SemiAnalysis Weekly

Epizody

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  Ep. 037 - Who's Funding the $11 Trillion AI Buildout? (Capital Markets) | Dan Nishball, Jordan Nanos 09.10.2026 1h 23min

  H100 rental prices went up, on a GPU that should be sliding down its depreciation curve. That curve is what lenders underwrite. Daniel Nishball (@dnishball) kicks off our new Compute Capital Markets group by following the money through Nvidia's $497B backstops, ClusterMAX as a credit signal, and whether each token is profitable. Jordan Nanos (@JordanNanos) brings the rental data. AI debt is about to pass auto loans.0:00 Opening1:48 Nvidia's Backstop Universe6:22 The $11T Funding Wall17:25 Balance Sheet as a Service26:27 ClusterMAX as Credit Risk31:51 Why H100 Prices Rose43:09 Token Profitability58:05 You Can't Go Back1:07:25 AI Debt vs Auto Loans1:11:14 Inside Nvidia's Backstops
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  Ep. 036 - $200 Buys $12,000 of Opus Tokens, We Bought Every Plan (AI Cloud TCO) | Max Kan, Jordan Nanos, Andrew Megalaa 07.10.2026 50min

  Pay Anthropic $200 a month and you can pull $12,000 of Opus 5.5 tokens at API pricing. Max Kan (@maxkan) and Andrew Megalaa bought every plan, OpenAI, Meta, xAI, MiniMax, Moonshot, Z.ai, Cursor, and measured every token type to find the ceiling. The catch isn't subsidy. Anthropic still books 50 to 60% gross margins on these plans, which means the API itself is the price gouge.0:00 Cold Open1:03 Subsidies and Credits5:23 Token Types and Cache14:08 Model Value Charts20:51 Test Methodology26:54 Other Plans31:26 Utilization and Limits36:24 Token Efficiency41:24 Open Models44:22 Cyber and CaptureRead More: https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/anthropic-subscriptions-offer-5x
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  Ep. 035 - Tech DD’s, Performance Projections, Benchmarks, Supply Chain, Investment Thesis (Consulting)| Abhilash Jain, Jordan Nanos 05.10.2026 34min

  Jordan (@JordanNanos) and Abhilash (@AbhilashJain17) discuss the clients SemiAnalysis consulting serves, custom projects like the inference simulator, how client work turns into research products, neocloud due diligence, and why SLAs decide who gets funded. They also discuss Feynman specs, de-specced memory, and a 20-trillion-parameter OpenAI model. 0:00 Intro and Overview2:27 Client Types5:24 Custom Projects9:47 Strategy Work12:27 Consulting to Products14:33 Neocloud Due Diligence18:40 SLAs and Insurance22:32 Risk Assessments26:45 Build vs Buy29:19 Favorites and Outlook
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  Ep. 034 - Engrams: How DeepSeek Offloads KV Cache to DRAM and SSD (Core Research) | Jordan Nanos, Cam Quilici, Alec Ibarra, Bryan Shan 02.10.2026 1h 3min

  The InferenceX team is back after two months. Jordan Nanos (@JordanNanos) is joined by Cam Quilici (@noslawextratost), Bryan Shan, and Alec Ibarra to discuss Engram and DRAM offloading, the AgentX benchmark and its profit calculator, TPU v7 on InferenceX, Vera Rubin vs Blackwell, fast tokens, and TileRT on NVIDIA GPUs.0:00 Intro0:31 Engrams12:27 AgentX Benchmark16:36 Profit Calculator23:40 TPU v732:03 Vera Rubin40:49 Fast Tokens49:33 TileRT54:00 Chip Startups1:01:31 Wrap Up
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  Ep. 033 - ClusterMAX 3.0 Is Here! Neoclouds Ranked (Neoclouds, GPUs) | Sam Harshe, Pratt Bhatt, Jordan Nanos 23.09.2026 1h 8min

