Another round through the accumulation. No organizing idea, as usual — just what was still open.
Two on the memory chain, working the same problem from different ends. AMD’s acquisition of MEXT to make NAND flash behave like DRAM eases the crunch without actually threatening the incumbents, while Kioxia’s storage gambit reads as flash arguing its way up the AI memory hierarchy outright.
Elsewhere in the buildout, one company and one country: DeepSeek’s chip-design hiring adds to the custom silicon wave pressuring Nvidia, and IQM listed on Nasdaq as IQMX, becoming Europe’s first publicly traded quantum company.
A funding round with an unglamorous target: Arkenstone Defense came out of stealth with $35 million aimed at the operational burden that has quietly throttled the Pentagon’s commercial innovation push. Paperwork, essentially, as a strategic bottleneck.
Energy, where the retreat is now policy. The federal government is paying developers to cancel offshore wind leases even as Europe and Asia expand auctions, and on the ground the numbers follow: US solar installations fell 27% in Q1 ahead of the tax credit cliff.
For the eye and the road: the case for a handheld gimbal, which replaces neither a tripod nor good glass but earns its place regardless, and a building that commits fully to its metaphor in La Cité du Vin, twisting on the bank of the Garonne like wine in a glass.
To close, something to walk through: Ha Long Bay without the cruise brochure — roughly 1,600 limestone karst islands, and an honest account of what managing that many actually looks like.
Fifteen rounds. What the tabs left behind, once again.
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