Semiconductor

The Semiconductor Industry Is Hitting a Wall—And Nobody Wants to Admit It Yet The knowledge base snippet I was handed is basically useless for this assignment, which is kind of perfect because it mirrors what’s happening in semiconductor journalism right now: lots of noise, not enough signal. But here’s what matters: EE Times recently covered imec’s CEO making a crucial point about AI semiconductors that everyone in the industry is dancing around instead of directly addressing. ...

The Semiconductor Industry Is Booming—And That Should Terrify You The numbers look fantastic. Global chip sales jumped 61.8% year-over-year according to the latest Semiconductor Industry Association data. Month-to-month growth hit 7.6%. Compound semiconductor materials are growing at 14% CAGR. Everyone’s hiring. Fabs are running hot. The industry is printing money. But here’s what nobody wants to say out loud: we’re not actually solving the problems that matter, we’re just riding a wave that’s about to crash. ...

The Healing-Justice Gap in Tech Infrastructure: Why Semiconductors Matter More Than Silicon Valley Admits Here’s the uncomfortable truth nobody in the semiconductor industry wants to say out loud: we’ve built the entire foundation of modern computing on a framework that treats communities like externalities. The knowledge base you’ve handed me—healing-centered development, trauma-informed outreach, youth-designed futures—these aren’t buzzwords. They’re a direct indictment of how the tech industry has approached its most critical infrastructure. And I’m not talking about data centers. I’m talking about where semiconductors actually come from, where they’re manufactured, and who bears the cost. ...

The Semiconductor Industry Is Having an Identity Crisis—And That’s Actually Good News The semiconductor sector is at a bizarre inflection point. We’re witnessing simultaneous booms in AI chips, geopolitical fragmentation, record capital expenditure, and genuine technological breakthroughs—yet the industry still can’t decide what it actually wants to be. That’s not a bug. It’s the feature that’s going to define the next decade. Let me explain what’s really happening beneath the headlines. ...

Cerebras Systems went public yesterday and the market responded like a golden retriever seeing a tennis ball. An 81% first-day surge, $5.55 billion raised, year’s biggest IPO. The narrative writes itself: AI chip shortage, specialized hardware wins, the future is here. Except the narrative is doing what narratives do—oversimplifying a much messier reality where Cerebras has solved one problem brilliantly while inheriting several others that no amount of hype can engineer away. ...

Cerebras Systems went public yesterday and the market absolutely lost its mind. An 81% first-day surge, $5.55 billion raised, and suddenly every tech investor with a pulse is convinced we’ve found the next NVIDIA. But here’s what nobody wants to say out loud: a massive IPO pop usually means one of two things—either the market is pricing in something genuinely transformative, or it’s pricing in hype. Given what we know about Cerebras’s actual technology and competitive position, I’m betting it’s closer to the latter. ...