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The Winners Of The AI Boom You Never Thought About
00:19:43
Big AWS outage took down half the internet overnight. X wants you to be able to snap up dormant or desirable X handles. Blackwell chips look like they’ve hit volume production in the US. And you know who else is benefiting from the AI boom? Crypto miners and makers of plain old cables.
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Tech Brew right home from Monday, October 20th, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough today big AWS outage took down half the Internet overnight. X wants you to be able to snap up dormant or desirable X handles. Blackwell chips look like they've finally hit volume production in the US and you know who else is benefiting from the AI boom? Crypto miners and makers of plain old cables. Here's what you missed today on the world of tech. As I am typing this, there are still a few residual problems I've been noticing around the web all morning, but overnight there was a big AWS outage that took down a bunch of things including Amazon, Fortnite, ChatGPT and Snapchat. AWS says the underlying DNS issue has been fully mitigated and most operations are succeeding normally now after a major US East 1 outage beginning at 3:11am Eastern Time. Quoting the Verge, as of 6:35am Eastern Time, the AWS status Checker is reporting that most AWS service operations are succeeding normally now, and some of the impacted platforms, including Fortnite, Epic Games Store and Perplexity, have announced that they are fully recovered and back online. However, as of 9:50am Eastern Time, Amazon says that multiple services in the US East 1 region are still impacted by operational issues and that it is working toward a full resolution. The AWS dashboard first reported issues affecting the U.S. east 1 region at 3:11am Eastern Time, with global services and other regions also taken offline. The cause of the outage hasn't been confirmed, and it's unclear when regular service will be fully restored. Users on Reddit reported that the Alexa smart Assistant was down and unable to respond to queries or complete requests, and in my own experience, I found that routines like preset alarms were not functioning. The AWS issue also impacted platforms running on its cloud network, including Perplexity, Airtable, canva, and the McDonald's app. We are actively engaged and working to both mitigate the issue and understand the root cause, Amazon said in an Update published at 3:51am Eastern Time. In a 5:27am Eastern Time update Amazon said. We are seeing significant signs of recovery. Most requests should now be succeeding. We continue to work through a backlog of queued requests, End quote Foreign says it has paused Sora's ability to generate videos resembling Martin Luther King Jr. At the request of his estate after some users created what they called, quote, disrespectful depictions. Quoting TechCrunch While there are strong free speech interests in depicting historical figures, OpenAI believes public figures and their families should ultimately have control over how their likeness is used to OpenAI said in a post on X from its official Newsroom account. Authorized representatives or estate owners can request that they're like this, not be used in Sora cameos, end quote Dr. Bernice King, Dr. King's daughter, posted on Instagram last week asking people to stop sending her AI videos resembling her father. She joined Robin Williams Daughter, who also asked Sora users to stop generating AI videos of her father. The Washington Post reported earlier this week that Sora users had created AI generated videos of Docker King making monkey noises and wrestling with another civil rights icon, Malcolm x. Scrolling through OpenAI's Sora app, it's easy to find crude videos resembling other historical figures, including artist Bob Ross, singer Whitney Houston and former President John F. Kennedy. The licensor of Dr. King's estate did not immediately respond to TechCrunch's request for comment. OpenAI has added other restrictions to Sora in recent weeks since its launch earlier in October, the company said it planned to give copyright holders more granular control over the types of AI videos that can be generated with their likeness. That may have been in response to Hollywood's initial reaction to Sora, which was not great. As OpenAI adds restrictions to Sora, the company seems to be taking a more hands off approach to moderating content in ChatGPT. OpenAI announced this week that it would allow adult users to have erotic chats with ChatGPT in the coming months. Nick Turley, the head of ChatGPT, told me earlier this month that the best way to teach the world about a new technology is by putting it out in the world, he said. That's what the company learned with ChatGPT, and that's what OpenAI is finding with Sora too. It seems the company is learning something about how to distribute this technology as well. End quote X is apparently planning a handle marketplace for Premium plus and business subscribers to search for and