  ClusterMAX 3.0 is here. Sam Harshe (@sharshe02) and Pratt Bhatt (@PrathmeshBhat19) join Jordan Nanos (@jordannanos) after months of testing 77 GPU clouds. Some moved up, some moved down. Health checks, cache hit rates, NCCL recipes, agentic coding on clusters, a Linux kernel bug, neocloud security, SLAs and financing, NVIDIA's backstops, five-year-old H100s, and hosted RL training.Read the full ClusterMAX 3.0 report: https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/clustermax-30-the-industry-standardClusterMAX inquiries: [email protected]:00 Cold Open1:32 The Rankings6:58 Health Checks13:26 Endpoint Cache Misses16:40 Networking and NCCL22:52 Vibe-Coded Infra31:27 Bug Hunting38:36 Security45:43 Financing Neoclouds56:33 Hosted Training and RL
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  Ep. 032 - 300 Datacenter Bans, 3 Projects Delayed: Moratoriums Explained (Datacenter, Energy) | Maya Barkin, Reyk Knühtsen, Jordan Nanos 18.09.2026 53min

  More than 300 towns, cities, and counties have voted to pause data centers in the past 18 months. Maya Barkin (@mayabarkin) and Reyk Knühtsen (@robotknower) from the SemiAnalysis Data Center, Energy, and Industrials team join Jordan Nanos (@jordannanos) to explain what a moratorium actually is, how they mapped every one of them against the US project pipeline, and why only three projects are being delayed.Plus: the SpaceX de-annexation in Brownsville, New York vs Texas, why politicians love a moratorium, and the surprising amount of alpha in anti-data center Facebook groups. Jeremie Eliahou Ontiveros (@JeremieEO) drops in from Bangkok.Read More: https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/everyone-says-datacenter-moratoriums0:00 Intro0:36 What Is a Moratorium4:34 300 Moratoriums, 3 Projects10:18 Behind the Meter Wins14:04 Eight Conditions to Delay17:06 The SpaceX De-Annexation20:03 Cheap Political Signaling32:03 New York vs Texas41:14 City Council Alpha46:32 Advice for Developers
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  Ep. 031 - EMERGENCY EPISODE: Are We Doomed? | Jordan Nanos, Doug O'Laughlin, Max Kan, Joey Brookhart 16.09.2026 1h 2min

  Emergency episode. Doug O'Laughlin (@Fabknowledge) , Joey Brookhart (@SaasquatchC), and Max Kan (@maxkan) join Jordan (@JordanNanos) to talk through Dario's "We Must Pace the Frontier" blog and the responses from Sam Altman and David Sacks. Does pacing actually mean less compute, or a lot more? Plus the Hugging Face incident, Moonshot serving Claude, and the security behaviour that keeps them up at night.0:00 Cold Open2:50 Glorified Neoclouds8:21 Pacing the Frontier12:53 Safety Eats Compute20:38 Hugging Face Lessons30:52 Moonshot Serving Claude36:37 The Coxson Resignation38:27 Two-Year Predictions49:19 Regulation Under Trump57:21 Hotter or Cooler
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  Ep. 030 - Long Live the Short King: Why 4-HI HBM Wins (Memory) | Myron Xie, Jordan Nanos 14.09.2026 38min

  NVIDIA previewed Rubin Ultra at 1TB of HBM per package. The part that ships will carry 192GB.Myron Xie and Jordan Nanos get into how the design fell that far, why the reason is supply and not performance, and why shipping less memory per chip might be the right call anyway.For the first time in recent memory, NVIDIA's next flagship will have less capacity than the one it replaces.Read More: https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/long-live-the-short-king-why-4-hi
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  Ep. 029 - Modular Data Centers Cut Build Time to 12 Months (Datacenter, Energy) | Nico Bontigui, Jordan Nanos, Nigel Chiang, Eric Wen 11.09.2026 46min

  Traditional data center builds ran 18 to 24 months, sometimes past three years. Modular construction cuts that to 12. Jordan Nanos (@JordanNanos) sits down with Eric Wen, Nigel Chiang, and Nico Bontigui to map what modular actually means, from MEP heavy skids to full containerized builds. They break down why the bottleneck moved from construction time to labor, why welders and electricians are the real constraint in Abilene, and how time to power translates directly into tokens at 40 to 100 million dollars per megawatt. Subscribe for weekly SemiAnalysis coverage on data center construction, prefabrication, and AI infrastructure. 0:00 Cold Open1:09 What Is Modular4:03 Why Go Modular5:55 Time to Power Math9:04 Labor Wage Data13:51 Two Kinds of Bottlenecks18:24 Site, Shell, System22:31 Who Owns the Risk26:59 Trucks and Insurance30:53 Who Supplies the Modules35:50 Commissioning Reality41:39 Vendor Map and WrapRead More: The Wild Wild West Of LEGO Datacenters: https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/the-wild-wild-west-of-lego-datacenters
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  Ep. 028 - Most Neoclouds Suck At Security: How Agents Hacked Hugging Face (Neoclouds, Security) | Doug O'Laughlin, Sam Harshe, Jordan Nanos 02.09.2026 50min

