Kevin Xu - Interconnected (Page 3)

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 and Annual Letters•

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

Welcome to our first-ever quarterly investment performance deep dive letter. To new and old readers alike, a friendly reminder of who we are: at Interconnected, we run a long/short equity portfolio that is laser-focused on investing in the “picks and shovels” of the

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.

Topics: Open Source• Facebook• AI•

Meta Wants to Make AI “Moatless"

When Meta first released its open source foundation AI model, LLaMA, I thought it was a shrewd move to gain public trust for a social media giant with a huge trust deficit. However, the more I think about Meta’s open source AI posture

Topics: AI•

China's Underestimated AI Convening Power

Ever since Large Language Models (LLMs) became synonymous with AI, thanks to ChatGPT, the consensus is that LLMs created in China lag those from the US, and the gap will persist. For a variety of reasons – from tighter government regulations, to lack of quality

Topics: Announcement•

Re-Introduction

Last week, I spent a few days in New York City catching up with old friends and making new friends with readers of my newsletter. It was exhilarating! (Thank you to everyone who made time to hang out with me IRL. To those who

Topics: AI• Nvidia• Jensen Huang•

Jensen Huang NTU Commencement Speech 2023

Jensen Huang, two days after Nvidia's historic quarterly earnings, delivered the commencement speech at National Taiwan University – one of the elite universities in Taiwan. He shared three near-death Nvidia stories – making the wrong architecture choice when building for its first customer Sega,

Topics: Alibaba• Cloud Industry•

Is the Next Alibaba...AliCloud?

During Alibaba’s Q4 2023 earnings call, Daniel Zhang, Alibaba Group’s CEO, expressed a rather romantic optimism that “we would love…to see one of these little Alibaba's spinning off from Alibaba becoming another big Alibaba.” Among the six “little Alibaba’

Topics: Developer• AI• Open Source•

AI Will Create More Developers, Not Less

Last week, I started using a new brokerage service for my investments. It is one of those brokerages that can help produce an audited track record, access to more international exchanges, and other bells and whistles designed for the “pros”. Yet, the UI and

Topics: VC• China• Geopolitics•

“Hardtech” Corporate VCs Rising in China

Huawei runs a little-known corporate VC division called Habo Investment. I first wrote about Habo back in early 2021, when it was barely two years old. Yet, at that time, it had already made 22 investments, five of which have gone public on the