Interconnected

1 week ago | interconnected.blog | Kevin Xu

Today’s post is a translation and transcreation of an article published by Jiemian News, a Chinese language tech outlet, that profiled Xiaomi’s homegrown chip-making backstory. While I rarely do translations, this article was sufficiently interesting and included some fascinating insights and anecdotes behind the overnight success of Xring O1, Xiaomi’s recently released flagship chip, that was a decade in the making.

2 weeks ago | interconnected.blog | Kevin Xu

Topics: AI • ($) Is 2025 the Year of the AI RIF? AI RIF is the best, if not only, form of walking the walk to show what AI can really do Kevin Xu Author and founder of Interconnected. See "About Interconnected" for more information. More posts by Kevin Xu. This post is for paying subscribers only Subscribe now Already have an account? Sign in

2 weeks ago | interconnected.blog | Kevin Xu

About a year ago, I wrote a post calling the Middle East – specifically Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates – the “swing vote” of the global AI competition between the US and China. Last week, it looks like this swing vote has swung decidedly towards the US, at least for now. Trump’s four-day swing through the three countries – the first major foreign trip of his 2nd term – had all the relevant CEOs of leading AI companies in tow, ready to take purchase orders.

1 month 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.

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 move, combined with recent reports that possible export controls