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Silicon Futures is a neXt Curve reThink Podcast series on AI and semiconductor tech and the industry topics that matter.

This month, the world of AI and semiconductors has gone truly mad. Drama and volatility are the only ways to describe what we witnessed in July with AI agent swarms going rogue, a frantic effort to save open-weight models from being banned by the U.S. government, and AMD coming to market with their first rack-scale AI supercomputing system to take on NVIDIA's dominance.

In this episode, Leonard, Karl and Jim talk about some of the top headlines from July of 2026.

➡️ AMD Advancing AI 2026 highlights (3:47)
➡️ AMD + Cerebras partnership for inference AI (4:18)
➡️ AMD's strategy for heterogeneous AI inference compute (7:04)
➡️ AMD touts CPU portfolio and diversity for AI (10:34)
➡️ Is agentic AI compute the same as AI training compute? (13:57)
➡️ Is AMD's ecosystem 18-month behind NVIDIA's? (17:29)
➡️ Could ROCm.ai be a CUDA equalizer for AMD? (19:46)
➡️ Are we in the infancy of AI still? (24:54)
➡️ Will closed AI models and labs continue to lead? (26:34)
➡️ AI for security vs. AI for threat actors. Who wins? (33.39)
➡️ Is the gigawatt a good metric for "AI capacity"? (37:57)
➡️ QUANTUM NEWS! IBM acquires HRL Laboratories (43:58)
➡️ What to make of Intel's public commitment to 14A? (43:58)

Hit Leonard, Karl, and Jim up on LinkedIn and take part in their industry and tech insights.

Check out Jim and his research at Tirias Research at www.tiriasresearch.com.
Check out Karl and his research at Cambrian AI Research LLC at www.cambrian-ai.com. Check out Karl's Substack at: https://substack.com/@karlfreund429026

Please subscribe to our podcast which will be featured on the neXt Curve YouTube Channel. Check out the audio version on BuzzSprout or find us on your favorite Podcast platform.

Also, subscribe to the neXt Curve research portal at www.next-curve.com and our Substack (https://substack.com/@nextcurve) for the tech and industry insights that matter.

NOTE: The transcript is AI-generated and will contain errors.

DISCLAIMER: This podcast is for informational purposes only.

Send us Fan Mail

Silicon Futures is a neXt Curve reThink Podcast series on AI and semiconductor tech and the industry topics that matter.

Leonard Lee (neXt Curve), Karl Freund (Cambrian AI Research), and Jim McGregor (Tirias Research), unpack a dense and drama-filled month in AI and chips.

U.S. AI labs start a whining campaign as Chinese open-weight models threaten the AI world order, NVIDIA resuscitates the AI PC, neoclouds lay out their vision for reinvention, Apple flexes its agentic AI muscle, Qualcomm brings heterogeneous computing to the AI data center game, and much more.

In this episode, Leonard, Karl and Jim talk about some of the top headlines from June of 2026.

➡️ Jim's takes from COMPUTEX 2026 (2:41)
➡️ The agentic workstation and revival of the AI PC with NVIDIA RTX Spark (3:22)
➡️ WWDC 2026: Strike 3 for Apple Intelligence? - (10:25)
➡️ Revisiting Apple's AI strategy (11:20)
➡️ Neocloud takes from Nebius Inflection 2026 (16:03)
➡️ Neocloud and their enterprise pivot play beyond GPUaaS (18:40)
➡️ Leonard's take on Cisco Live! 2026 (21:43)
➡️ The race to reduced the procurement-to-first-token for AI clusters (23:55)
➡️ The great closed AI model drama (26:49)
➡️ The great U.S. AI lab whining campaign (32:00)
➡️ Inflective reflections on Qualcomm's Investor Day 2026 (34:10)
➡️ Qualcomm's Reverse Ricky Bobby move (37:57)
➡️ Qualcomm's hybrid approach to the AI data center opportunity (43:44)
➡️ Apple's dramatic move to raise prices thanks to memory crunch (49:05)

Hit Leonard, Karl, and Jim up on LinkedIn and take part in their industry and tech insights.

Check out Jim and his research at Tirias Research at www.tiriasresearch.com.
Check out Karl and his research at Cambrian AI Research LLC at www.cambrian-ai.com. Check out Karl's Substack at: https://substack.com/@karlfreund429026

Please subscribe to our podcast which will be featured on the neXt Curve YouTube Channel. Check out the audio version on BuzzSprout or find us on your favorite Podcast platform.

Also, subscribe to the neXt Curve research portal at www.next-curve.com and our Substack (https://substack.com/@nextcurve) for the tech and industry insights that matter.

NOTE: The transcript is AI-generated and will contain errors.

DISCLAIMER: This podcast is for informational purposes only.