(00:00:00) Intel 18A Yields, Micron's $1T Moment & Nvidia's $91B Warning
(00:00:49) Rackscale Agentic Infrastructure Play
(00:01:41) Micron's $1 Trillion HBM Signal
(00:02:30) Nvidia Supply Warning and $91B Guidance
(00:03:03) US Closes China Chip Export Loophole
(00:03:33) ASML and Korean Wage Precedent

Intel's 18A process node moves from roadmap to revenue this week, as the Xeon 6+ begins shipping with over 36,000 cores per liquid-cooled rack — a direct challenge to GPU-centric data centre orthodoxy at exactly the moment agentic inference workloads are shifting CPU-to-GPU ratios back toward parity. A rackscale partnership with SambaNova and Foxconn puts disaggregated inference into commercial deployment, with Together.ai already running live customer workloads across Intel, SambaNova, and Nvidia Blackwell hardware.

Micron crossed $1.095 trillion in market cap this week, its Cloud Memory unit posting $5.28 billion in revenue at a 66% gross margin — accelerator-grade economics applied to memory, driven by insatiable HBM demand across every major AI accelerator platform. The margin risk if supply constraints ease by 2027 is real and worth modelling now.

Nvidia guided approximately $91 billion in Q2 FY2027 revenue while simultaneously warning that bottlenecks in memory, optics, and final assembly may persist through fiscal 2027 — a combination that reflects both genuine demand excess and deliberate demand management.

Also covered: the Commerce Department formally closing the subsidiary loophole allowing Chinese firms to source advanced AI chips through offshore affiliates; ASML's $10.3 billion Q1 revenue with a 45-billion-euro EUV backlog signalling a long capex runway; and a Samsung–SK Hynix wage deal setting a new labour cost floor across Korean chipmaking with structural implications for global memory margins.

The watchpoints: Intel's hyperscaler qualification timeline on 18A, HBM pricing stability through 2027, and whether US export enforcement closes real gaps or simply redirects them.

This episode includes AI-generated content.