Zephyr
@zephyr_z9
AI & Chips | Not Investment Advice | DYOD
718 Following 141.9K Followers
▶ SK Hynix flooded with unprecedented offers from Big Tech to secure chip supplies
- SK Hynix is reportedly receiving aggressive proposals from global Big Tech firms to fund new production line investments and the purchase of expensive semiconductor manufacturing equipment.
- These offers are highly unusual in the global memory industry, coming as demand for memory chips — essential for AI data centers, smartphones, and PCs — has surged beyond what chipmakers can supply.
- According to multiple sources, SK Hynix's customers have proposed directly investing in dedicated memory production lines.
- Other proposals involve customers funding the purchase of ASML's EUV (extreme ultraviolet) lithography equipment. EUV tools, which etch circuit patterns onto silicon wafers, cost several hundred million dollars per unit.
- However, with ample cash on hand, SK Hynix is taking a cautious stance toward accepting customer financing.
- The concern is that such arrangements could lock the company into specific customers and potentially require it to supply memory at lower prices in exchange for guaranteed long-term supply.
- An SK Hynix official said, "Regardless of the form of the proposal, our currently available production capacity is essentially 'zero,'" adding that "we don't even have small volumes that could be allocated to specific customers."
- The official also noted that investment proposals have been made targeting the Phase 1 production line of the large-scale fab currently under construction at the Yongin cluster.
- This pattern departs from the memory industry's traditional boom-bust cycle, with the industry increasingly viewing the current AI-driven demand growth as long-term structural growth rather than a short-term cycle.
- The development underscores the intensifying competition to secure memory chips amid the AI boom.
Show more
Such a huge weakness
> spend meaningful time making the RL training environments
meaningful ×
probably 90%+ √
Floating point math is not associative! And many of the highest performance kernels split the workload among SMs and accumulate partial results in a nondeterministic order. Many AI labs just accept this, or pay a huge performance penalty for determinism. DeepSeek decided to do neither. (1/4) 🧵
Show more
Makes me even more bullish about neoclouds
Bruh, even the shitco is getting the Jensen stamp
Bruh, even the shitco is getting the Jensen stamp
$NVDA and $IREN announced a strategic partnership to deploy up to 5 GW of AI infrastructure across IREN’s global data center pipeline.
Sweetwater in Texas is planned as the flagship NVIDIA DSX deployment.
NVIDIA also gets the right to invest up to $2.1B in IREN https://t.co/Wpl8ioabKs
Show more
With the help of Claude Mythos Preview, the Firefox team fixed more security bugs in April than in the past 15 months combined. https://t.co/rHsempnr0Y
"almost no data industry"
Their biggest weakness
Visiting most of the leading Chinese AI labs, I'm struck by a culture that's extremely well suited to building LLMs with fewer resources, but one happening in a very different ecosystem, more companies at play, almost no data industry, etc.
Full report: https://t.co/ibmtMWnfTc
Show more
my prediction on the photonics/laser stuff is, there will be more and more SiPho as we add more lanes and need better mux/demux, TFLN is not gonna win for 400G per lane although you hear it a lot, as some folks already made it working on SiPho and the TFLN price and volume won't be even close to beating SiPho.
DSP will be dominated by broadcom and then marvell for a long time, but SiPho is just so much easier to design and make, and the Chinese companies will be taping out most of the SiPho chips and making all the way to various engines and modules.
Laser moat of the US companies won't last long, it's not that complicated, and more similar to e.g. battery optimization than complex digital circuit design, and Chinese companies already make most of the andriod and lidar vcsel chips, some of them pretty high power and spec. They control most of In and InP production as well. US laser companies will have to and are already building InP fabs in SEA, theres no In or In purification in the US.
If I know more chemistry, I would start an ITO recycling company now.
Show more
Satya is twisting the knife
new: Microsoft holds sway over OpenAI's development of a custom AI server chip for inference.
$18 billion in financing for the chip hinges on Microsoft. https://t.co/vMkw0hsYa4
"Ajinomoto acquires land for new semiconductor materials factory, set to start operations in 2032"
BRUH
味の素、半導体材料の新工場用地を取得 32年に稼働予定 https://t.co/RRkorOWP3F https://t.co/RRkorOWP3F
Nvidia got FAFOed multiple times with Rubin/Rubin Ultra design
- They pushed for higher pin speed HBM4, but Micron's & Hynix's base die were subpar, so they had to change plans & face delays (lower pin speeds)
- They pushed for a quad die Rubin Ultra design, yield and warpage issues forced them to switch to 2 die and 2+2 die MCM design
- They pushed for 16 Hi HBM4E for Ultra, yield issues forced them to come back down to 12 Hi
- They pushed for a dual profile 2.3kW/1.8kW Rubin, but indium-graphite TIM was unstable and now they are switching back to graphite TIM
Show more
Aletheia's Warren Lau's $NVDA channel checks suggesting Rubin delays on heat-spreader redesign: https://t.co/QQWSvGWzQ1
The second semis memo is finally here!!!
Lots of banger names from all over the world
And a special company too ;)
https://t.co/9k86aYW72V
It was really special https://t.co/RWQnKTOta4
The second semis memo is finally here!!!
