The most interesting chip news this week was not from Nvidia, and the most interesting model news was not from San Francisco. The supply chain is rearranging itself quietly. Here is the thread.
Your coding tool speaks Chinese
Cursor’s Composer is built on K2.5, the trillion-parameter open-weight base from Beijing’s Moonshot AI. Millions of Western developers use it daily. Procurement never asked the question this raises. Meet Kimi →
DeepSeek wants its own silicon
The models were half the story. Reuters reports, citing three sources, that DeepSeek is designing an inference chip to cut its reliance on Nvidia and Huawei both. No confirmation, no timeline, and a very large signal. Read the reporting →
Every lab had the same idea
DeepSeek is not alone. OpenAI’s Jalapeño ASIC taped out in nine months, and the reason every lab is suddenly a chip company comes down to one word: inference, the layer where AI’s economics actually live. Why inference →
Beijing’s full stack
Zoom out and the pieces form a picture: MiniMax reportedly building a 2.7 trillion-parameter open model, Ant open-sourcing a robotics brain, MetaX chips nearing mass production. A complete domestic stack, assembling in public. See the stack →
The memory makers count the money
Whoever wins the chip race, the memory sellers get paid. Samsung just guided to a record $58 billion quarter, roughly 19 times last year’s operating profit, on AI demand alone. See the numbers →
One number
Nine months. Concept to tape-out for OpenAI’s first ASIC. Chip design used to take three years. How that happened →
One thing to use
Check your defaults. Claude Sonnet 5 is now the default for millions who never chose it. Defaults are the quietest strategy in AI, and knowing yours is the cheapest advantage. What changed →
That is the thread: the models crossed borders, the labs went vertical, and the memory makers sent everyone the bill. Hit reply with your take. Forwarded this? Claim your own copy.
Dr. Joseph Joshua
P.S. Next issue: the data center that brought its own power plant.
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