The Age of Inference: Etched Startup Proves the Next AI Hotspot

The Age of Inference: Etched Startup Proves the Next AI Hotspot

Inference is becoming more important than pre-training in AI chips, including how pre-fill and decode work and why more compute is shifting toward serving models.  Today we walk through Etched’s ASIC system for transformer inference, its claims around efficiency and throughput, and the tradeoff between specialization and general-purpose GPUs like NVIDIA’s.  We also look at custom chip efforts from companies like OpenAI, Google, and Amazon, and argues that inference demand may keep growing as AI agents and long-running workloads expand. ------ 🌌 LIMITLESS HQ ⬇️ EMAIL US:           info@limitless.fm NEWSLETTER:    https://limitlessft.substack.com/ FOLLOW ON X:   https://x.com/LimitlessFT SPOTIFY:              https://open.spotify.com/show/5oV29YUL8AzzwXkxEXlRMQ APPLE:                 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/limitless-podcast/id1813210890 RSS FEED:           https://limitlessft.substack.com/ ------ TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Inference’s New Frontier 2:14 Training Versus Inference 5:19 Etched’s Bold Bet 7:58 Building the Whole Rack 10:48 TSMC and the Hard Problems 13:29 Why Inference Matters 14:59 The Transformer Risk 17:02 OpenAI’s Jalapeno Chip 18:59 Why Accelerators Keep Winning 22:28 The Market Is Underpricing It 23:10 NVIDIA Is Still in the Game 24:56 Vertical Integration Wins ------ RESOURCES Josh: https://x.com/JoshKale Ejaaz: https://x.com/cryptopunk7213 ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠ Josh works with Anthropic as a contractor. All views expressed are his own and do not represent Anthropic, its leadership, or its affiliates. Nothing in this episode is investment advice.

THIS WEEK IN AI: Fable 5 Returns, OpenAI Might Nationalize, Meta Sells Compute

We are so back. Anthropic announced the return of Fable 5, its safety updates, and related releases like Sonnet 5 and Claude Science.  In other news this week, we look into Meta’s brain-to-text research, OpenAI reports, new inference hardware, and recent robotics demos. ------ 🌌 LIMITLESS HQ ⬇️ NEWSLETTER:    https://limitlessft.substack.com/ FOLLOW ON X:   https://x.com/LimitlessFT SPOTIFY:             https://open.spotify.com/show/5oV29YUL8AzzwXkxEXlRMQ APPLE:                 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/limitless-podcast/id1813210890 RSS FEED:           https://limitlessft.substack.com/ ------ TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Fable 5 Returns 3:12 Banned, Safeguarded, Back 7:58 Sonnet 5 And Science 11:33 Meta Reads Your Mind 14:11 Meta's Compute Pivot 17:17 OpenAI's Power Play 23:26 Etched's Chip Breakthrough 27:37 Memory Market Shock 31:02 Robots In The Home 36:54 Industry, Not Housebots 39:01 Episode 200 Milestone ------ RESOURCES Josh: https://x.com/JoshKale Ejaaz: https://x.com/cryptopunk7213 ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠ Josh works with Anthropic as a contractor. All views expressed are his own and do not represent Anthropic, its leadership, or its affiliates. Nothing in this episode is investment advice.

The AI Energy Stack: The Actual Industry Winners

This is the long-awaited Energy Stack episode. The AI trade is shifting from GPUs to the power, wiring, and data center infrastructure needed to support them.  Today, we cover Bloom Energy, optical networking companies like Lumentum and Corning, Marvell’s role in AI hardware, and neocloud providers such as Nebius, CoreWeave, and IREN. ------ 🌌 LIMITLESS HQ ⬇️ NEWSLETTER:    https://limitlessft.substack.com/ FOLLOW ON X:   https://x.com/LimitlessFT SPOTIFY:             https://open.spotify.com/show/5oV29YUL8AzzwXkxEXlRMQ APPLE:                 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/limitless-podcast/id1813210890 RSS FEED:           https://limitlessft.substack.com/ ------ TIMESTAMPS 0:00 GPU Bottleneck Shifts 0:37 Power Becomes the Constraint 3:15 Five-Year Grid Delays 5:47 Bloom’s Fast Energy Fix 9:54 Data Transfer Hits Limits 11:51 Light Replaces Copper 17:25 Power Delivery Gets Harder 18:22 Marvell Wins Power Design 20:35 Renting Compute at Scale 21:08 Nebius and NeoClouds 25:17 Compute Becomes an Asset 29:47 The Substrate Layer Ahead ------ RESOURCES Josh: https://x.com/JoshKale Ejaaz: https://x.com/cryptopunk7213 ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠ Josh works with Anthropic as a contractor. All views expressed are his own and do not represent Anthropic, its leadership, or its affiliates. Nothing in this episode is investment advice.

GPT-5.6: OpenAI's New Model Cheated and Now It's Locked Away

In this episode, we discuss OpenAI’s restricted GPT-5.6, its model tiers, and questions raised by its benchmark results and reported behavior. We also cover pricing pressure from open source AI models, limited public access to frontier systems, and broader consolidation in the AI industry. ------ 🌌 LIMITLESS HQ ⬇️ NEWSLETTER:    https://limitlessft.substack.com/ FOLLOW ON X:   https://x.com/LimitlessFT SPOTIFY:             https://open.spotify.com/show/5oV29YUL8AzzwXkxEXlRMQ APPLE:                 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/limitless-podcast/id1813210890 RSS FEED:           https://limitlessft.substack.com/ ------ TIMESTAMPS 0:00 GPT 5.6 Banned 1:46 Three New Models 4:51 Benchmarks and Politics 6:43 Cheating on Long Tasks 8:26 Cheaper Frontier AI 11:01 Hidden Risks Revealed 12:34 Closed Access Dilemma 14:26 Government and Public Gap 19:40 Encryption All Over Again 22:04 Waiting for the Framework 23:08 AI Talent Consolidates 24:13 Frontier Moves Faster ------ RESOURCES Josh: https://x.com/JoshKale Ejaaz: https://x.com/cryptopunk7213 ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠ Josh works with Anthropic as a contractor. All views expressed are his own and do not represent Anthropic, its leadership, or its affiliates. Nothing in this episode is investment advice.

THIS WEEK IN AI: ChatGPT Built its Own Chip, Micron Soars, a24's $75m Google Deal

Today we're unpacking OpenAI’s plan to build its own custom AI chip—the Jalepeño—and what that means for its hardware strategy.  We also cover Micron’s strong earnings, its ties to Anthropic, Meta’s next model timeline, and new developments from Google, Amazon, Anthropic, and Valar Atomics. ------ 🌌 LIMITLESS HQ ⬇️ NEWSLETTER:    https://limitlessft.substack.com/ FOLLOW ON X:   https://x.com/LimitlessFT SPOTIFY:             https://open.spotify.com/show/5oV29YUL8AzzwXkxEXlRMQ APPLE:                 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/limitless-podcast/id1813210890 RSS FEED:           https://limitlessft.substack.com/ ------ TIMESTAMPS 0:00 OpenAI’s AI Chip Move 2:46 Compute and Hardware Strategy 5:30 Micron’s Earnings Surge 11:03 Meta’s Mythos Model Delay 14:47 A24 Meets Google AI 17:51 Sam Altman Movie Standoff 19:02 Claude Tag Enters Slack 21:10 Newsletter and Sponsorship Call ------ RESOURCES Josh: https://x.com/JoshKale Ejaaz: https://x.com/cryptopunk7213 ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