Technology and Semiconductors
Julian Reyes covers the semiconductor supply chain and the capital spending cycle behind it, from wafer starts to power contracts. He worked as a supply chain analyst at an electronics manufacturer before spending four years at a technology research firm modelling fab capacity. He is more interested in lead times and depreciation schedules than in product launches.
The company added generative features to its core product and then did something unusual, which was to disclose what running them costs. Gross margin has fallen nine points in six quarters.
Wafer fab equipment spending is on course for a fourth consecutive up year. Booking patterns at the equipment makers point to a pause that the chip price data has not caught up with yet.
A queue position has become the most valuable asset in a datacentre development. The process that creates one was designed in the 1990s to connect generators, and it is being used to connect loads it was never meant to see.
Meridian Grid Compute has contracted more load for 2028 than it had in total three years ago. The transmission upgrades that make the load deliverable are being funded on a forty year utility rate base.
Front end capacity for the logic die is adequate and getting more so. The capacity to stack memory on top of that die and mount the result on a substrate is not, and it takes eighteen months to add.
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