($) P(Grand Bargain) = 55%
A US-China deal is the appropriate season finale for a reality TV, “deal junkie” president| Interconnected
Last week, DeepSeek released a new version of its model to much fanfare. Except the fanfare did not come from the model’s performance improvement, hybrid nature (combining both reasoning and non-reasoning into a single model, like GPT-5), or strong agentic capabilities. It came from an unprompted comment from| Interconnected
A US-China deal is the appropriate season finale for a reality TV, “deal junkie” president| Interconnected
Finally, some positive-sum competition between the US and China| Interconnected
Guess what, Chinese tech companies hate Huawei too!| Interconnected
Open Source, American AI in a Box, GPU Tracking, Sub-Systems Export Control, "Try First" Culture| Interconnected
Welcome to the Q2 2025 update of Interconnected Capital. To new and old readers alike, a friendly reminder: I run a global technology long-only fund focused on investing in both the hardware and software “picks and shovels” of the interconnected global digital AI economy. I draw on| Interconnected
The most successful tech CEO and VC no one has heard of| Interconnected
One of my July 4th traditions is to do a crossfit hero workout at my local gym. This year, my gym chose the workout Witten. I finished it in 51 minutes and 41 seconds this morning; it was a slog! Another one of my July 4th habits is to reflect| Interconnected
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or Overseas Chinese Infrastructure?| Interconnected
The first (known) phone call between Trump and Xi since the inauguration finally happened this week. Soon after the call, the new round of negotiation will take place in London on Monday, June 9th. A new wrinkle is added to the negotiation dynamic – Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is now part| Interconnected
Bilingual analysis (English & Chinese) of businesses and trends from the lens of builders, operators, investors, regulators, and how they are connected.| Interconnected
Bilingual analysis (English & Chinese) of businesses and trends from the lens of builders, operators, investors, regulators, and how they are connected.| Interconnected
| Interconnected
Today’s post is a translation and transcreation of an article published by Jiemian News, a Chinese language tech outlet, that profiled Xiaomi’s homegrown chip-making backstory. While I rarely do translations, this article was sufficiently interesting and included some fascinating insights and anecdotes behind the overnight success| Interconnected
AI RIF is the best, if not only, form of walking the walk to show what AI can really do| Interconnected
With two important, long-term implications| Interconnected
Internet's only bilingual newsletter on the intersections of tech, business, investing, geopolitics, and US-Asia relations. New post every week by Kevin Xu (@kevinsxu)| Interconnected
The dictionary definition of the word “grift” is as follows: “to acquire money or property illicitly [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/grift]”. It may be a strong word, but also more or less encapsulates the regulatory ethos that’s governing cross-border technology businesses these days. The TikTok-Oracle deal flaunts this| Interconnected
Author and founder of Interconnected. See "About Interconnected" for more information.| Interconnected
An economically rational deal if you are a true early stage VC| Interconnected
Internet's only bilingual newsletter on the intersections of tech, business, investing, geopolitics, and US-Asia relations. New post every week by Kevin Xu (@kevinsxu)| Interconnected
NVIDIA made a major announcement in its efforts to onshore advanced chip manufacturing to the US this week, by leading (demanding?) its ecosystem of partners to produce its Blackwell products in Texas and Arizona. This move, combined with recent reports that possible export controls on its China-modified H20 chips may| Interconnected
The AI is just taking an exam, like you and me| Interconnected
Internet's only bilingual newsletter on the intersections of tech, business, investing, geopolitics, and US-Asia relations. New post every week by Kevin Xu (@kevinsxu)| Interconnected
Tying together DeepSeek open source week, the Oval Office meltdown, and TSMC’s new investment| Interconnected
How Should We Think About Asia’s Biggest Cloud Now| Interconnected
In “Nebius Part 1: the Smooth (Developer) Operator”, I shared my point of view on why Nebius is the most compelling pure-play AI neocloud with its smooth developer experience, its history, and the pros and cons of its Yandex and Russian roots. In this Part 2 installment, I explore the| Interconnected
Last Friday, Wall Street “discovered” Nebius. It was revealed in Nvidia’s latest 13F filing as one of its newest investees, along with WeRide, a Chinese self-driving company. I put “discovered” in quotes because for those of us paying attention, this “mystery” has been in the public for three months.| Interconnected
Internet's only bilingual newsletter on the intersections of tech, business, investing, geopolitics, and US-Asia relations. New post every week by Kevin Xu (@kevinsxu)| Interconnected
Welcome to the 2024 annual letter of Interconnected Capital. To new and old readers alike, a friendly reminder: I run a global technology long-only fund focused on investing in the “picks and shovels” of the interconnected global digital AI economy. I draw on my technology business operator's experience and geopolitical| Interconnected
Bilingual analysis (English & Chinese) of businesses and trends from the lens of builders, operators, investors, regulators, and how they are connected.| Interconnected
Bilingual analysis (English & Chinese) of businesses and trends from the lens of builders, operators, investors, regulators, and how they are connected.| Interconnected
Today’s post is the translation of a speech Morris Chang delivered on the history and future of TSMC and the semiconductor industry at large in April. Chang is the founder and two-time CEO of TSMC, now 90-years-old and retired. The audience of the speech was Taiwanese government officials and| Interconnected
Internet's only bilingual newsletter on the intersections of tech, business, investing, geopolitics, and US-Asia relations. New post every week by Kevin Xu (@kevinsxu)| Interconnected