Lots of banger names from all over the world
And a special company too ;)
https://t.co/9k86aYW72V
Where are all the people who were writing threads about why HIMX wouldn’t work? They must have more to say, right?
Base GB200 NVL72 is 2 GPUs per CPU.
Meta's custom Catalina NVL72,
➡️shown almost than a year ago at a public event,
is 1:1.
Some of y'all just missed the reason why, I guess.
Apple ✅, Nvidia ✅
Did u listen to us, anon??
WiseEye: Adopted by a leading brand for smart glasses, with mass production expected later this year
CPO Gen 1: Small quantity shipments expected in 2H26
CPO Gen 2: Nearing completion of customer product validation for AI data center applications
Show more
$HIMX Q1’26 EARNINGS HIGHLIGHTS
🔹 Revenue: $199.0M (Est. $195M) 🟢
🔹 EPS Per Diluted ADS: $0.046 (Est. $0.03) 🟢
🔹 Gross Margin: 30.4%, at high end of guide (Est. 30%) 🟢
Q2 2026 Guide:
🔹 Revenue: +10.0% to +13.0% QoQ (Est 5%) 🟢
🔹 Gross Margin: Around 32% (Est. 30.8%) 🟢
🔹 EPS Per Diluted ADS: $0.086-$0.103
Segment Performance:
🔹 Large Display Driver Revenue: $24.2M; +11.7% QoQ
🔹 Large Display Driver Revenue Mix: 12.2% of total sales
🔹 Small & Medium Display Driver Revenue: $135.8M; -2.4% QoQ
🔹 Small & Medium Display Driver Revenue Mix: 68.2% of total sales
🔹 Non-Driver Revenue: $39.0M; -7.7% QoQ
🔹 Non-Driver Revenue Mix: 19.6% of total sales
Other Metrics:
🔹 Automotive Driver Sales: Declined double digits QoQ in Q1
🔹 Smartphone IC Sales: Increased QoQ, driven by new OLED solutions entering mass production for a leading smartphone brand’s mainstream model
🔹 Tablet IC Sales: Increased QoQ, driven by renewed mainstream demand and shipments for a new premium OLED tablet
🔹 Automotive Tcon: Hundreds of secured design wins across a broad customer base
🔹 WiseEye: Adopted by a leading brand for smart glasses, with mass production expected later this year
🔹 CPO Gen 1: Small quantity shipments expected in 2H26
🔹 CPO Gen 2: Nearing completion of customer product validation for AI data center applications
🔹 FOCI Stake: 5.36%, valued at NT$4.96B / $156M as of May 7 close
🔹 Patents: 2,564 granted, 331 pending as of March 31, 2026
Financials:
🔹 Operating Profit: $10.2M
🔹 After-Tax Profit: $8.0M
🔹 Operating Expenses: $50.3M; -8.4% QoQ, +9.9% YoY
🔹 Operating Margin: 5.1%
🔹 Cash, Cash Equivalents & Other Financial Assets: $287.6M
🔹 Long-Term Unsecured Loans: $27.0M, including $6.0M current portion
🔹 Inventory: $151.7M
🔹 Accounts Receivable: $190.9M
🔹 DSO: 86 days
🔹 CapEx: $2.9M
Capital Return:
🔹 Annual Cash Dividend: $0.252 per ADS
🔹 Total Dividend Payout: $44M
🔹 Dividend Payout Ratio: 100% of previous year’s profit
🔹 Dividend Payable Date: July 10, 2026
Commentary:
🔸 “We expect upward momentum through the remainder of 2026, supported by a meaningful number of new automotive projects scheduled to enter mass production in the second half.”
🔸 “The positive outlook is also supported by the anticipated growth in our non-driver IC businesses, particularly Tcon and WiseEye AI.”
🔸 “Despite ongoing macro uncertainty, Himax continues to expand beyond its traditional display IC business, focusing on key growth areas including smart glasses, ultralow power AI and CPO.”
🔸 “These emerging technologies present significant growth opportunities that help diversify our revenue base into areas with attractive gross margin profiles and profitability while also strengthening our overall competitiveness.”
Show more
What if..... The most obvious big CPO winner was accessible to buy in the US all along? $HIMX
Hmmm....
Are they going to launch agents and run simulations in Eve???
Exclusive: Google DeepMind will train its AI technology on EVE Online after Google took a multi-million-dollar stake in the sci-fi MMORPG's developer.
EVE Online is famous for players' corporate espionage, economic maneuvering and politicking. https://t.co/5P6nWZqIjL
Show more
They are also getting a $3B capital injection from High Flyer
DeepSeek could be valued at up to $50 billion after its first funding round, in which it is expected raise as much as $4 billion. https://t.co/PVZSDz3yzX
This is very cool
fine, I'll do it myself
(*doesn't actually do anything himself, prompts V4-Pro in Hermes to do it*)
*$0.16 and 4 million tokens later*
wow that's really nice, now I'll have to double and triple check everything, thanks DeepSeek https://t.co/K2P9Zs8YS8
Show more
