What The Chip Happened?

What The Chip Happened?

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What The Chip Happened?
What The Chip Happened?
đŸ”„Reigniting Innovation: Intel’s Bold Engineering-Led Era
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đŸ”„Reigniting Innovation: Intel’s Bold Engineering-Led Era

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Jose Najarro
Apr 01, 2025
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What The Chip Happened?
What The Chip Happened?
đŸ”„Reigniting Innovation: Intel’s Bold Engineering-Led Era
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Welcome, AI & Semiconductor Investors,
Intel’s new CEO Lip-Bu Tan is betting big on an engineering-first revival—accelerating AI silicon, doubling down on foundry strength, and promising a culture shift from “talk to action.”

We also cover AMD’s $4.9B hyperscale bet to take on NVIDIA and Ayar Labs’ game-changing optical chiplet that could reshape AI data flow as we know it. — Let’s Chip In

What The Chip Happened?

đŸ”„Reigniting Innovation: Intel’s Bold Engineering-Led Era
đŸ€ AMD’s $4.9B AI Power Move
🚀 Illuminating AI Scale-Up with the World’s First UCIe Optical Chiplet
[UiPath’s Q4 2025 Earnings Highlight Accelerated Agentic Vision]

Read time: 7 minutes


Intel (NASDAQ: INTC)
đŸ”„Reigniting Innovation: Intel’s Bold Engineering-Led Era

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What The Chip: On March 31, 2025, Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan shared a transformative vision at Intel Vision 2025. He emphasized a renewed focus on engineering excellence, a culture of innovation, and stronger collaboration with customers.

Details:

🔧 Customer-Centric Culture: Lip-Bu Tan stressed that “my No. 1 priority has been spending time with customers” and pledged that Intel will create products that solve real-world challenges.

🚀 Engineering-First Mindset: Tan aims to speed up product development and accelerate AI-led full-stack solutions on next-gen silicon (Intel 18A), with high-volume production of Panther Lake expected later this year.

🏭 Foundry Push: Intel continues building its “world-class foundry,” aligning capital spending to meet market demand. Tan reiterated the importance of advanced manufacturing leadership, saying Intel “never left” the U.S. and is expanding domestic operations.

💾 Cost Action Plan: The company’s $10B cost-cutting program (including a 15% workforce reduction last year) is designed to streamline expenses and maintain critical R&D investments.

âŹ†ïž Data Center Focus: Nearly 75% of the world’s data center workloads run on Intel. Despite strong market share, Tan acknowledges the need for improved AI data center solutions, citing rack-scale systems as a key priority.

đŸ’» PC Market & Software Synergy: Intel powers 7 in 10 PCs worldwide and is working with over 200 software vendors to optimize performance for more than 400 features, strengthening the CPU’s position in AI PCs.

✹ New Leadership Tone: Tan promises a shift from “talk to action,” with an emphasis on culture change and accountability. As he notes, “we must turn our words into action and deliver on our commitments.”

Why AI/Semiconductor Investors Should Care: Intel’s renewed engineering focus and strengthened foundry aspirations signal a strategic path to reclaim leadership in advanced chip manufacturing—critical for AI and data center growth. By aligning products with customer needs and optimizing costs, Intel is positioning itself to compete more effectively in an increasingly demanding semiconductor market.


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Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD)
đŸ€ AMD’s $4.9B AI Power Move

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What The Chip: On March 31, 2025, AMD completed its $4.9 billion acquisition of ZT Systems, a major hyperscale server infrastructure provider. By uniting ZT Systems’ rack-level expertise with AMD’s CPU, GPU, and networking hardware, AMD is positioning itself to capitalize on a booming AI data center market.

Details:

🔧 Rack-Scale Integration: AMD gains ZT’s ability to design and deploy cluster-level AI systems, leveraging AMD EPYC CPUs, Instinct GPUs, and the open-source ROCmℱ platform to reduce deployment times.

💰 Accretive by 2025: “Acquiring ZT Systems is a significant milestone in our AI strategy,” said Forrest Norrod, AMD’s Executive Vice President, adding that the deal is expected to boost non-GAAP earnings by late 2025.

đŸ€ Strategic Divestiture: AMD will sell ZT’s U.S.-based manufacturing operations in 2025, focusing on high-margin design and engineering capabilities. This asset-light approach may improve AMD’s operating margins.

đŸŽïž Competitive Edge: Directly challenges NVIDIA by offering integrated AI hardware and software solutions, tapping into relationships with cloud titans like AWS and Microsoft Azure.

⚙ Executive Continuity: Former ZT Founder Frank Zhang and President Doug Huang join AMD, ensuring a smooth integration while maintaining established customer links.

