SemiAnalysis Weekly

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1. Ep. 043 - The Midterms and the 2028 Datacenter Buildout (Datacenters) | Jeremie Eliahou Ontiveros, Jordan Nanos, Maya Barkin, Wayne Ma

   4 november 2026 · 43 min

   Afspelen
   Recorded Election Day morning, before any results: SemiAnalysis’s model has about 62 GW of US datacenter additions in 2028, most not yet under construction and sitting in states electing a governor. Texas alone is close to 30%. Lees meer

   Jordan Nanos (@JordanNanos) sits down with Maya Barkin (@mayabarkin), Wayne Ma (@waynema) and Jeremie Eliahou Ontiveros (@JeremieEO) on why 2027 is largely locked in, why the backlash crosses party lines, and how developers can win over their neighbors.

   Since recording: the AP called Texas for Gina Hinojosa, who would pause datacenter permitting, and Georgia for Keisha Lance Bottoms, and Democrats took a 3-2 majority on Georgia’s Public Service Commission, which sets power rates. (As of Nov 4, 2:35 PM ET.)

   Read the article: https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/the-datacenter-backlash-goes-bipartisan

   0:00 Intro

   0:54 The 2028 Buildout

   5:32 Pause vs. Conditions

   10:03 Bipartisan Backlash

   14:37 Grid Risk

   16:30 Tax Incentives

   19:51 Texas

   24:34 Risks to 2027

   30:23 Georgia

   32:31 Federal Outlook

   35:20 Winning Over Neighbors

   42:04 What We're Watching

2. Ep. 042 - GDPx: The Benchmark for Frontier AI

   3 november 2026 · 52 min

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   SemiAnalysis just launched GDPx, a benchmark built with 14 specialized data partners across 11 domains where frontier intelligence earns the highest returns. Even the best model scores just 12%. Lees meer

   Jordan Nanos (@JordanNanos) sits down with Max Kan (@maxkan) and Andrew Megalaa (@AndrewMegalaa) to explain why most popular benchmarks are broken, the difference between difficult and unfair tasks, how a real private equity deal room became a finance environment, why binary grading still matters, and what the leaderboard says about Opus 5.5, GPT-6 Astra and Gemini 4 Carbon.

   Explore GDPx: https://gdpx.semianalysis.com

   Read the article: https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/gdpx-measuring-frontier-model-capabilities

   Want your model evaluated or to partner on a future version? gdpx@semianalysis.com

   0:00 Cold Open

   0:10 Launch Week Chaos

   4:02 Broken Benchmarks

   5:15 Difficult vs. Unfair

   7:33 Building GDPx

   9:25 Frontier Domains

   11:02 The 11 Domains

   14:12 Domain Experts

   15:00 Models vs. Experts

   19:36 Model Behavior

   20:44 The Leaderboard

   22:33 Cyber and Safety

   24:32 Frontier vs. Day-to-Day

   27:13 The Finance Task

   31:27 Binary vs. Partial Grading

   36:48 AI and Jobs

   42:43 Quick Takes

   43:44 Google's Comeback

   47:25 Public vs. Private Tasks

   49:52 What's Next

3. Ep. 041 - EMERGENCY: Anthropic’s S-1 Is Here (Tokenomics/ Markets) | Doug O’Laughlin, Jeremie Eliahou Ontiveros, Joey Brookhart, Jordan Nanos

   27 oktober 2026 · 55 min

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   Anthropic filed its S-1: revenue per dollar of compute is up 5.2x since Q1 2025, a customer who spent $1 last year now spends $9, and incremental gross margins are running near 90%. Jordan Nanos (@JordanNanos), Doug O'Laughlin (@fabknowledge), Jeremie Eliahou Ontiveros (@JeremieEO) and Joey Brookhart (@SaasquatchC) break down profitability, the half trillion in compute commitments, customer concentration, the 2027 compute roadmap, and whether OpenAI can keep up. Lees meer

   0:00 Cold Open

   0:53 Profitability

   2:10 The Datacenter View

   4:14 Compute Commitments

   6:28 Incremental Margins

   8:19 Customer Concentration

   12:00 Top Customers

   16:53 New Funding

   18:54 Underpromise, Overdeliver

   20:25 Elon and Neoclouds

   25:14 Compute Efficiency

   29:40 Can Anyone Catch Up?

   33:26 Surprises and Runway

   37:47 Market Reaction

   39:02 Holiday Usage

   42:56 Is OpenAI Cooked?

   48:44 Government Revenue

   50:45 Wrap-Up

4. Ep. 040 - ASML Is Building a Hybrid Bonding Tool, and Its Patents Show How (AI Supply Chain) | Jordan Nanos, Howie, Sherry Zhang

   23 oktober 2026 · 35 min

   Afspelen
   Every hybrid bonder on the market today brings the die to the wafer. ASML's patents bring the wafer to the die.Sherry Zhang and Howie join Jordan Nanos (@jordananos) to dig into the patents behind ASML's die-to-wafer hybrid bonder, why a track-based design could beat Besi on alignment and particle control, and why HBM won't adopt die-to-wafer hybrid bonding before 2029. The team also looks at how China is using hybrid bonding to keep scaling past its lithography limits, and what larger photomasks mean for High-NA EUV.Chapters:0:00 The Patent Tip-Off1:53 Hybrid Bonding 1014:06 Die-to-Wafer vs Wafer-to-Wafer5:43 Back End vs Front End8:05 Why HBM Waits Until 202913:45 Everything Comes to the Die18:26 Alignment and Cleanliness22:48 Bonding Instead of Shrinking25:49 China's Toolmakers Step Up28:25 Bigger Masks for High-NA33:29 Two Tool Stacks?Read the full article: ASML Is Building a Hybrid Bonding Tool!https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/asml-is-building-a-hybrid-bonding Lees meer

