Software Engineering Daily – SED News: AMD’s Big OpenAI Deal, Intel’s Struggles, and Apple’s AI Long Game

Date: November 4, 2025
Hosts: Gregor Vand (A) and Sean Faulconer (B)

Episode Overview

This "SED News" episode offers a deep dive into major recent developments in the tech and chipmaking industries, focusing on AMD's landmark partnership with OpenAI, Intel's ongoing turbulence, Apple's strategic positioning in AI, and the wider financial and technology landscape that underpins these moves. The discussion flows through news headlines, technical company analysis, and conversational speculation, topped off by memorable stories from Hacker News and some light-hearted future predictions.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Industry Headlines and Recent Deals

• Security AI Acquired for $1.7 Billion ([04:06])
  • Security AI specializes in privacy compliance, data discovery, and protection.
  • Acquired by "VM Software", a data protection/backups firm; both brands have strong U.S.-centered presence.
  • [B]: “Shows... there’s still tremendous momentum in the world of security but also specifically with what's happening in AI right now.”
• LangChain Raises $125 Million Series B ([05:50])
  • Major AI infrastructure and tooling player with open source roots hits a $1.25 billion valuation.
  • [B]: “It’s a good sign for open source… they’ve been able to adapt as well with the market change.”
• Periodic Labs: $300 Million Seed Round ([07:50])
  • Founded by OpenAI’s Liam Fidus and ex-Google Brain’s Ekin Dougis Kubik, aiming to build “AI for the physical world” – essentially an AI scientist.
  • [A]: “Investors were getting nervous because they had nothing actually to invest in... obviously a good place to be.”

AWS Outage: Impacts and Broader Reflections ([09:18 – 16:30])

• US-EAST-1 outage deeply affected businesses, including those far from the U.S.—even global teams working during Diwali were impacted.
• Core issue related to DynamoDB; cascading failures affected many AWS services.
• Speculation around AWS layoffs and potential loss of experienced engineers contributing to the issue.
  • [B]: “If a lot of your experienced engineers are no longer there and then you have some sort of outage like this... it could’ve not happened... because they were experienced enough to recognize... the signs.”
• Basecamp’s move away from AWS directly coincided with the outage, prompting broader questions on cloud dependence.

2. Apple: Design Reversals and AI Strategy ([17:09], [19:00])

• Rare reversal: Apple allows rollbacks on “Glass UI” after negative reception—possible sign of greater user input into design.
  • [A]: “I was very happy when they brought back MagSafe to MacBook Pros... if they just evolved rather than completely yo yo’d around...”
• Apple achieves record iPhone sales despite mixed reactions to new UI.

3. Deep Dive: The State of the Chip Makers (Main Topic) ([21:38])

Intel’s Struggles:

• Once an undisputed market leader, Intel now faces serious trouble, with former CEO estimating they need “about $40 billion” more to recover.
  • [A]: “It feels strange that they’re having to actually do this kind of stuff, like sell off assets and they’re Intel. But hey, here we are.” ([26:13])
• Loss of key customers (e.g., Apple), deteriorating product quality, expensive R&D missteps, and asset sales under newly appointed CEO Lip Bhutan.
• [B]: “They’ve been struggling... even more than certainly I was aware of.” ([22:54])

AMD’s Big Moves:

• OpenAI Partnership: OpenAI takes up to a 10% stake in AMD ([28:01])
  • AMD stock rose 25% after deal—OpenAI association transforms perception and stock value.
  • Long-term, multi-year partnership focuses on delivering AI compute and inference; 6 gigawatts planned, with 1 GW coming online next year.
  • [A quoting Lisa Su, AMD CEO]: “We’re tied to each other now.” ([29:01])
  • Strategic emphasis: “Partnerships like this take years to get comfortable.”
• Oracle Partnership: Huge order (50,000 AMD AI chips), part of the AI infrastructure wave.
• Collaboration with Intel: Joint initiatives like the “Checktag” x86 memory safety instructions.

