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SemiAnalysis’s Dylan Patel says Google’s TPUs are just as good as Nvidia’s in his nightly benchmarks, and without Jensen’s wheeling and dealing Google could take a ton of share “It’s sort of a three-pronged strategy. One is you have to have the technical progress, and that keeps you winning. The second is that you have to have supply chain prowess, and Jensen’s the only executive in the semiconductor industry that is going out there and drinking and meeting and convincing all of these supply chain companies to invest like they’ve never done before, give him the allocations.” “Now if all of a sudden there’s no Jensen, and Google’s like, actually, double my allocation. The TPU, from our benchmarking, we test TPUs. We run benchmarks on them on open source models every night. They’re just as good as Nvidia. But Google doesn’t have that DNA of wheeling and dealing with the supply chain, wheeling and dealing with customers. Now if that DNA is gone, the thing that is Jensen is gone, does that now mean Google can just take a ton of share? It’s a real big possibility.” “Same with AMD. Technically, they’re awesome, but they’re just not able to wheel and deal like Jensen is able to. And that’s been a lot of the reason why they’ve been behind. Of course, the software as well. One of Nvidia’s biggest moats being CUDA, and software is being rapidly displaced by the fact that AI models are so good at writing software.”

President Trump reveals Jensen Huang called him yesterday 'going through hell,' and says Huang should only have stepped down if the woman was a spy Stephen A. Smith: “Before I let you get on out of here, shifting, Jensen Huang.” Trump: “Yeah.” Stephen A. Smith: “Nvidia, resigned as CEO.” Trump: “Sad.” Stephen A. Smith: “Your feelings about that?” Trump: “Well, he’s a tremendous talent. He did something that nobody else, you know, you have China and these people, they copy. They pirate so much. Here’s a chip that’s so complex, so brilliant that you can’t copy it. I mean, it’s beyond copying because of their level of genius. What he’s done is incredible. He built an incredible, Nvidia is unbelievable.” Stephen A. Smith: “Should he have stepped down?” Trump: “Well, the big thing is, was the woman a spy? And I don’t know if that’s been determined yet. But if the woman was a spy, yes. If the woman was not a spy, perhaps it would be different. But I can tell you this, somehow, he’ll end up in his feet. I mean, I know him. I know him pretty well. I always thought of him as a fine man." "I spoke to him yesterday. He’s going through hell. What he feels most badly about is his wife and family. That’s what he is really, that’s what he told me. And in, strongest, he called me as the president. I’m president, and he called me. And he said, what I’ve done to my wife and family is, that’s what he talked about.”

Dylan Patel says Nvidia’s next CEO has to hold off OpenAI, Broadcom, Google, Anthropic, Meta, Amazon, and AMD chip teams, who are all 'fucking good' “It’s not like you’re fighting, no knocks against Palo Alto Networks, but their competitors are not that amazing, versus Nvidia’s fighting an OpenAI chip team, a Broadcom chip team, a Google chip team, an Anthropic chip team, a Meta chip team, Amazon chip team. These guys are fucking good. AMD. They’re all really good, and all these startups.” “They’re all good. It’s not like they’re incompetent. I think it’s very different. As great as Lisa Su is, she took down Intel, who’s incompetent.” “What is the person who defined a category and created it and kept all the invaders at bay? It’s very different than being second place or making smart tactical business decisions, innovating on something once there’s already a category established. It’s just very different.”

Dylan Patel says Nvidia without Jensen Huang becomes a committee that decides slowly, with no clear technical lead and a weaker hand to lock up supply below market rate “I think that’s the biggest worry for Nvidia, is that now it’s like a committee of people doing stuff. And that’s just gonna make decisions slow. Technically, they could fall behind because of this.” “There’s sort of three main things. There’s the technical side. Nvidia is so ingrained in helping make decisions there. There’s no one clear technical lead. I mean, maybe Jonah is, but then there’s a lot of people who are also directly reporting to Jensen doing technical stuff, so it’s hard there to move as fast.” “Supply chain wise, Nvidia wants to do aggressive things, lock up supply, convince the supply chain to do things that they’ve never done before in terms of technology and supply, and locking it up to Nvidia. And that’s probably a lot harder to do given whoever the CEO is is probably not as charismatic as Jensen, and they’re not gonna be like, ‘Yeah, sure, Nvidia. You can have 60% of my capacity or 70% of my capacity at a price that’s below market rate.’ That’s just probably tough.”