  This week Doug, Sam and Jordan discuss the OpenAI vs HuggingFace security incident and our recent article on Neocloud security ahead of ClusterMAX 3.0Full article: https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/most-neoclouds-suck-at-security0:00 Cold Open0:57 Neocloud Security4:38 The Hugging Face Hack11:47 Agent Swarm Behavior14:47 Obliterated Models20:37 Security as a Service24:30 What the Data Shows33:08 Attacker Asymmetry40:55 Nothing Ever Happens45:22 CMAX Audit
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  Ep. 027 - OpenAI Jalapeño: Better Than Nvidia Blackwell (Accelerators) 30.08.2026 1h 3min

  This week Bryan, Myron and Jordan discuss our recent article on OpenAI Jalapeño. They cover the performance, architecture, programming model, implications for NVIDIA and more.1:05 Jalapeno Overview4:22 Tokens Per Megawatt9:15 Benchmark Caveats13:48 The CUDA Moat21:12 How OpenAI Did It32:13 Samsung HBM442:10 AI-Designed Silicon49:24 Architecture Deep Dive56:58 Doom and WrapFull Article: ⁠https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/openai-jalapeno-better-than-nvidia
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  Ep. 026 - PJM's $12B Modeling Mistake Is Hitting Ratepayers Again (Datacenter, Energy) | Robert Boswall, Jordan Nanos 20.08.2026 43min

  PJM overpaid $12 billion across two capacity auctions, and the same modeling error is set to repeat in an upcoming emergency auction. Robert Boswall (@RobertBoswall) and Jordan Nanos (@JordanNanos) break down how the largest grid in America, 13 states and 66 million people, inflates demand while constraining supply. The result is scarcity pricing that ratepayers absorb, not the data centers driving the narrative. Of the $63 billion spent across four auctions, Boswell estimates $12 billion was avoidable, split $7 billion and $5 billion across the 2025-26 and 2026-27 auctions. This is the mechanics behind every headline blaming AI for rising power bills. Subscribe for weekly analysis on grid design, capacity markets, and AI energy demand!0:00 Cold Open1:33 What Is PJM3:13 Capacity Auctions7:39 The $12 Billion12:33 How Plants Get Paid15:15 The Winterization Gap21:17 Data Center Demand26:41 The Emergency Auction30:00 Board Overrules Members40:32 Turning It AroundArticle: https://open.substack.com/pub/semianalysis/p/12b-of-us-ratepayers-money-wasted
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  Ep. 25 - DYLAN IS HERE, LIVE! | Dylan Patel & Jordan Nanos 17.08.2026 38min

  Dylan joins the pod today, recorded live from our SF office. Jordan and Dylan discuss SemiAnalysis's AI spend, the model that escaped during training, AI rollups eating private equity, new accelerators vs NVIDIA, and whether the pod gives away too much information for free.0:00 Cold Open5:25 SA AI Spend9:29 AI Performance Reviews10:40 AI Rollups13:47 The Agent Moment15:28 The Escaped Model18:11 Model Exponential22:52 Compute and Chips30:18 Open Models32:00 ADHD and AI
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  Ep. 024 - SpaceX's 10GW Plan Drives $300B ARR by 2027 (Datacenter, Energy) | Reyk Knuhtsen, Jeremie Eliahou Ontiveros, Jordan Nanos 09.08.2026 50min

