Daily Update - May 20th, 2026
Dell goes heavy on AI-workstations. Nvidia hand delivering CPUs, Samsung worker strike becomes national issue.
On today’s hit list: On-prem AI getting a foothold with Dell’s AI workstations, Nvidia’s Ian Buck becomes CPU Santa, and Samsung strikes become national issue.
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Dell Tech World brings frontier models on-prem
At Dell Technologies World 2026 on Monday, CEO Michael Dell announced on-prem partnerships pulling frontier models from Google, OpenAI, xAI, Palantir, and Reflection inside customer-owned Dell infrastructure. Dell also unveiled a Desk-Side Agentic AI workstation running 70-billion to 1-trillion parameter models locally. Dell reports 5,000 customers on the Dell AI Factory. (Dell, ServeTheHome)
Austin: I’m a firm believer in the value prop of on-premises and desk-side AI.
Run the AI near your proprietary data. Don’t give the data to Sam or Dario.
Buy token generators. Don’t buy tokens.
And hey, the model labs are going to play ball. Why not? Let the customer pay for the inference hardware after all! Much better margins, no?Vik: I would like to run AI at home. I already run my own cloud storage, among other services. But the memory requirements and hardware costs do not justify it for me personally.
NVIDIA ships first Vera CPUs to Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceX, Oracle
NVIDIA delivered its first Vera CPUs to Anthropic in San Francisco, OpenAI in Mission Bay, and SpaceX in Palo Alto on Friday, followed by a shipment to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure in Santa Clara on Monday, with the units hand-delivered by Ian Buck, Nvidia’s VP of hyperscale and high-performance computing. The deliveries land the same week NVIDIA reports first-quarter fiscal-2027 earnings after the close. (Nvidia).
Vik: LOL, Ian is the Compute Santa dropping off Vera CPUs to the “good” Bay Area AI labs. “Bad” ones like Google who shill TPUs all time get a lump of coal like Gaudi GPU.
Korea floats emergency action as Samsung strike talks resume
Samsung Electronics and its largest union resumed talks on Monday in a last-ditch effort to avert a strike, as South Korean Prime Minister Kim Min-seok warned that the government could invoke emergency labor mediation if a walkout threatens the national economy. The remarks marked the first official mention of emergency intervention. Micron shares fell as much as 7% on concerns that a work stoppage at the world’s largest DRAM and NAND producer would tighten memory chip supply, while Korean stocks dropped 5% amid the chip slump and broader overheating concerns. SK Hynix has separately been running at full HBM allocation, according to industry reports. (The Elec, Bloomberg)
Austin: I’ve never paid so much attention to South Korea!
Vik: Meanwhile, SK Hynix is picking up all the dropped pennies from missed Samsung business opportunities.
Quick Hits
Advanced Packaging
Amkor is expanding its US manufacturing capacity in Arizona. Could this really be for processing Intel EMIB?
Foundry & Equipment
Intel customers are prepaying for ABF substrates. Per CEO Lip-Bu Tan on CNBC, “a couple of customers” have prepaid Intel for substrate supply, citing a very tight supply chain. (More)
TSMC Arizona posted a record Q1 profit that exceeded SMIC and UMC’s combined earnings. Per DigiTimes, premium pricing for US-made wafers plus an Apple/AMD/NVIDIA mix is the driver.
Memory & Storage
Samsung’s P5 Fab 1 in Pyeongtaek now slips to 2027. Per industry reporting, both Samsung and SK Hynix are running a “Super Fast Track” sprint on fab construction. Roughly 250k WPM of additional Chinese memory capacity is expected next year — commodity DRAM/NAND, not HBM. (More)
Samsung adviser warns the AI-driven memory super-cycle may lose momentum by 2028 as Chinese chipmakers aggressively expand DRAM and NAND production. (SCMP)
Power & Data Centers
Analog Devices is acquiring Empower for $1.5B in cash (confirmed). Per EE Times, Empower’s voltage-regulation IP gives ADI a foothold in AI server power.
Vitzrocell, a Korean battery maker, is moving into the AI data-center market with lithium-ion capacitors for backup power applications. (The Elec)
Photonics
POET lands $400M funding to ramp AI photonics production (EE Times)
Key Data
Inference is king, and the king needs power. Surfaced by @jukan05 on X.
You can’t miss this!
Just check out this insane video from Gemini Omni — create anything from anything, starting with video. Not 100% sure what it does, but the video is cool!
Original X post.