request inactive usernames. Rare X handles can cost between $2,500 to even more than $1 million. Quoting TechCrunch priority handles refers to usernames that often include full names, multi word phrases or alphanumeric combinations. These handles are free to request for Premium plus and Premium business subscribers. If a user's request is approved, X will transfer the handle to them for free. However, if a user cancels or downgrades their subscription, their old handle will return to their account after a 30 day grace period. X notes that examples of priority handles include usernames like Gabriel Jones, Pizza Eater and Paradox AI. The launch of the new Marketplace will allow X to boost revenue through direct payments. It will also potentially increase interest in its premium subscription offering as it continues to deal with a struggling ads business. The social network says not all requests are approved and that requests are usually reviewed within three business days. Once a request is approved, the user's old handle is reserved and won't be given to anyone else. So called rare handles include short, generic or culturally significant names. These handles won't be available through standard requests and will instead be offered through public drops and direct pre priced purchases. Available by invitation only for public drops, multiple people can apply for the handle. X says selection is based on a user's past contributions on the platform, their intended use of the handle, and their engagement and reach on the social network. As for direct purchases, pricing is based on a number of factors including popularity of the word, character length and cultural significance. Once purchased, the user gets to keep the handle even if their premium subscription ends. Examples of rare handles include usernames like Pizza, Om and On. X explained on a help page that it's launching the marketplace instead of releasing inactive handles at once for anyone to claim because it wants to prevent bot spam or misuse, noting that the Marketplace quote allows for fair and secure distribution through a controlled process. If a user has a specific inactive handle in mind that isn't on the marketplace, they can register their interest to add the handle to their watch list. If it becomes available, X will notify them. End Quote Smart ring maker Aura is launching a redesigned app with a new metric to show a weekly overview of stress management and says it is working with the US FDA on a blood pressure study. Quoting the Verge, the updated Aura app will introduce a new cumulative stress feature that provides a weekly overview of how the body manages and recovers from sustained stress, drawing from sleep, heart rate, temperature and activity data. The redesign, Cumulative Stress and a new stress management dashboard will be available on iOS and Android globally in the coming weeks, according to Aura. The company also announced that it's working with the FDA on a blood pressure study that will be available for US Members of its oralabs early access platform in the coming months. Its aim is to develop a feature that can identify early signs of hypertension, a term for abnormally high blood pressure in the blood vessels. Study participants will be notified of their current likelihood of hypertension by combining OURA Ring data with information collected via questionnaires around family history, medication and lifestyle habits. Several Apple Watch models already support hypertension notifications after the feature cleared the FDA in September. End quote@TSMC Arizona, Nvidia and TSMC unveiled the first Blackwell chip wafer made in the US Representing that Blackwell has reached volume production. Quoting Axios, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang visited TSMC semiconductor manufacturing facility in Phoenix on Friday to announce the advance. You built something incredible, but you will realize in time that you are part of something historic, huang told several hundred TSMC employees who gathered to celebrate the announcement. The single most important chip is now being produced in America, wang said. Wang gave President Trump high praise and repeatedly made clear that this is just the beginning of AI related manufacturing in the US Wang on multiple occasions lauded Trump's vision to reshore manufacturing. Nvidia and TSMC are working together to build the infrastructure that powers the world's AI factories right here in America, Nvidia said in a blog post. TSMC Arizona is expected to create thousands of high tech jobs and attract a broad ecosystem of suppliers, Nvidia and TSMC said in a joint statement. Today we've laid the foundation for the US to lead the AI race at the infrastructure level, huang told the crowd, adding that Nvidia plans to spend half a trillion dollars on AI related infrastructure in the coming years. The wafer is a crucial first step in reassuring critical chip production in the US but there's still a long way to go before the country's chip demand could be free of dependency on companies and factories overseas. End quote.
