Interconnected

This publication offers insights in both English and Chinese, focusing on businesses and trends through the perspectives of builders, operators, investors, and regulators, exploring their interconnectedness. It was established and is written by Kevin Xu.

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Benchmark Invests in Manus: VC Math vs Geopolitics Math

2 weeks ago | interconnected.blog | Kevin Xu

About a month ago, I got early access to Manus, the AI agent product made by the Chinese startup, Butterfly Effect, that briefly went viral globally. A month later, Bloomberg scooped that Benchmark, a leading Silicon Valley VC firm, invested to fuel the company's growth. (I wrote an earlier post on how Manus stacks up against GPT and Gemini as a hypothetical junior analyst, if you are interested in a product review.)The investment, if true, is of course notable.
($) Huawei's Global AI Ambition: The Core Depends on The Soul

3 weeks ago | interconnected.blog | Kevin Xu

NVIDIA made a major announcement in its efforts to onshore advanced chip manufacturing to the US this week, by leading (demanding?) its ecosystem of partners to produce its Blackwell products in Texas and Arizona. This move, combined with recent reports that possible export controls
NVIDIA: Made in America (by Taiwan)

1 month ago | interconnected.blog | Kevin Xu

NVIDIA made a major announcement in its efforts to onshore advanced chip manufacturing to the US this week, by leading (demanding?) its ecosystem of partners to produce its Blackwell products in Texas and Arizona.
($) This Time is NOT like Covid

1 month ago | interconnected.blog | Kevin Xu

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CoreWeave vs Nebius

1 month ago | interconnected.blog | Kevin Xu

This post is a collaboration with Howe Wang, who writes the ProcureFYI substack which is one of the best sources of alt data when it comes to US government procurement contracts and data center construction. I highly recommend his work!Nvidia GTC wrapped up last week. CoreWeave’s IPO will price and start trading later this week. The generative AI industry is quickly moving from a “hopes and dreams” phase to a “rubber meets the road” phase.
An Ordinary Analogy to Understand Pre-Training, Test-Time Compute, Inference

1 month ago | interconnected.blog | Kevin Xu

Ever since OpenAI released its o1 model last September (only 7 months ago!), the AI world has been progressing at a feverish pace into the reasoning model paradigm. The pace has been fast and furious, and so has the volume of the noise obscuring the signals, as jargon flies everywhere. I have struggled with it myself (and won’t blame my newborn on this one), and see others struggle with it, too. The one thing I took away from having gone to law school years ago is reasoning by analogy.
($) Manus vs Gemini vs GPT: the Junior Stock Analyst

2 months ago | interconnected.blog | Kevin Xu

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Has American Soft Power Peaked?

2 months ago | interconnected.blog | Kevin Xu

Three seemingly unrelated recent events might have marked the peak of American soft power: DeepSeek’s open source week, the Oval Office meltdown between Presidents Trump and Zelensky, and TSMC’s $100 billion additional investment commitment to the US of A. How so? Let’s start with the most recent one: TSMC.
($) Alibaba Cloud: No Longer Ignored

2 months ago | interconnected.blog | Kevin Xu

In “Nebius Part 1: the Smooth (Developer) Operator”, I shared my point of view on why Nebius is the most compelling pure-play AI neocloud with its smooth developer experience, its history, and the pros and cons of its Yandex and Russian roots. In this
Nebius Part 2: Cash, Optionalities, Challenges

2 months ago | interconnected.blog | Kevin Xu

In “Nebius Part 1: the Smooth (Developer) Operator”, I shared my point of view on why Nebius is the most compelling pure-play AI neocloud with its smooth developer experience, its history, and the pros and cons of its Yandex and Russian roots. In this Part 2 installment, I explore the other, even more intriguing elements of this company – its cash position, its other divisions and optionalities, and the immense challenges it is facing in this crowded market.