Tech news picked on 2026-06-26
Memory Has Become the Gateway to AI Capital: SK Hynix's $29.4 Billion Listing Signal
- SK Hynix applied for an ADR listing on Nasdaq worth $29.4 billion on June 24.
- It is the second largest IPO ever after SpaceX.
- The scene cannot be explained by the conventional view of memory as a volatile commodity.
- Capital values bottlenecks that everyone must pass through more than flashy applications.
- If you are on an AI service team, examine how much your costs are tied to a single supplier.
- On June 25, IBM revealed sub-1 nanometer chip technology featuring a 0.7-nanometer node, packing 100 billion transistors into a chip the size of a fingernail.
- Mass production is at least five years away.
- Even though cutting-edge processes improve computational efficiency, these benefits don't translate equally to every company.
- Small teams end up paying prices set by suppliers, so instead of waiting for better chips, it's wiser to optimize current structures to use less computation through caching and model partitioning.
The New Entry Barrier Set by Vertical Integration: Now You Must Make Your Own Chips
- OpenAI and Broadcom completed tape-out of their first inference-only chip Jalapeño within nine months of design.
- Following Google's TPU and Amazon's Trainium, AI companies are solidifying the trend of going from models down to silicon.
- Actual deployment and cost advantages are yet unconfirmed, and training still depends on external GPUs.
- Nonetheless, startups feel the pressure first.
- Prepare structures in advance to avoid being subject to the pricing and policies of model operators.
'Show Me Your Credentials' Era: New SaaS Market Opened by Mandatory Age and Identity Verification
- The UK, EU, USA, and Australia are successively enforcing age and identity verification by law.
- In the US alone, 19 states have passed laws restricting minors' access to social media, while over 20 states have enacted age verification laws for adult content.
- Money flows not to those who collect more IDs, but to those that relieve platforms of regulatory differences and data breach burdens.
- Combining requirements from various countries and states into a single API, designed to return only the necessary age status, is gaining value.
Apple skips high-performance M6, chip roadmap pivots to on-device AI
- According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple is skipping the M6 Pro, Max, and Ultra and heading straight to the M7 line focused on on-device AI.
- The trend of running inference on the device is now embedded in the Mac chip roadmap.
- Still, it's premature to rely solely on unreleased chips to lock products into the Apple ecosystem.
- On-device inference does not eliminate costs but shifts them to device performance differences and development complexity, so it's wise to create boundaries allowing local switching by function.
OpenAI Invests $150 Million in People, Not Models; 'Adoption' Is the Moat
- On June 14, OpenAI announced it would invest $150 million into its Partner Network to train 300,000 certified consultants by year's end.
- Rather than buying people, this is a strategy to bind the ecosystem through certification and partnership programs.
- It also signals that the value of on-site adoption is becoming greater than model competition.
- Small companies have more opportunities in application and operations tailored to domestic work than in selling certifications.
Anthropic, OpenAI IPO Race, and the Shaken Price List of Founders Riding on It
- Anthropic raised $65 billion in Series H, achieving a $965 billion valuation, and OpenAI submitted a secret S-1 at an $852 billion valuation.
- Both companies are entering the IPO track together, and the market share fight is extending into token price cuts and lock-in contracts.
- Cheaper tokens usually come with conditions that lock in customers.
- Let's keep structures and renegotiation options that allow switching suppliers beyond today's lowest price.
Where Software Founders Fit in the AI Drug Discovery Startup Boom
- Reid Hoffman and Siddhartha Mukherji launched Manas AI, an AI drug discovery startup, with a $24.6 million seed round.
- It's a small amount compared to other companies raising $1.3 billion.
- Software founders without biotech backgrounds should focus on the underlying platform and data layers rather than competing directly in drug creation.
- If aiming to reduce researchers' time, confirm actual demand and work with colleagues who have biotech expertise.