Daily Update - May 7th, 2026
Anthropic goes to SpaceXAI, ARM CPU, MediaTek.
Semi markets exploding as usual. Anthropic desperate for compute, ARM sends mixed signals, MediaTek surges so much, markets stops trading it. Also, QCOM (Vik: FML.)
Let’s get into it.
Anthropic partners with SpaceXAI
Anthropic is partnering with SpaceXAI for access to >300 MW of capacity at the Colossus 1 data centers as it looks to increase its compute during a period of exponential growth. Anthropic is even interested in future space datacenters. They were cautious on compute once and got burned; now they’re are okay going to the far reaches of space for it. Dario admits that they only planned for 10x growth, but then got hit with 80x instead. In the last month, they have also announced compute capacity expansions with Amazon, Google and Broadcom. All the compute goodness seems to allow them to expand their usage limits on Claude.
Austin: I’m a Claude code fan… but finally installed Codex because it felt like my agents are always just sitting around waiting for some GPUs. But I haven’t gone all in on Codex yet. Should I? Am I missing out?
ARM: CPU-GPU Ratio Not Changing
In a statement that is rather confusing, and contrary to what Intel and AMD have been saying, ARM CEO Rene Haas thinks that core-counts are more likely to go up before CPU counts go up. From the call:
The way I think about it is that while the ratios may not go to more CPUs than GPUs from a chip standpoint, they probably will from a core count standpoint. And what do I mean by that? The way to think about Blackwell and Rubin and some of these large accelerators is that they’re pretty much reticle-limited, meaning that the size of the chip is already limited by the amount of area that a mass can print. So it’s not like you’re going to get many, many more GPUs, and then one could argue how efficient those GPUs are as they consume all that silicon. On the flip side, CPUs today, the Arm AGI CPU, for example, it’s 136 CPU cores, Vera, that’s 88. As I mentioned earlier, could I see those core counts doubling or quadrupling over the next number of years? Absolutely.
Hmm.
Vik: The main argument here is that increasing core count is lower hanging fruit, compared to making reticle limited chips. This is arguably correct when ARM AGI has only 136 CPU cores, you can squeeze more in the next gen. But, AMD Venice is already at 256 cores, 512 threads. For ARM, it makes sense to increase core counts first. But saying we will sell fewer CPU chips is not good for a burgeoning silicon CPU business like ARM.
Austin: I think Arm is still swinging for the fences regardless of unit volumes vs core counts. Presumably more cores means higher ASPs anyway. Arm put out a $100B TAM for server CPUs back at Arm Everywhere in March, and this week AMD followed up with a $120B TAM estimate. The pie is big and getting bigger. DARIO DON’T BE THE LIMITER ON MERCHANT CPU GROWTH! GO GET MORE ACCELERATORS, SO THEY CAN SELL MORE CPUs!
Taiwan Freezes MediaTek Trading Due to Surge
In an investor briefing, MediaTek (2454.TW) outlined plans for mass production of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and raised its revenue target for those chips to US$2 billion. Management said ASIC sales could eventually account for as much as 20% of company revenue if wafer foundry capacity and major customer orders come through. Investors bid the stock sharply higher over a few sessions, prompting the exchange to invoke its abnormal trading controls.
Vik: MediaTek is becoming increasingly important in the custom ASIC business. CoT with Google might be more viable than Hock Tan of Broadcom thinks it is.
Austin: MediaTek has TSMC wafer allocation. That’s important. And IIRC, MediaTek was at Intel Foundry’s Direct Connect back in April 2025. So MTK is presumably working on securing as many wafers across the industry as possible. That’s a good sign if you’re in the custom ASIC business; you can’t grow that business if you don’t have wafer allocation.
Quick Hits
Google DeepMind will use the player data from a space role-playing video game called Eve Online which revolves around deceiving, scamming and playing politics, to train intelligence models. To DeepMind, this represents a dataset of complex social simulations that will eventually be used to also improve the game.
Word on the street is that Cerebras IPO is oversubscribed by 15x, with $60B in incoming investments for a $4B valuation. See what happens when using eBay auction style for IPO?
South Korea plans $345M state funding to localize power semiconductors. SiC and GaN are becoming increasingly important.
QCOM 0.00%↑ stock is soaring based on what I’m not sure. Alex K and Vik sad. 😭
Key Data
We going to consume tokens at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Catch you tomorrow.