2025.12: How Nvidia Responds to a Threat

Here were a few of our favorites from Stratechery Plus this week. — Andrew Sharp

1. Nvidia and the Future of Inference. ChatGPT arrived in November 2023, Nvidia became one of the most valuable companies on earth shortly thereafter, and practically every day since, analysts have been wondering when Nvidia’s dominance might be disrupted. One concern is that cloud providers will eventually turn to cheaper ASIC chips custom-built to serve one specific inference use case. This week, Jensen Huang used his keynote at Nvidia’s GTC conference to address that possibility head-on: Ben’s Daily Update on Wednesday distills Huang’s arguments for Nvidia GPU dominance and explains why it’s compelling. What was most impressive, however, is how Nvidia and its founder still look nimble, aggressive and very much ready for a fight. — AS
   
   
2. Intrigue at the Panama Canal. A few weeks ago, President Trump was at the State of the Union announcing that CK Hutchison, a Hong Kong shipping conglomerate, would be selling its ports on the Panama Call to Blackrock for $22.8 billion. At the time, outsiders were surprised that PRC authorities appeared to have blessed CK Hutchison’s side of that deal. Fast forward to this week, and it’s now clear that the aforementioned authorities did not bless that deal, Xi Jinping is angry, and Chinese regulatory agencies are exploring ways to block the transaction. How will it play out? Can Xi scuttle the deal without provoking Trump? And how might this bear on the sale of TikTok? We discussed all that and more on this week’s episode of Sharp China, which you can listen to here. — AS
   
   
3. Where Sam Altman Came From and Where AI Is Going. This week’s Stratechery interview was with Sam Altman, and it was very interesting to me how his background tied into his current prominence in tech, and OpenAI’s transformation from a research lab to an accidental consumer product company. Come for that, stay for the interrogation of Sam’s choice to tweet in all lowercase letters and whether AI is the ultimate test of God. — Daman Rangoola

Stratechery Articles and Updates

• An Interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman About Building a Consumer Tech Company — An interview with Sam Altman about building OpenAI and ChatGPT, and what it means to be an accidental consumer tech company.
• Nvidia GTC and ASICs, The Power Constraint, The Pareto Frontier — Jensen Huang’s GTC keynote was a compelling argument in favor of Nvidia’s position relative to ASICs when it comes to inference.
• Intel’s New CEO, Reevaluating Gelsinger, Lip-Bu Tan and Cadence — Intel’s new CEO casts Pat Gelsinger’s tenure and firing in a new light: was Intel’s problem simply bad execution?
• Metallica on Vision Pro, Non-Immersive Immersive Video, Ping and AI — Metallica on the Vision Pro was cool, but ultimately disappointing, and symbolic of Apple’s need to control everything.

Dithering with Ben Thompson and Daring Fireball’s John Gruber

• Apple’s Preciousness
• Jensen’s Charts

Asianometry with Jon Yu

• What Happened to the Capacitors in 2002?
• The Once-Mighty Soviet Fishing Fleet

Sharp China with Andrew Sharp and Sinocism’s Bill Bishop

• Renewed Tensions on Taiwan; Xi ‘Angered’ by the Panama Canal Deal; TikTok Talks Heating Up; Multidimensional Trump Implications

Greatest of All Talk with Andrew Sharp and WaPo’s Ben Golliver

• A 2021 Redraft: Cade’s Revival, Mobley’s Ascent, Redrafting Multiple Jalens, Sengun Four Years Later, and More
• Tres Leches and Western Conference Mayhem, Trading Devin Booker, Broadening the All-Star Lexicon

Sharp Tech with Andrew Sharp and Ben Thompson

• Should Apple Buy Perplexity?, What Apple Could Learn from IBM, Vision Pro and Its Vaporware
• Deep Research and OpenAI’s Business Model, New Cost Structures and White Collar Concerns, The Future of Cognition and Companionship

The latest Sharp Tech video is about Chatbots as the Killer AI App of today.