Silicon Futures for May 2026 – Qualcomm hyperscale AI, Cerebras IPO, Huawei 1.4 nm

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

This month, the AI narrative has rediscovered its mojo with hyperscalers continuing to double down on their CapExc on AI infrastructure, while realizing unrealized “other income” from their investments in AI startups and labs as the likes of Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI prepare to go public.

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

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

➡️ Qualcomm’s mystery hyperscaler customer? (2:07)
➡️ The geopolitical risk of playing the AI game (4:46)
➡️ Huawei teases “1.4 nm” chip and novel architecture (7:29)
➡️ Cerebras finally IPOs! (14:17)
➡️ NVIDIA’s Q1 FY27 results and new reporting structure (20:57)
➡️ Memory vendors are now $trillion market cap (23:50)
➡️ Will Apple use Intel Foundry for Apple Silicon? (25:42)
➡️ The state of Intel Foundry business (28.22)
➡️ Alex Katouzian joins Intel to head up Client Computing Physical AI (29:07)
➡️ AMD proving they are more than AI accelerators (30:57)
➡️ Is the AI infrastructure boom driving IoT revival? (32:15)
➡️ AMD, Arm, NVIDIA, Intel, and the CPU boom (34:50)
➡️ Dell’s pivot toward warm-water cooling (37:36)
➡️ Dell leans into AI workstation! (38:57)
➡️ NVIDIA investments in Taiwanese AI startups (40:56)
➡️ “Other income” unrealized gains of AI investments (42:29)
➡️ All eyes on COMPUTEX 2026 (43:21)