I have leaned bearish automotive semiconductors for a few months, and I think the call has been mostly correct. For me, the beginning of my bearishness started when I highlighted that China would try to murder the supply aspect of the market for the foreseeable future. In my SiC as a Dog part 2, I mentioned that it does look like Silicon Carbide will be an utterly commoditized substrate market in the long term. So not only am I bearish the macro, but I’m probably bearish the most significant and fastest-growing segment within Automotive. Then, shoes finally started to drop this year, as Mobi ..read more

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Maxlinear has probably been among this semiconductor cycle's worst companies, if not the worst. I think that it might be time to give them a fresh look. This report will be partially paywalled, with the company overview in front of the paywall and the rest behind the paywall for paying subscribers. Company History Company Overview Why Now and the Catalyst (Paywall) Valuation (Paywall) Company History Maxlinear was founded in 2003 in Carlsbad, California, by eight engineers. Today, Kishore Seendripu (CEO/Chairmen) and Curtis Ling (CTO) are still founders and work at the company. Maxli ..read more

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has repeatedly emphasized that the data center is the new unit of compute. While this concept seemed straightforward at first, the deeper implications became clearer after Nvidia's presentations at GTC and OFC 2024. I only recently grasped exactly what is happening, and a simple reframing of the underlying principles that drove Moore’s Law makes the entire picture clearer. In this new paradigm, the rack itself is similar to a chip, and now, if we frame the rack as the new chip, we have a whole new vector to scale performance and power. Let’s talk Moore’s Law from the pe ..read more

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Correction: I sent out an email with a duplicated portion. This is edited and resent. Hello from San Jose! I was in person to listen to Jensen’s keynote speech, which was delivered on March 18th. It would be best if you watched the whole thing. It would be helpful if you watched the keynote before this post. Anyway, I want to articulate one of AI's big whys. I’ll discuss product announcements and then post thoughts on the competitive positioning behind the paywall. The Future is Simulated: Nvidia's Vision for an AI-Powered World "It is so much cheaper to do simulations than real experiments ..read more

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Hello everyone. There’s been quite an inflow of subscribers and new followers, so I thought I would refresh some ideas for everyone. At a high level, I want to talk about my philosophy about investing in semiconductors and then talk about ideas. Disclaimer: Please note that this newsletter is not investment advice. The information provided is for informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice. You should consult with a financial advisor or other professional to determine your investment goals and risk tolerance. Any investment decisions you make are solely your resp ..read more

Nvidia’s earnings are akin to my Super Bowl. There is no more significant event in semiconductors and AI, and each quarter, we tune into Nvidia’s results to see precisely what quarter we are in the AI hype cycle (and potentially bubble). There is no better signpost for the entire AI ecosystem than the company making the most of the revenue so far: Nvidia. Anyways, let’s flip the results. NVIDIA reports Q4 EPS $5.16 ex-items vs FactSet $4.59 Reports Q4: Revenue $22.10B vs FactSet $20.40B Q1 Guidance: Revenue $24.0B +/- 2% vs FactSet $22.21B Non-GAAP gross margin 77.0%, +/- 50bp vs c ..read more

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