Hi all, I’m switching things up a bit to share a couple of recent contributions I did for the Asia Society, spanning from the latest development in the TikTok legal saga to semiconductors and GPU smuggling in China. (I’ll be back in a few days with a fresh| Interconnected
The Paris Olympics may be over, but who says heated competition in bizarrely mutated sporting events only seen at the Olympics fueled by irrationally intense nationalism should stop? As a lifelong basketball fan, one of the more bizarrely mutated Olympic events is 3x3 basketball. As a full-time observer and occasional| Interconnected
Welcome to Interconnected Capital’s first half (H1) of 2024 investment performance letter, which I write on a quarterly basis. (You can find my Q1 letter here.) To new and old readers alike, a friendly reminder: I run a global technology equity portfolio focused on investing in the “picks and| Interconnected
The global AI competition is often framed as a 1-on-1 battle between the US and China, with a “Cold War II” undertone as the backdrop. In this tussle, there is one region that is growing more powerful and critical to which side will eventually win (if there is any winning| Interconnected
This API ban signals a phase shift from “chip war” to “cloud war”| Interconnected
Will “AI in a box” become a thing? Huawei Cloud is certainly trying to make it so. By packaging GPUs, networking, server racks, other hardware, and AI models all together, Huawei Cloud is pushing the adoption of AI infrastructure by putting everything an enterprise or government agency could possibly need| Interconnected
During the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting last weekend, Warren Buffett made a lot of headlines on AI. By comparing AI to nuclear weapons and sounding the alarm on deepfakes by talking about how he was almost fooled by a deepfake of his own likeness, his commentary would put him squarely| Interconnected
Welcome to my first quarterly letter of 2024. To new and old readers alike, a friendly reminder: at Interconnected, I run a long-only equity portfolio that is laser-focused on investing in the “picks and shovels” of the interconnected global digital AI economy. I draw on my technology business operator's experience| Interconnected
One topic this newsletter has been obsessed with over the last four years is cloud data centers. Partially because of my previous industry experience, working deeply on cloud-based tech products, partially because these data centers are just fascinating and so crucial to the global digital economy yet so misunderstood, I| Interconnected
Over the weekend, while I was recovering from jetlag after attending a wonderful three-day, closed-door conference on China hosted by the Salzburg Global Seminar, TSMC quietly opened its first chip fab in Japan. I only say quietly because very few mainstream English media outlets bothered sending a team, or even| Interconnected
The much-lauded CHIPS Act is not going well. And TSMC, which is supposedly to be one of the Act’s biggest beneficiaries, is starting to hedge against a failing industrial program. Since its passage 16 months ago, the Act’s implementation led by the Commerce Department has done very little| Interconnected
My first post of 2024 tries to answer a question I’ve been wrestling with throughout 2023. Does China want generative AI? Increasingly, I think the answer is: not really. On balance, China as a whole (minus the small, elite circle of tech entrepreneurs, VCs, and AI academics) sees more| Interconnected
It was a crazy busy week in the world of generative AI. OpenAI DevDay and GPT-4 turbo, GitHub Universe and Copilot, Hu.ma.ne and the AI pin, Kaifu Lee’s 01.ai becoming a unicorn, Elon’s x.ai releasing Grok – the floodgate of announcements and advancements is breathtaking.| Interconnected
By the time you read this post, you are likely bombarded with news and tweets about the antitrust hearing of the big four tech companies (Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Alphabet) and their respective quarterly earnings. Meanwhile, another announcement happened in the tech world that I believe could be just as impactful| Interconnected
Bilingual analysis (English & Chinese) of businesses and trends from the lens of builders, operators, investors, regulators, and how they are connected.| Interconnected
Last weekend, I read a long, epic piece of techlore [https://www.huxiu.com/article/360061.html] that chronicled the fierce and bitter rivalry between TSMC and Samsung in their fight to become the world’s number 1 chip foundry, which stretched back three decades and continues today. Among the| Interconnected
Consolidation in the semiconductor industry continues. The latest event is MIPS Technologies embracing the open source instruction-set architecture (ISA), RISC-V, and no longer designing for the MIPS architecture that gave birth to the company more than three decades ago. While this news, reported in the trade publication EE Journal [https:| Interconnected
Three months after Softbank announced its acquisition of Arm in 2016, Masa Son (founder and CEO of Softbank) invited Jensen Huang (founder and CEO of Nvidia) for dinner at his California mansion. Just the two of them. Among the many things they talked about at this “dinner date”, chronicled in| Interconnected
The “tool-in” ceremony of TSMC’s new fab in Arizona drew a lot of attention last week. CEOs from Apple, Nvidia, and AMD attended and spoke. President Biden, along with a coterie of cabinet officials, congresspeople, and local Arizona politicians, came to rally, celebrate, and claim (as we will see,| Interconnected
By now, the entire world knows that Elon Musk owns Twitter. The ongoing frenzy surrounding this deal has reached peak “silly season [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/silly%20season]” – a term political campaign operatives use to describe ridiculous and frivolous media stories near the end of a campaign season. (Coincidentally,| Interconnected
What happens when audio recordings of 80 internal meetings of a company are leaked to the media? A serious credibility problem. That’s what happened to TikTok last week when the audio of, indeed, more than 80 internal meetings were leaked to Buzzfeed, which led to a bombshell story [https:| Interconnected