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First, CNBC takes a look at Credo, which makes active electrical cables to connect AI servers and whose stock price has more than doubled this year after soaring 245% last year. Credo's purple cables are the signature offering of Credo, a 17 year old silicon Valley based semiconductor company whose name rarely gets mentioned alongside the leaders of the AI boom. But Wall street has taken notice. CREDO shares have more than doubled this year to $143.61 after soaring 245% in 2024. The company's market cap, which was about $1.4 billion at the time of its IPO in 2022, now sits close to $25 billion. Credo is angling to position itself as a key supplier in the trillion dollar AI infrastructure expansion and is benefiting as the money flows downstream. The stock jumped 5% on Friday after analysts at JPMorgan Chase initiated coverage with the equivalent of a buy rating and a $165 stock price. They said the active electrical cable or AEC market, which CREDO pioneered, is on pace to hit $4 billion by 2028 as all the major hyperscalers invest in data center buildouts. The industry outlook is supported by increasing deployments from major companies such as Amazon, Microsoft and xai, as well as broadening adoption, including Meta and more, the analyst wrote. They predicted annualized revenue growth for CREDO of at least 50% through 2028. Revenue in fiscal 2025, which ended in early May, more than doubled to $436.8 million. The company also turned profitable, recording net income of $52.2 million after losing 28.4 million the prior year. Analysts are expecting sales to more than double again in fiscal 2026 to almost $1 billion, according to LSEGG. Credo's purple AECs cost between $300 and $500 each, depending on bulk discounts and other negotiations, according to an estimate from the 650 Group, an industry researcher. They are sturdy, moderately thick copper cables wrapped in a braided covering with big connectors containing chips on each side. Previous servers typically had one or two processors on a motherboard. Individual servers today can have up to eight, and the most powerful AI models require Potentially millions of GPUs all working together as one. Each GPU needs its own connection to the switch, the term for a computer that routes data around the cluster, often mounted on the top of a server rack. Nvidia's latest product slots several of these boards together to comprise a system with 72 GPUs. Next year's fastest racks will have twice as many, and the following year a Kyber rack will have 572 GPUs. Nvidia says in the past, Credo's opportunity was one cable per server. But now Credo's opportunity is nine cables per server, said Alan Weckel, an analyst at 650 Group. He estimates that Credo has 88% of the market for AECs, which are also made by Astera Labs and Marvel. Many GPUs are connected by fiber optic cables powered by components made by companies like broadcom and coherent. AECs offer an alternative to fiber optic cables. They have chips called digital signal processors on both sides that use sophisticated algorithms to pull data out of the cable, enabling much longer lengths than traditional copper cables. Credo's longest AEC is 7 meters long. Credo CEO Bill Brennan, who joined the company in 2013, told CNBC that hyperscalers are choosing his company's cables because they are more reliable than fiber optic cables. He said customers are trying to avoid what's called a link flap, where one part of an AI cluster goes offline because the optical cable connecting them fails, costing hours of pricey GPU time. And then secondly, Bloomberg takes a look at how shares of bitcoin mining companies pivoting to AI and infrastructure have soared this year in 2025, with a fund tracking mining firms up 150% year to date, quote shares of the large scale computing outfits that make bitcoin work are once again outperforming the original cryptocurrency as more pivot to hybrid models built around artificial intelligence and high performance computing. Long ago dubbed miners because of the perceived similarities to the mining of traditional commodities such as gold, when creating bitcoin, the companies have often been at the mercy of the volatile price swings experienced by the Token. Two years ago, the sector benefited at the initial start of the AI boom, only to see their share prices tumble the following year as mining profitability declined and competition increased. Even with the crypto market carnage over the past week, bitcoin is still up about 14% in 2025 and within striking distance of the all time high of almost $126,000 reached at the start of the month. Investors have stampeded into the Token since the second Trump administration embraced a pro crypto agenda. Yet the biggest winners of this year's crypto comeback aren't bitcoin holders, but the miners themselves. A fund tracking listed mining firms has soared more than 150% year to date. Unlike during past cycles when the miners would rally while bitcoin was gaining, the companies are now being viewed for what they are becoming tech infrastructure firms. Investors are almost exclusively valuing bitcoin miners for their HPC AI opportunities At this point, said John Todaro, analyst at Needham & Co. We would say less than 10% of our conversations on miners are actually on bitcoin and mining. Cipher Mining and Iron exemplify the trend. Shares in the Nasdaq listed firms have soared about 300 and 500% respectively this year as they pivot from pure bitcoin mining to AI infrastructure. Earlier in 2025, Cypher signed a 10 year, roughly $3 billion co location deal with Fluidstack, backed in part by Google, which guaranteed $1.4 billion in lease obligations in exchange for warrants representing a five point. The agreement is one of the clearest signals yet that the line between crypto mining and AI computing is blurring. Iran, meanwhile, closed a $1 billion convertible notes offering on Wednesday. Terra Wolf, a US based miner, also announced plans this week to issue $3.2 billion in senior secured notes to finance an expansion of its Lake Mariner data Center in Barker, New York. Singapore based BitDeer Technologies rallied almost 30% on Wednesday after detailing its plans to convert major mining sites into AI data centers, including its 570 megawatt facility in Clarington, Ohio. The company said that in a best case scenario, full conversion could yield annualized revenue exceeding $2 billion by the end of 2026. End quote. Nothing more for you today. Talk to you tomorrow.