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Kevin Xu (interconnected.blog) Profile picture
Kevin Xu (interconnected.blog)
@kevinsxu
Building/Investing @ Interconnected Capital; Writing @interconnect_ed; ex. GitHub, PingCAP, Obama White House/Commerce Dept; suffering #Canucks fan
Mar 14, 2024 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence showed Li Qiang this slide during a visit that made it on to CCTV (h/t @niubi)

It outlines 3 fundamental challenges to China's domestic large AI model development

Let's unpack each 🧵👇 Image Challenge 1: no self sufficiency in model architecture

GPT-series is proprietary, and most Chinese models are built by leveraging open source LLaMA

(This over-reliance on LLaMA is seen as a severe problem, not some shortcut to leapfrog the US) Image
Sep 24, 2023 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
CHIPS Act execution is so behind is embarrassing

🧵👇 Out of the ~$53 billion incentives, only last week did some $238 million get distributed

That's less than 1%

And they are funding R&D hubs, aka "labs", not the fabs we desperately need to make more chips ()

What's happening to the fabs subsidies?nytimes.com/2023/09/20/us/…
Aug 10, 2023 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Conflict and drama between TSMC and local Arizona unions are bad and getting worse 🧵 Arizona fab is delayed, so TSMC wants to bring 500 workers from Taiwan to speed things up

These workers will be on EB-2 visas

In response, Arizona Pipe Trades 469 union (for pipefitters) started a petition lobbying AZ lawmakers to deny their visas
votervoice.net/AZPipeTrades/C…
Mar 12, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
1/ Calling SVB a "regional" bank is misinformed

Tech is global. So SVB must be global too.

(Screenshot from SVB website) 2/ SVB opened in:
- Israel (2008)
- UK (2012)
- China (2012, partnership w/ Pudong Development Bank)
- Ireland (2016)
- Germany (2018)
- India, Canada, Denmark (2019)
Mar 11, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Most people in Silicon Valley don’t read POLITICO—which a decent barometer of DC’s attitude to news of the day

Here are excerpts from today’s issue on SVB’s collapse

tldr: not much sympathy Image “SVB was (yes, it’s now officially dead) a strange bank. Nearly all of its depositors held over the insured FDIC limit of $250,000 in their accounts.” Image
Dec 11, 2022 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
1/ Morris Chang gave a sobering speech at the TSMC Arizona fab opening ceremony

He proclaimed that "globalization is almost dead" and this is just "the end of the beginning"

Sadly no one listened; no covered the speech

Here's my transcript of what he said in a thread🧵👇 2/ "When I started TSMC back in 1987, I had a dream. Probably because of my background, which up to that point, was primarily America. Probably because of my background, my dream was to build fabs in the United States."
Dec 9, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
1/ Lockdown and protests at Foxconn's iPhone City in Zhengzhou appears to be the ultimate trigger for the end of Covid Zero.
wsj.com/articles/lette… 2/ iPhone City employs 200k workers who make most of Apple's new iPhones.

Apple's reliance on iPhone City under Covid Zero has led to historically long wait times for the new iPhone Pro models
Aug 1, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
1) I spent Saturday reading some fine prints of the CHIPS Act, because...why not? Just being a responsible citizen and taxpayer.

Here's what I learned (with screenshots) 👇🧵 2) The headline number that media often reports is $52B, but money that will *directly* contribute to either building more semiconductor fabs or training more workers to operate those fabs is closer to $39.2B.

$39B in "Manufacturing Incentives" + $200M for workforce education
Jul 4, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
1/ New post is my yearly July 4th meditation on America: "What is Exceptional about 'American Exceptionalism'"

Already received many comments since sending out to email subs last night -- a nuanced critique of "exceptionalism" can be quite the trigger!

Main points 🧵👇 2/ Exceptionalism cuts both ways -- a pendulum that can swing to the good or the bad

Some parts of American Exceptionalism is swinging to "the bad"

Printing trillions of USD as the "exceptional" reserve currency is one

SCOTUS being reduced to a political tool is another
Jun 20, 2022 • 7 tweets • 4 min read
For ByteDance to become a global tech co, TikTok must become “less Chinese”, “more American”.

It is failing, as shown in @ebakerwhite of @BuzzFeed 's reporting and implicitly confirmed by TikTok's own blog post!

I dissect this problem in new post: interconnected.blog/tiktoks-americ…

🧵👇 TikTok has an “American Credibility” problem – four problems to be exact:

- “whistleblower” problem
- “master admin” problem
- “protected data” problem
- “Oracle” problem

Here's a short breakdown of each👇👇 Image
Jan 18, 2022 • 6 tweets • 4 min read
0/ Distributed work is here to stay, but not in the 100%-remote-Zoom-for-everything way.