Apple: The AI Long Game

• Launching the M5 chip, Apple carves out a privacy-focused, “run models locally” approach—less reliant on cloud AI.
  • [A]: “If they can get to a place where they have... best in class at local AI, I would say they’re making probably good strategic bets in the long term.” ([35:04])
  • Apple’s Tensor APIs aimed at developer use for local AI.

Nvidia’s Position

• Nvidia remains dominant, but faces looming threats from custom chip alternatives due to the high price premium for their chips.
  • [A]: “My take is... there’s going to be some decrease to Nvidia’s market share... people will create chips that fit particular use cases better.” ([37:54])
  • Nvidia’s defense: Complete server systems and CUDA ecosystem make it hard to fully replace.
  • [B]: “They’re betting on their entire CUDA ecosystem and developer tooling to go beyond just being like a chip provider.” ([38:55])

OpenAI’s Financial Web

• OpenAI reportedly involved in $1 trillion in AI deals in 2025, including $300 billion with Oracle (infrastructure) and $22 billion with CoreWeave (data centers).
• Heavy circular investments: OpenAI invests/spends with Nvidia, which invests back, money flows to AMD, and so on.
• [A]: “It’s just very unclear how they’re going to reach any kind of revenue that can cover these deals... It seems like everything is glued together by OpenAI at this point.” ([38:55], [40:14])

4. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• [B] ([28:01]):
  “It’s kind of crazy how much some association with OpenAI... dramatically impacts your public stock price.”

• Lisa Su (AMD CEO), as quoted by [A] ([29:01]):
  “We’re tied to each other now.”

• [A] ([24:25]):
  “They really need to get back up to actually delivering chips that people want to buy. It sounds really obvious, but that seems to be the biggest problem.”

• [B] ([31:04]):
  “OpenAI gives Nvidia $20 and then Nvidia gives $20 back to OpenAI and then they give that money over to AMD and AMD gives that money back.”

• On Apple ([35:04]):
  [A]: “This is the one that interests me the most because I don’t like the idea that we have to rely on these far away expensive, polluting data centers. Yeah, it'd be nice that we can actually do a lot of it locally.”

5. Hacker News Highlights ([41:00])

• AWS Outage Exposes Overdependence: Postman and other local-first tools failing when AWS is down, leading to alternatives like Bruno (open source Postman alternative) and renewed appreciation for Curl.
  • [A]: "You know what's better than downloading Postman? Not downloading Postman."
• Bypassing Kindle DRM:
  Ingenious technical deep dive on removing Kindle DRM, revealing Amazon’s heavy use of SVG font obfuscation and per-page randomized alphabets. The community agrees: if you buy it, you should own it.
  • [A]: “It's like buying a physical book and every time you want to open it, you need this special key from the bookshop.”

6. Predictions ([47:00])

• A: Anticipates concrete reporting soon around weaknesses in the OpenAI financial web—expect investigative journalism to reveal cracks in the trillion-dollar deal ecosystem.
• B: Foresees a post-AWS-outage trend of more companies announcing moves to multi-cloud setups for redundancy.

Important Timestamps

• [04:06] Security AI acquisition news
• [05:50] LangChain $125M round, open source AI tools
• [07:50] Periodic Labs $300M raise: “AI gets a wet lab”
• [09:18 – 16:30] AWS outage: causes, impact, and Basecamp’s exodus
• [19:00] Apple walks back on Glass UI, record iPhone sales
• [21:38 – 40:14] Main topic: state of Intel, AMD, Apple, Nvidia, OpenAI’s web
• [41:00] Hacker News: Postman down, just use Curl, Kindle DRM bypass
• [47:00] Predictions: OpenAI deal structure, multi-cloud future

Tone & Style

The episode retains its trademark blend of technical fluency, accessible banter, and global perspective, with both hosts sharing industry experience and honest opinions. The conversation stays pragmatic, skeptical about hype, and open to nuanced takes on the evolving AI, chip, and cloud ecosystem.