CEO, Founder at Techstrong
Alan Shimel
All Articles
15 articles
The Neoclouds’ Indispensability Trap
Jim Chanos has a point about CoreWeave. The famed short-seller recently argued that neocloud moats are “both dug and filled” by Nvidia. His reasoning is straightforward: Nvidia supplies the GPUs that neoclouds rent to customers, influences their allocation and pricing, and possesses the ability to weaken or bypass the intermediaries whenever it chooses. Chanos went […]
Alan Shimel · Aug 17, 2026 · 10 min
Intel’s $36 Billion Second Chance: The Technology Is Working. Will the Business Follow?
One year ago, the United States government made an extraordinary bet on Intel. On Aug. 22, 2025, Washington agreed to invest $8.9 billion in the company, converting previously awarded CHIPS Act and Secure Enclave funding into an equity stake. The goal was bigger than rescuing another struggling American corporation. It was to preserve something the […]
Alan Shimel · Aug 12, 2026 · 9 min
Beyond the Die: The Definitive Guide to Advanced Packaging in the AI Era
For decades, semiconductor progress was told through the story of the chip itself. That story still matters — but it no longer explains how the most advanced AI systems get faster. The most consequential change is now happening around the die as much as inside it. In Beyond the Die: The Definitive Guide to Advanced […]
Alan Shimel · Aug 4, 2026 · 1 min
The Wall We Built Is Becoming Their Foundation
ASML shed about 5% of its market value on Monday because of a report about five machines. The Information reported that a Shanghai-based, state-backed manufacturer has begun mass-producing immersion deep ultraviolet lithography tools, with roughly five units expected to ship this year and about twenty in 2027. For scale, ASML shipped 131 immersion DUV systems […]
Alan Shimel · Jul 29, 2026 · 5 min
Moore’s Law Didn’t End. It Changed Direction
IBM’s “0.7nm chip” is part marketing sleight of hand and part genuine semiconductor breakthrough. Ignore the decimal point. Nanostack—and the decision to build silicon upward—is the real story. Let’s get the marketing out of the way first. IBM says it has introduced the world’s first “sub-1 nanometer chip technology.” More specifically, the company calls this […]
Alan Shimel · Jul 24, 2026 · 9 min
Google Is Betting the AI Model Is Ready to Become the Machine
For most of computing history, progress meant separating the software from the machine. Software could be changed, upgraded and replaced without throwing away the computer beneath it. Hardware became increasingly general purpose, while software developers gained the freedom to decide what those machines would do. The decoupling of hardware and software helped create the modern […]
Alan Shimel · Jul 23, 2026 · 9 min
AI Can Be Underbuilt and Overinvested at the Same Time
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. delivered almost everything an AI infrastructure bull could have wanted from its second-quarter earnings report. Revenue reached $40.2 billion, an increase of 33.7% from a year earlier. TSMC recorded another quarter of record profit. Gross margin reached 67.7%, operating margin came in at 60.3%, and management raised its expectations for full-year […]
Alan Shimel · Jul 20, 2026 · 8 min
Apple’s M7 Ultra is About Securing the Homeland
Apple may be preparing to build one of the most formidable AI server processors in the market. That does not mean it wants to become the next AWS. According to Mark Gurman’s latest Bloomberg Power On report, Apple is accelerating development of an AI-focused M7 generation, including an M7 Ultra designed to support as much […]
Alan Shimel · Jul 14, 2026 · 8 min
Is SK hynix the Power Behind NVIDIA’s Throne?
For most of the computer era, memory chips were the semiconductor industry’s supporting cast. Necessary, certainly. Occasionally scarce. Often expensive at precisely the wrong moment. But they were not what made people line up for product launches or drove investors into a frenzy. Processors were where the action was. Memory was the mundane stuff sitting […]
Alan Shimel · Jul 13, 2026 · 9 min
AI Doesn’t Need to Own the Plane
The reported compute agreements involving Google, Anthropic, and SpaceX immediately generated questions about scale. Google is said to be committing roughly $920 million per month for AI compute capacity, while Anthropic has reportedly entered into a similarly significant arrangement. Combined, the agreements represent access to hundreds of thousands of GPUs and billions of dollars in […]
Alan Shimel · Jun 9, 2026 · 4 min
Cisco Needs Its Own Silicon to Compete in AI Infrastructure
For most of Cisco’s history, the company occupied a well-defined place in the technology stack. Cisco built the networks that connected everything else. Servers evolved. Storage evolved. Applications evolved. Cisco moved the packets between them. That position created one of the most successful companies in technology history. It may not be enough for the AI […]
Alan Shimel · Jun 3, 2026 · 5 min
Every AI Story Eventually Becomes a Semiconductor Story
When I started covering technology, semiconductors were one of those industries that most people acknowledged as important but rarely paid much attention to. Chips were the engines underneath the hood. They powered servers, PCs, networking equipment and eventually smartphones, but they generally weren’t the story. The story was the software, the applications, the platforms and […]
Alan Shimel · Jun 2, 2026 · 5 min
Apple Was the Target. Intel May Be the Casualty
Microsoft and NVIDIA do not usually coordinate their social feeds for fun. So when the two companies posted matching teasers on May 29 promising “a new era of PC,” complete with map coordinates pointing at a venue in Taipei, the timing was not subtle. Computex opens June 2, Jensen Huang has a keynote, and the […]
Alan Shimel · Jun 1, 2026 · 6 min
NVIDIA Plays a Delicate Balancing Game
NVIDIA’s recent announcement that it plans to invest roughly $150 billion annually in Taiwan and establish a major headquarters presence there generated headlines around the world. Given Taiwan’s role in the semiconductor industry, the move was hardly surprising. TSMC manufactures NVIDIA’s most advanced chips, and the broader ecosystem of suppliers, packaging specialists and manufacturing partners […]
Alan Shimel · Jun 1, 2026 · 5 min
The AI Tariff We Are All Going to Pay (And it’s Not Energy Prices)
I recently wrote about the BYOP movement, where datacenter providers are increasingly making datacenter plans that include dedicated power, so consumers do not wind up paying a tax for the data center industry’s exploding energy demands. But there is another, perhaps bigger AI tax that we are going to
Alan Shimel · Mar 10, 2026 · 5 min