  OpenAI and Anthropic are adding close to $30 billion of ARR per month, and the driver is gross margin expansion, not new compute. Jeremie Eliahou Ontiveros (@JeremieEO) and Reyk Knuhtsen (@robotknower) join Jordan Nanos (@JordanNanos) to trace the $100 million per megawatt per year figure from real inference workloads on GB200 and GB300 up through SemiAnalysis simulation. The Google deal prices GB300 capacity near $14 an hour against a $3 average, a premium justified by a 90 day cancellation clause and the ability to turn on megawatts immediately.From there the conversation moves to SpaceX's 10 gigawatt ambition, the sites and supply chain needed to hit it, the permitting playbook, and why Microsoft becomes the largest offtaker. The bull and bear cases both get airtime, followed by a Hugging Face security scare to close. Subscribe for weekly coverage of tokenomics, datacenter energy, and AI compute economics.CHAPTERS:0:00 – Intro0:47 – The $100M Thesis3:59 – Pricing & Google's Deal10:38 – Training vs Inference13:21 – Sites & Supply Chain20:55 – Permitting Playbook25:40 – Microsoft's Role33:31 – Paying For It41:01 – Bull vs Bear43:29 – Hugging Face Security Scare & Wrap-UpReferenced:SpaceX 10GW in 2027 – Why It's Real, Will Drive $300B ARR for SpaceX, and Why Microsoft Will Be the Largest Offtaker: https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/spacex-10gw-in-2027-why-its-real
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  Ep. 023 - Everyone Leaves Google, Elon Forecasts 1T ARR, Reflecting On GPT-5, Building Personalized Software (Roundtable) | Jon Y, Doug O'Laughlin, Jordan Nanos 07.08.2026 44min

  Jeff Dean and the Gemini leads are leaving Google. Jon Y (@asianometry) makes his FIRST appearance to unpack the exodus with Doug O'Laughlin (@fabknowledge) and Jordan Nanos (@JordanNanos). The crew debates the Demis CEO question, whether Google acquired its innovation or invented it, and how the Bell Labs comparison reads once disruption arrives. First engineers who spent thirty-five years in one job now leaving for passion projects.The episode opens by revisiting the 2024 Dwarkesh clip where Jon questioned whether GPT-5 would be any good. Two years later the verdict is mixed: GPT-5 was a dud, 5.2 was ass, but 5.6 is strong and GPT-6, codenamed Doug, is rumored to write well. Then the Chinese transceiver ban, where the West depends on a supply chain China already owns. 00:00 Intro01:02 Was GPT-5 Good?05:00 The Transceiver Ban08:57 Everyone Leaves Google12:56 Google's L Culture19:20 Do Legends Matter?23:44 The Protestant Church28:44 Elon's $1T Pull-In30:55 Roll Your Own Software38:17 Start With Memory
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  Ep. 022 - Market Drawdown, Historic Bubbles, Funding The Buildout, AI Politics (Doug is Back) 29.07.2026 49min

  Doug is back this week!Timestamps:00:00 Market Update07:02 Comparing to Past Bubbles in Taiwan and Korea10:08 Memory Prices, LTAs, and Market Cycles18:11 Future Demand for AI and Model Usage37:40 Scaling Laws and Supply Constraints44:45 Financial and Capital Constraints in Tech Expansion50:57 Geopolitical Risks, Policy Impact, Long Term Outlook
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  Ep. 021 - The AI Project Trinity: Capital, Offtake, Data Center (Datacenter, Energy) | Dan Nishball, Jordan Nanos, Zane Fong, Kang Wen Cheang 23.07.2026 52min

  AI and datacenter CapEx hits $11 trillion cumulatively from 2024 to 2029, and $7.1 trillion of that needs funding, roughly 75% debt financed. Dan Nishball (@dnishball), Zane Fong (linkedin.com/in/zanefongzq), and Kang Wen Cheang (linkedin.com/in/cheangkangwen) sit with Jordan Nanos (@JordanNanos) to break down the AI project Trinity: capital, offtake, and data centers. Today only one deal reliably clears the lending bar, a five-year offtake from an investment-grade hyperscaler. Everything else struggles to finance.The crew explains how NVIDIA backstops are structured, how lenders price GPU loans against them, and what NVIDIA actually does with GPUs it takes back. AI debt financing is on track to become the second-largest US asset-backed market behind the $13 trillion mortgage market. Subscribe for weekly analysis on semiconductors and AI infrastructure.References: https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/nvidia-gpu-debt-backstop-unleashesCHAPTERS:00:00 Intro|01:23 The $11T Funding Problem09:12 Startups Can't Get GPUs11:32 How the Backstop Works20:26 The Central Bank of AI21:35 The Bullseye26:23 CoreWeave Credit Spreads36:58 APAC Examples42:41 ClusterMax48:58 Training vs Inference
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  Ep. 020 - Anthropic vs OpenAI Usage, Margins, Meta Compute, Future of MSL (Tokenomics) | Crystual Huang, Max Kan, Joey Brookhart, Jordan Nanos 18.07.2026 50min

