Interconnected

($) AI Spending Against the Price of Time

Nvidia’s China Business is Important to US Geopolitical Positioning

But not in the way most people think. Sun Tzu, who wrote “The Art of War” roughly 2500 years ago, distilled many military strategies that are studied by both military and business leaders everywhere. One of the more well-known psychological warfare tactics he espoused

Topics: Cloud Industry• AWS• AI•

($) re:Inventing AWS: Keynote Digs and Narratives

Topics: Alibaba•

Alibaba's Reorg Hot Mess

Corporate reorgs are never easy. When Alibaba proposed its “1+6+n” corporate reorg in March, breaking up the giant into one single holding company with six loosely held, somewhat independent businesses, plus a cohort of other assets (the “n”), it was the mother

Topics: China•

($) The Age of Not Obvious: China in September 2023

Topics: AI•

China May Stay Permanently Behind the US in Generative AI

It was a crazy busy week in the world of generative AI. OpenAI DevDay and GPT-4 turbo, GitHub Universe and Copilot, Hu.ma.ne and the AI pin, Kaifu Lee’s 01.ai becoming a unicorn, Elon’s x.ai releasing Grok – the floodgate

Topics: AI• Open Source• Regulation•

($) AI Executive Order: Likes and Dislikes

Topics: Cloud Industry• Google Cloud Platform• AI•

How to Understand Google's Gemini Delay

The top three major cloud providers – AWS, Azure, Google Cloud – all reported their quarterly results last week. The market’s reaction was a striking divergence between rewarding Azure and AWS either their re-accelerating (Azure’s 28% year-on-year rate) or stabilizing growth (AWS’s 12%

Topics: Announcement•

📣Announcing Interconnected 2.0

Dear Subscribers and Readers: I have some personal and professional news to share with you. On the personal front, I recently got engaged to my lovely fiance. We went to China last month to visit family and friends – my first time returning since the

Topics: AI• Cloud Industry•

($) Second Order Effects of the Expanded US AI Chips Ban

Topics: Quarterly Investment Performance Letters•

($) Q3 2023 Letter: Sideways Market Continues with More War

Topics: Open Source• Regulation• AI•

🏛️Washington is Using China to Destroy Open Source

The word “China” has been used as the boogeyman for a lot of tech policy initiatives in Washington DC – some smart, some dumb. The dumbest one yet is the latest push to restrict and regulate open source – the one remaining norm of openness, transparency,

Topics: Investing•

💸Q3 2023 Performance Update

With Q3 officially behind us, I would like to share a quick update on the Interconnected portfolio’s quarterly investment performance update, as we have done in the previous two quarters. Here is our Q3 2023 (and cumulative 2023) performance and quarterly benchmarks comparison

Topics: EVs• CATL• Ford•

🔋Is Ford’s Pause on CATL Plant Really About China?

Ford’s pause of its $3.5 billion battery plant last week has been portrayed in many circles as a victory against Chinese technology. Many members of Congress, from Marco Rubio to Mike Gallagher, who have staked their political career on being permanently anti-China,

Topics: Cloud Industry• Regulation• AI•

🏦AI Is Turning Clouds Into Banks

Louise Matsakis of Semafor reported an important scoop this week: the White House’s upcoming executive order on AI may require cloud computing platforms to share customer information with regulators. If this scoop turns out to be true, this EO will basically implement a

Topics: Industrial Policy•

🇺🇲Are Labor Unions Raining on America's Parade?

Every Labor Day weekend brings about some fond memories for me. Early in my career, as a political campaign staffer, first with Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008, then on a few issues and local campaigns, I marched in many Labor Day parades, oftentimes

Topics: China• Macro•

5️⃣ China's Future Through the Wubi Lens

Recently, I did a weekend long road trip, and then promptly fell sick for a week (thus the delayed publishing of this post, sorry folks!). During my weeklong nasal-congestion-induced stupor, I kept thinking about the stretch of drive over the Blue Ridge Mountains where

Topics: AI• China•

🔊Capital Allocators China - Generative AI Panel

Last week, I was invited to do a panel discussion with members of Capital Allocators China on notable trends in generative AI between the US and China. This is the China chapter of Ted Seides’s Capital Allocators community, so the audience is mostly

Topics: AI• Public Market•

🟡 Generative AI Heading For (Short Term) Disappointment

The generative AI wave may have taken off with ChatGPT last November, but the first ripple started in June 2020 with the release of GPT-3. Back then, the model’s performance already made quite a stir, especially within the programming and engineering community. Tweets

Topics: Meta• Alibaba• Baidu•

☁️Llama 2 is China Cloud's Best Friend

When Meta’s large language model, Llama 2, was released a couple of weeks ago, it chose Microsoft’s cloud platform, Azure, as its preferred partner. Since the model is open source (though people dispute how open source it really is given its licensing

Topics: Investing•

🤑H1/Q2 2023 Performance Update (and A Poll)

With the first half (H1) of 2023 behind us, it is time again for my quarterly performance update on my investment portfolio. Here is the H1/Q2 2023 performance and benchmarks comparison (as of June 30): * Interconnected Portfolio H1: +220.12% (Q2: +53.66%

Topics: AI• Regulation•

🤖EU, China, US: Three Different Attitudes Toward AI Regulation

One interesting aspect of the fast-evolving landscape of generative AI is the global consensus on the need to regulate it. This was not the case at the dawn of the Internet or the early days of mobile social media. Perhaps precisely because regulators regretted

Topics: Resources• VC•

Good Chinese Language Tech Podcasts

A big part of my learning process is listening to audio products – audiobooks, podcasts, earnings calls, investors presentations. I can glean a lot of nuances from listening that are missing from reading transcripts, though listening does take more time. One overlooked genre I listen

Topics: Semiconductor• Geopolitics• South Korea•

🏴‍☠️Traitors or Treasures: the Semiconductor Talent Conundrum

Last month, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol called the global semiconductor competition “a national all-out war.” As the home country of the world’s two largest chips manufacturers, Samsung and SK Hynix, South Korea is a global semiconductor leader in all respects. Its

Topics: Cloud Industry• Geopolitics•

US vs China: A Cloud Proxy War

The US-China tech “cold war” appears to have a new front: the cloud. According to the New York Times, both the Departments of State and Commerce are looking into new ways to restrict Chinese cloud hyperscalers, e.g. AliCloud, Huawei Cloud, Tencent Cloud, etc.