5. Ep. 039 - [EMERGENCY] Our Numbers Are "Insane." Here's the Proof. (Datacenters) | Jeremie Ontiveros, Reyk Knuhtsen, Jordan Nanos

   20 oktober 2026 · 35 min

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   Brad Gerstner put our 43 gigawatt forecast for 2027 on All-In, then again in his BG2 sit-down with Jensen, and called it too aggressive. The consensus counter sits near 25 GW, built on moratorium headlines and grid connection fears. Jordan Nanos (@JordanNanos) sits down with Jeremie Ontiveros (@JeremieEO) and Reyk Knuhtsen (@robotknower), who have been tracking the same capacity curve since March 2024, and it has barely moved across every model revision. So they aren't cutting it. They're raising it. Lees meer

   Read the article: https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/datacenters-2027-the-year-of-acceleration

   0:00 Cold Open

   1:17 The 2027 Forecast Debate

   2:21 Model Track Record

   5:27 Where the Pushback Comes From

   8:16 Delays and Haircuts

   12:31 The Top 40 Sites

   15:23 Leading Indicators

   20:40 Modular Builds

   25:41 Chips vs Datacenters

   27:53 Responding to Brad Gerstner

6. Ep. 038 - GLM 5.3 on AMD, NVIDIA, and Chinese Chips From Day One (InferenceX) | Kimbo Chen, Wenyao Gao, Jordan Nanos

   14 oktober 2026 · 44 min

   Afspelen
   GLM 5.3 only attends to the tokens that matter. It still has to keep every one of them. Lees meer

   Kimbo Chen (@kimbochen) and Wenyao Gao (@gao_wenyao) join Jordan Nanos (@JordanNanos) to dig into AMD catching NVIDIA on InferenceX, how post-training alone pushed an open-weight model within reach of Mythos, and whether Z.ai quietly tuned it for Chinese chips. The team also looks at how GLM 5.3 became a fallback when Claude and GPT refuse security work.

   Chapters:

   0:00 Cold Open

   0:37 Sparse Attention 101

   4:46 HiCache and HiSparse

   10:13 AMD Catches NVIDIA

   12:54 Capacity vs Bandwidth

   18:44 The Frankenstein Flash

   20:09 Mythos-Class From China?

   22:52 Post-Training Pipeline

   32:32 Chinese Chips, Day One

   39:54 GLM 5.4 and Beyond

   Read the full article: How GLM 5.3 Sparse Attention Affects HBM Memory Usage

   https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/sparse-savings-persistent-demand-inside-glm53

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

   9 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 23 min

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   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. Lees meer

   0:00 Opening

   1:48 Nvidia's Backstop Universe

   6:22 The $11T Funding Wall

   17:25 Balance Sheet as a Service

   26:27 ClusterMAX as Credit Risk

   31:51 Why H100 Prices Rose

   43:09 Token Profitability

   58:05 You Can't Go Back

   1:07:25 AI Debt vs Auto Loans

   1:11:14 Inside Nvidia's Backstops

8. Ep. 036 - $200 Buys $12,000 of Opus Tokens, We Bought Every Plan (AI Cloud TCO) | Max Kan, Jordan Nanos, Andrew Megalaa

   7 oktober 2026 · 50 min

   Afspelen
   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. Lees meer

   0:00 Cold Open

   1:03 Subsidies and Credits

   5:23 Token Types and Cache

   14:08 Model Value Charts

   20:51 Test Methodology

   26:54 Other Plans

   31:26 Utilization and Limits

   36:24 Token Efficiency

   41:24 Open Models

   44:22 Cyber and Capture

   Read More: https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/anthropic-subscriptions-offer-5x

9. Ep. 035 - Tech DD’s, Performance Projections, Benchmarks, Supply Chain, Investment Thesis (Consulting)| Abhilash Jain, Jordan Nanos

   5 oktober 2026 · 35 min

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   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. Lees meer

   0:00 Intro and Overview

   2:27 Client Types

   5:24 Custom Projects

   9:47 Strategy Work

   12:27 Consulting to Products

   14:33 Neocloud Due Diligence

   18:40 SLAs and Insurance

   22:32 Risk Assessments

   26:45 Build vs Buy

   29:19 Favorites and Outlook

10. Ep. 034 - Engrams: How DeepSeek Offloads KV Cache to DRAM and SSD (Core Research) | Jordan Nanos, Cam Quilici, Alec Ibarra, Bryan Shan

    2 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 3 min

    Afspelen
    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. Lees meer

    0:00 Intro

    0:31 Engrams

    12:27 AgentX Benchmark

    16:36 Profit Calculator

    23:40 TPU v7

    32:03 Vera Rubin

    40:49 Fast Tokens

    49:33 TileRT

    54:00 Chip Startups

    1:01:31 Wrap Up

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