#ai-hardware

#ai-hardware

Apple just lost a top design talent. Meta has hired Alan Dye, who was the head of Apple's human interface design team. The company is filling his position with Stephen Lemay, who CEO Tim Cook told Bloomberg "has played a key role in the design of every major Apple interface since 1999." Before being poached by Meta to become its chief design officer, Dye worked at Apple since 2006, where he oversaw projects including Liquid Glass and Vision Pro.

But they are wrong. These arguments assume that China cannot succeed in AI without access to these advanced AI chips, which is not the case. Advanced AI chips simply reduce the cost of AI. Today's state-of-the-art AI models require a large number of AI chips to build and run. An advanced chip has higher performance; therefore, fewer are needed to achieve the same AI performance.

Meta is in talks with Google about the use of TPUs (Tensor Processing Units) from 2027, with possible lease agreements via Google Cloud as early as 2026. The move would make Google a serious alternative to Nvidia as a supplier of AI hardware. The latter could be significantly affected by this due to its limited number of large customers. According to Bloomberg, citing The Information and insiders, Meta may start using TPUs in its own data centers.

The price of some cloud services will have to rise by five to ten percent by mid-2026, maybe sooner, according to Octave Klaba, CEO of French cloud OVH. In a weekend post to his X account, Klaba opened with the observation that the price of RAM and NVMe drives will increase significantly in around six months. The CEO attributed that increase to demand for AI hardware, which he said has seen memory-makers shift production to the HBM memory used in GPUs.

Google parent Alphabet ( NASDAQ:GOOG )( NASDAQ:GOOGL ) is often seen as a core tech giant focused on search, advertising, and cloud computing. Yet beneath its main operations lies a quieter side: a venture arm that invests in promising companies in areas like space tech, geospatial data, and semiconductors. These bets target innovations adjacent to Alphabet's ecosystem, such as enhanced connectivity for Android devices, Earth observation for AI-driven mapping in Google Earth, and efficient chip designs for data centers powering Google Cloud.

In recent years, though, my dictaphone collection has taken on a new, less physical form. Google's Pixel phones have been a revelation for journalists, offering real-time, on-device transcription through the Recorder app. I've often found myself bringing a Pixel along to a press event even if I wasn't actively using it as a phone at the time-the ability to get an automatic transcript once your recording is done has been an incredible timesaver.

Valuations further differentiate the periods: dotcom tech stocks often traded at 150 to 180 times trailing earnings, while current AI frontrunners average around 40 times. Some AI hardware purchasers have reported improved return on ivested capital (ROIC), but results vary across the industry. This solid groundwork distinguishes AI from historical bubbles and primes leading companies like Nvidia for substantial expansion.

In a conversation that bridges the realms of technology and personal frustration, Jony Ive and Sam Altman discuss their collaboration on a new AI hardware project that spans gaming and usability.