The Memory Trade: Samsung's Record Breaking Profit

The Memory Trade: Samsung's Record Breaking Profit

Samsung’s brain-melting profits are clear evidence of the growing role of memory chips in the AI supply chain, with a focus on DRAM, NAND, and high bandwidth memory.  Today we explore how Samsung and SK Hynix have gained pricing power as HBM demand strains factory capacity and pushes up costs for consumer devices. We also cover the market reaction to recent earnings, including share declines even after Samsung reported record profits and beat estimates. We look ahead to the limited number of memory suppliers, slow capacity expansion, and the upcoming U.S. listing of SK Hynix. ------ 🌌 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 Samsung’s Memory Windfall 1:32 AI Memory Power Shift 3:42 DRAM, NAND, and HBM 5:13 The Black Hole for Memory 6:40 Bubble or Supercycle? 7:38 Consumer Costs Surge 10:19 Prices Keep Climbing 11:43 Why Supply Can’t Catch Up 13:04 Memory Hits Consumers 14:14 How Long Can It Last? 15:09 Supply Still Tightly Constrained 16:25 Cheaper Memory, More AI 17:10 Stocks Hit a Bear Market 18:44 Sell-The-News Shock 19:56 Lessons from Past Cycles 21:16 SK Hynix Goes Onshore 23:13 IPO Demand Explodes 24:29 Long-Term Outlook Holds ------ 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.

Understanding The Past Year in AI: 200th Episode Special!

🌌 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/ ------ In our 200th episode, we review nearly 200 transcripts to identify recurring themes and track how the AI landscape has changed over the past 14 months.  Focusing on compute and memory as key AI investment themes, we revisit companies featured on the show and discuss future topics like specialized AI applications, local models, and space-based model training. ------ TIMESTAMPS 0:00 200th Episode Victory Lap 1:49 Early Bets Proven Right 3:44 Memory and Chip Windfalls 4:59 The Cursor Thesis Pays Off 5:34 Limitless Portfolio Returns 7:46 Where the AI Puck Goes 9:32 Trends Rising and Fading 12:57 Google’s AI Comeback 13:47 New Frontiers in AI 15:32 Space, Science, and Specialized AI 17:47 Turning Intelligence Into Value 20:15 Local Models and New Devices 22:45 Recursive AI and Geopolitics 24:56 Optimism for the Next 200 ------ 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 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.