Intelligence across the full AI supply chain
From rare earth extraction to frontier model deployment. The Silicon Wire covers every link in the chain that powers artificial intelligence.
War in Iran, the $119 Oil Spike, and What It Actually Means for AI Infrastructure
The US-Israeli strikes on Iran sent crude to $119. Prices retreated to $85. The conventional wisdom — that expensive oil threatens AI by raising electricity costs — is mostly wrong. Only 0.6% of US electricity comes from petroleum. The real threat is to new capacity: construction diesel, petroleum-derived materials, supply chain delays, and an $870 billion debt stack sensitive to every basis point of inflation-driven rate increases.
TSMC's $56 Billion Year: Inside the Largest Semiconductor Capex Budget in History
TSMC will spend up to $56 billion in 2026 — more than any semiconductor company has ever invested in a single year. We break down where the money is going, from 2nm node buildout to a fourfold expansion of advanced packaging capacity, and what it means for chip pricing and customer allocation.
NVIDIA GTC 2026: Vera Rubin in Production, Feynman on the Horizon
NVIDIA's Vera Rubin platform — 336 billion transistors, 288GB of HBM4, 50 petaflops per GPU — is already in production and shipping to hyperscalers. But the real reveal at GTC 2026 may be Feynman: the first 1.6nm AI chip with silicon photonics, targeting 2028.
The Weekly Briefing
Every Sunday. The most important supply chain developments of the week, with analysis on what they mean for the AI ecosystem. Free.