AI Materials & Equipment: The AI Industry’s Roots
Layer 1 of the AI industry: why ASML alone is the industry’s chokepoint, how EUV lithography works, and materials. The series finale.
July 2026
AI Foundries: The Skeleton of the AI Industry
Layer 2 of the AI industry: why TSMC alone monopolizes advanced chip production, why Samsung and Intel can’t catch up, and the geopolitics.
GPU & Chip Design: The AI Industry’s Fingertips
AI · Industry Structure · GPU & Chip Design AI Industry Structure, Layer 2: GPU & Chip Design (Fabless) This
AI Memory, CPU & Storage: The AI Industry’s Memory
Layer 2 of the AI industry: the full memory hierarchy from registers to storage, and why HBM is such a hot topic.
AI Networking & Optics: The AI Industry’s Nervous System
Layer 3 of the AI industry, networking and optics: why InfiniBand and Ethernet clash in the tech tying tens of thousands of servers together.
AI Power: The Bloodline of the AI Industry
Layer 3 of the AI industry: why big tech invests in nuclear, SMRs, and gas turbines at once, plus the grid queue problem.
AI Cooling: The AI Industry’s Thermosta
AI · Industry Structure · Cooling AI Industry Structure, Layer 3: Cooling This is the fourth article in the “5
AI Cloud: The Heart of the AI Industry
Layer 3 of the AI industry: how AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud differ, why they build their own AI chips, and rising neoclouds like CoreWeave.
AI Models: The Brain Behind the AI Industry
Layer 4 of the AI industry: how ChatGPT’s real brain gets trained, why it costs so much, and how it differs from open-source models.