President Trump reveals he spoke to Nvidia's Jensen Huang today to see if he was feeling all right: “He said, I had no idea that she was a spy. And I really believe him” Q: “In sticking with Jensen Huang, when you went to China earlier this year in May, did you know about these alleged ties to the Chinese by then?” TRUMP: “No. I didn’t hear about it then. But a lot of people have heard about it, and Jensen totally denies that. I asked him today because I did speak to him today just to see if he’s feeling all right, how you doing? And I asked him about that. And he had, He said he had absolutely no idea that the person in question was a spy.” Q: “Are you concerned about that?” TRUMP: “I asked him that question. Did you have any idea that she was a spy? He said, I had no idea that she was a spy. And I really believe him.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Jensen Huang: “There are real concerns that need to be addressed with respect to the Nvidia situation” Jeffries was asked about Nvidia's CEO after a classified briefing for congressional leaders: Q: “Mister Leader, I know you just talked about Jensen Huang, but just to put a finer point in it, you had that briefing downstairs. We know that it came up. You said earlier that you would be asking about it. Are you concerned by what you’ve seen publicly in this Huang case?” JEFFRIES: “There are real concerns that need to be addressed with respect to the Nvidia situation. The briefing was primarily about Iran and the situation as it currently exists. It was undertaken by the director of national intelligence, Jay Clayton, and the CIA director, John Ratcliffe. What is clear, and the NVIDIA issue did come up, but that we’re going to need a full briefing specifically as it relates to the NVIDIA issue so we could all get to the bottom of what has happened and what the implications are in terms of America’s national security.”

Former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger reveals Steve Jobs had already spent four releases porting Apple's operating system to x86 before Intel even offered to do it for him. "They did a few little chips internally. It wasn't a big deal. And then the little chips got a little bit bigger, and Steve was a master of this, just starting these small efforts to build core competence inside the company. I remember when we had the first conversation with Steve about porting the operating system to the Intel chip from the power chip that they were running on before they moved to Intel. And we were quite proud of the silicon software competencies that we had in compilers and operating systems. "So Steve, we'll help you port the operating system to the x86." And I remember Steve said, "I've been working on that the last four releases." He had been preparing the core technologies inside of Apple for something that might happen in the future, and to me, I just remember I was just shocked."

Former $INTC CEO Pat Gelsinger warns Taiwan holds less than three weeks of energy reserves, and a Chinese blockade that browns out the island shuts its fabs for 90 days at a cost greater than the Great Depression. And no shot needs to be fired. "Now, let's make it ugly for a second. The island of Taiwan has less than 3 weeks, a big article in the Wall Street Journal two weeks ago on this, less than 3 weeks of energy reserves." "That should just put a chill in everybody's spine, right? Because the blockade after 3 weeks, the island browns out. When you turn off a fab, it doesn't come back on for 90 days." "The economic impact of a brown out of Taiwan is greater than the Great Depression." "Never do you need to do anything, a shot to be fired. You just need to say, great, no energy for 3 weeks." "That is scary to me. We need more resilient supply chains."

$GOOG's Ruth Porat says the biggest risk in the AI buildout is the ROI question, and focusing on short-term tactics at the cost of building a great company. "I think the biggest risk for everyone is when the question is asked, which it often is, how do you get to an ROI? That's going to force our teams to do something short-term and tactical. You can always do a cost cut to get something to drop to the bottom line, and that is not a way to build a great company." "So I think the risk is don't be so in the moment maniacally focused on what is it, but have a right mix of an engine that's continuing to drive the business, which also explains why you need to start building early for growth so that you can grow into it." ____ Follow @firesidealpha for more daily highlights of key business and technology conversations.