Baidu joins the efficiency game. Keen to catch up in the China AI game, Baidu has launched two newer and cheaper models, but it is not clear whether Baidu is offering further innovation on efficiency or just a cheaper price to stem market share loss to its rivals. Baidu has released the latest version of its foundation model ERNIE and...
Mr Tan’s options already seem very limited. The recruitment of Lip-Bu Tan as the new CEO of Intel should come with an expectation of a strategic shift that increases the probability of the company being broken up but as this cannot be done for some time, one wonders how the new CEO will do anything that changes Intel’s fortunes. Lip-Bu...
The domestic house bot is still a pipe dream. I do not doubt that there is a very large market opportunity to sell robots that can do the housework and many other things but the problem is still so large, that no one is going to get there anytime soon regardless of the hubris and hype being pushed by the...
Nvidia is not close to danger yet. The worst-kept secret in tech is that Nvidia’s customers are all trying to reduce their dependence on Nvidia by building their own silicon, but it’s a slow process and with Nvidia’s product cadence, I don’t see it being in danger anytime soon. Meta is working with TSMC (and I presume Arm (see...
AI is not needed to sell iPhones yet. Apple’s run of trouble with AI is continuing as a good proportion of the much-hyped Apple Intelligence services are being delayed again in yet another sign that Apple is still struggling with AI raising the possibility of an acquisition to plug the gap. The good news is that AI is not yet...
Monica demonstrates an advance in orchestration, not AGI. Manus AI is the latest AI story out of China but once the hype has died down, I suspect the real story will be how Monica has made an advance in teaching agents to execute tasks rather than making them more intelligent. Manus AI is the latest product from a Chinese AI...
More questions than answers. Alibaba has produced a model that performs pretty well, but it is so small that China is once again challenging the Western “bigger is better” philosophy. However, there are so few details about how this was created that it is impossible to know whether this represents another step forward for China or if it is merely...
A $165bn insurance policy The more TSMC invests in the USA, the more secure Taiwan becomes because if Taiwan, for some reason, goes offline then the TSMC fabs in the USA will become the most expensive paperweights in history. This is why I view the $100bn commitment by TSMC as being more about incentivising the USA to defend Taiwan against...
Tencent has to become the agent of choice on Chinese smartphones Tencent has passed a crucial milestone in ensuring the durability of the ecosystem it built in China by becoming the most downloaded AI chatbot on Chinese iPhones. This is a must-win because if someone else supplies the agent by which users access their smartphones, then Tencent is almost certain...
Richard is founder, owner of research company, Radio Free Mobile. He has 16 years of experience working in sell side equity research. During his 11 year tenure at Nomura Securities, he focused on the equity coverage of the Global Technology sector.
Nvidia GTC 2025 – Spread Betting
Nvidia is spreading its bets wide and early. Another confident keynote from Jensen Huang where technical slip-ups were part of the show and where the best was saved for last. Nvidia is leveraging its dominant position in AI training to move quickly into nascent adjacent markets such that when they start to develop, Nvidia will already be the go-to...