Why AI/Semiconductor Investors Should Care: With a projected $500 billion AI data center market by 2028, AMD’s expanded portfolio positions it to capture a larger slice of AI infrastructure spend. The vertical integration from silicon to rack-level systems could drive faster innovation cycles, giving AMD a stronger foothold in a highly competitive field. Investors should watch for accelerated product rollouts and potential gains in market share as AMD challenges incumbent leaders in AI compute.


Ayar Labs (Private)
🚀 Illuminating AI Scale-Up with the World’s First UCIe Optical Chiplet

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What The Chip: On March 31, 2025, Ayar Labs announced the first-ever Universal Chiplet Interconnect Expressℱ (UCIeℱ) optical chiplet, able to deliver 8 Tbps bandwidth using co-packaged optics. This breakthrough aims to tackle data bottlenecks in scale-up AI architectures and reduce latency with a new, open, and interoperable design.

Details:

🔌 First UCIe Optical Solution: TeraPHYℱ chiplet, powered by a 16-wavelength SuperNovaℱ light source, enables seamless interoperability among different vendor chiplets, opening up a more cost-effective AI ecosystem.

⚡ 8 Tbps Bandwidth Milestone: By achieving 8 Tbps, Ayar Labs pushes the performance boundary, allowing GPUs and accelerators to transfer massive data across both short and long distances.

🏭 Silicon Photonics Meets CMOS: The monolithic GF Fotonixℱ platform from GlobalFoundries, along with TSMC’s COUPEℱ technology, underpins Ayar Labs’ silicon photonics approach, simplifying integration within multi-chip packages.

👀 Industry Endorsements: Mark Papermaster (CTO at AMD) highlights UCIe’s pivotal role in scaling networking solutions for AI. TSMC, ASE, Alphawave Semi, and d-Matrix add further support, underscoring the importance of open standards for next-gen AI infrastructure.

🚀 Reduce Power, Boost Performance: “Optical interconnects are needed to solve power density challenges in scale-up AI fabrics,” says Mark Wade, CEO and co-founder of Ayar Labs. By replacing traditional copper interconnects, the company aims to improve energy efficiency and reduce latency for AI workloads.

🌐 Demonstration at OFC: Ayar Labs will showcase its optical solutions at OFC, featuring the Jabil external laser source array with 64 SuperNova light sources, powering up to a petabit per second of bi-directional bandwidth.

Why AI/Semiconductor Investors Should Care: Optical chiplets address a key bottleneck in AI and high-performance computing by enabling faster data movement with lower power consumption. Adopting UCIe standards ensures multi-vendor interoperability—crucial for an evolving, high-growth AI chiplet ecosystem. Investors should watch for how this technology accelerates new classes of AI accelerators and boosts data center efficiency.


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Disclaimer: This article is intended for educational and informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice. Always conduct your own research and consult with a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.


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[Paid Subscribers] UiPath’s Q4 2025 Earnings Highlight Accelerated Agentic Vision

Date of Event: March 12, 2025

Executive Summary

*Reminder: We do not talk about valuations, just an analysis of the earnings/conferences

UiPath Inc. (NYSE: PATH), a leading provider of enterprise automation software, reported its fourth-quarter (Q4) and full-year fiscal 2025 earnings on March 12, 2025. The company posted Q4 revenue of $424 million, which would have reached $426 million excluding a $2 million foreign exchange (FX) headwind. UiPath ended the fiscal year with Annualized Renewal Run-rate (ARR) of $1.666 billion, representing a 14% year-over-year increase. However, near-term uncertainties, particularly in the U.S. federal sector and broader macroeconomic conditions, contributed to slightly lower-than-expected ARR growth in Q4.

During the Q4 earnings call, management underscored three key strategic themes. First, they remain committed to driving continued innovation around “Agentic Automation”—a new suite of capabilities meant to harness generative artificial intelligence (AI). Second, they seek to expand adoption of UiPath’s comprehensive platform through deeper relationships with existing enterprise accounts and fresh customer logos. Third, they will continue implementing operational rigor, supported by an improved go-to-market (GTM) structure that the company has refined over the past year.

Among the notable management insights, CEO Daniel Dines emphasized that Agentic Automation is UiPath’s “second act,” bringing together specialized AI-driven agents that work in tandem with robots and human teams. He also highlighted that many public sector deals were put on hold due to an administration transition that started in January, contributing to a short-term dip in new bookings. Meanwhile, CFO Ashim Gupta reiterated UiPath’s progress on restructuring and cost optimization. Gupta highlighted Q4 non-GAAP operating income of $134 million and total non-GAAP operating margin of 32%, both reflecting meaningful year-over-year improvements.


Growth Opportunities

A central theme in UiPath’s growth strategy is the use of generative AI to transform core business processes. Specifically, the company is accelerating the rollout of Agentic Automation, enabling enterprises to create and orchestrate AI agents that act autonomously within corporate workflows. UiPath’s historically strong robotic process automation (RPA) platform already handles deterministic tasks well; the new “agentic” capabilities address more dynamic challenges requiring adaptive behavior.

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