  Coding drives over 70% of lab API revenue, and token austerity policies mostly miss the point. Crystal (@crystalthegg), Max Kan (@maxkan), and Joey Brookhart (@SaasquatchC) break down why blocking teams from Opus saves nothing, while power users at the 99th percentile burn $100k per employee per year. Jordan (@Jordannanos) and the team run break-even math on the Max plans and Anthropic's margins.00:00 Intro00:53 Token Budgeting: Maxing vs Austerity03:05 Coding Eats the Token Market04:49 The ROI Question06:42 Subscriptions vs API Pricing09:08 Break-Even Math on the Max Plans10:42 Anthropic's Profit Margins12:07 Consumer vs Enterprise Mix16:04 The Two-Horse Race18:45 Codex App vs CLI20:41 Who Comes in Third?23:14 Clawbacks and the SpaceX Playbook26:59 Meta's NeoCloud Backstop29:58 Token-as-a-Service Market Forecast32:03 Hyperscalers vs Inference Startups38:50 MSL and the RL Scaling Law41:58 How to Build a Five-Figure RL Task47:10 Vibe Checks48:13 The $400B Anthropic BetReferenced:TokenBudgeting: Our Conversations with Enterprises on Token Spend: https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/tokenbudgeting-our-conversationsMeta Compute: Everyone Wants To Be A Neocloud: https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/meta-compute-everyone-wants-to-beAnthropic 3Q26 Profit Over $1B: The Anthropic IPO Financials Sneak Peak: https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/anthropic-3q26-profit-over-1b-theThe Future of Meta Superintelligence: A 1 Year Progress Update: https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/the-future-of-meta-superintelligenceComplete Launch Kit
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  [Emergency Episode] Moonshot’s Kimi K3 has Arrived! China has a Frontier Model 18.07.2026 31min

  A year ago, the big three was OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. Things have changed.Moonshot's Kimi K3 sits above Gemini on every composite benchmark, and it's open source in 10 days.New episode: what K3 reveals about frontier margins, model sizes, and who's actually still in the game. 00:00 Intro00:11 Is Kimi K3 the Third Best Model?04:04 Why Delay the Weights?05:30 2.8T Parameters and Serving Constraints06:48 Frontier Margins and the 3x Price Hike11:10 New Architecture, What Comes Next14:09 Will Open Source Catch Closed?19:51 Built for Chinese Accelerators22:57 The Harness Is the Product28:49 We're Still Early
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  Ep. 019 - Inside the STEEL Lab: From Package to Transistor (Teardown Lab) | Afzal Ahmad, Andrew Wagner, Jordan Nanos 16.07.2026 36min

  SMIC's N+3 node shrank the M0 layer over 15% and cut SRAM area 10 to 20%, all without EUV. SemiAnalysis built a lab just for that; Andrew Wagner and Afzal Ahmad walk Jordan Nanos (@JordanNanos) through the STEEL teardown of Huawei's Kirin 9030, from package to transistor. They explain die shots, FIB and TEM cross sections, NPU discovery, cell height, and standard cell libraries. Then backside power, GAA, and where SMIC goes next. 00:00 Intro: The STEEL Teardown Lab01:02 What Is a Teardown?02:17 Who Uses Teardown Data03:22 SMIC N+3 and the Kirin 903005:02 Inside the Lab: Sourcing to Silicon09:10 Die Shots Explained12:35 The NPU Discovery15:42 Scaling Without EUV17:57 FIB, SEM, and TEM Cross Sections20:59 Cell Height and Transistor Shrink23:56 Standard Cell Libraries26:22 Export Bans and Huawei's Response27:40 What's Next: Backside Power and GAA32:43 Data Center GPUs and Logic Folding34:28 Closing ThoughtsRead More: https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/steel-smic-n3-teardown