People need offices, just not all the time.

What I see will happen is "perpetual hybrid work". Out goes a corporate HQ. In comes many smaller centers of gravity.

$WE stands to benefit 1/ Hiring & recruiting tech + most knowledge workers are clearly more distributed.

We all felt this.

Now validated by data from @patrickc (), @eastdakota (), @brian_armstrong ()
Jan 11, 2022 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
#ICYMI Charlie Munger's new favorite stock is $BABA, now 3rd largest holding of Daily Journal (after $BAC $WFC). Position doubled in Q4.

What does "Poor Charlie" see in Alibaba and what many deem an "uninvestable" China?

🧵👇 Image 1/ We can deduce from Munger investing heavily in $BABA that China is far from "uninvestable"

I share similar sentiment. 2021 was a painful but necessary year to clean up 40-plus-years of “startup debt” since "opening & reform"(See post: interconnected.blog/removing-china…)
Nov 15, 2021 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
1/ Been struggling to find an elegant analogy to explain all this China tech crackdown + regulatory changes.

I think I've found it.

China is removing 40+ years worth of "startup debt"

Lemme explain 🧵👇 2/ Opening & Reform in 1978 marked birth of China the startup

Deng was founding CEO, looking for product-market fit, experimenting w/ FDIs, Shenzhen (a fishing village back then) etc

40+ years later, it mostly worked, but China accumulated a lot of "startup debt"
Jan 28, 2021 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
0/ NEW POST: "What Does Agora $API Do?"

With Clubhouse becoming the hottest social app in SV since probably Snapchat, and it being built on Agora, more ppl may want to know what $API actually does.

It more than deserves its own deep dive.

Thread👇
interconnected.blog/what-does-agor… 1/ Started in 2014, founder/CEO Tony Zhao is a tech veteran in the audio/video space, was founding engineer at Webex w/ Eric Yuan of Zoom.

Instead of building a Zoom, built a PaaS to enable devs to build their own Zoom, virtual classroom/doc visits/even places of worship.
Jan 7, 2021 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
0/ "Lame Duck Delisting"

If nothing else changes, 3 Chinese telcos will delist from NYSE by 4am ET next Monday, Jan 11.

Let's dive into why this is happening and what it could all mean. (thread)
interconnected.blog/lame-duck-deli… 1/ China Unicom/Mobile/Unicom HK are the only 3 co's on DoD's “Communist Chinese military companies” list trading on Wall Street, so using delisting to comply w/ Trump's EO is a one-time thing.
defense.gov/Newsroom/Relea…
Jan 5, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The 2020 Octoverse Report from @github has a very neat section "Open source powers the global economy"

It's a map of the world w/ toggle from 2015->2020->2025 ->2030: recording & projecting where open source contribs have/will come from.

(Pls read on)
octoverse.github.com In 2015, 🇺🇸was the lone bright region by a long shot. The rest of world was dim.

(Of course this, I assume, records contributions from that geography w/o info of the contributors' nationality.) Image
Dec 4, 2020 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
"Global by Nature (Part I): Developers"

First of a 4-part series that's been in my head for probably 4 years, on what Globalization 2.0 looks like and what kind of people, products, paradigms & opportunities will be “global by nature.”

Thread 👇👇
interconnected.blog/global-by-natu… 1/ Globalization 1.0 was all about trade. Globalization 2.0 is all about technology.

In G2.0 the most important people to understand is: developers--the builders and kingmakers of technology.

Developers is the single most important demographic that will shape G2.0
Oct 9, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
"China’s Semiconductor Future: What Can $1.4 Trillion Buy?"

Enjoyed writing my 1st column on @thewirechina + working w/ @DavidBarboza2 to help simplify/demystify semiconductors & China's proposed 1.4T investment in that sector.

Some highlights...(thread)
thewirechina.com/2020/10/04/chi… A semiconductor chip's life cycle is complex, though can be roughly broken down to 4 big stages:

- acquire raw material
- design chips
- marry the design to manufacturing capabilities
- produce at scale
Sep 4, 2020 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
0/ "What is TikTok Worth to Whom and Why?"

NEW post explores this (possible) sale from strictly a biz angle, esp for MSFT/WMT & ORCL, along 5 dimensions:

-product synergy (yep I used "synergy")
-user/data
-tech
-brand
-people

Some nuggets...(thread)
interconnected.blog/what-is-tiktok… 1/ Product synergy exists w/ either Azure or Oracle Cloud. Running TikTok during hypergrowth w/o issues is legit accomplishment for a cloud, will help differentiate in a heated global cloud race.

E-commerce w/ Walmart is more longterm, could help differentiate Walmart+ later.