market is going and an admission that when it comes to training, no one is close to competing against Nvidia. Cerebras Systems is a privately held semiconductor company that designs and sells silicon chips for AI training and inference and is a...

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China vs. USA – Tit for Tat pt. III

The cure for high prices is high prices. The Chinese export restrictions on Gallium and Germanium are tight enough to have triggered significant price rises which will in time incentivise production to resume outside of China both fixing the price problem and demonstrating that the Chinese restrict strategy will have no long-term impact. In July 2023, China restricted the export...

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Artificial Intelligence – Magic Money Tree pt. II

A classic example of too much money. The loss of 60% of its founders just months after being founded and raising $220m despite having no products, looks like a sign that in the rush to invest in AI, red flags are being ignored and due diligence is being skimmed which always ends in problems. The H Company (formerly Holistic) was...

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Peloton & Snowflake – Pandemic Pastimes.

Pandemic darlings tell different stories. Peloton FQ4 24 – The turn Peloton reported revenues that grew YoY dispelling fears of the company being in a death spiral which, combined with finally breaking even on a cash flow basis, gives hope that the ship has finally stopped sinking. The result was a 35% jump in the share price but given how...

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