Welcome back to This Week in Stratechery!
As a reminder, each week, every Friday, we’re sending out this overview of content in the Stratechery bundle; highlighted links are free for everyone. Additionally, you have complete control over what we send to you. If you don’t want to receive This Week in Stratechery emails (there is no podcast), please uncheck the box in your delivery settings.
On that note, here were a few of our favorites this week.
- How to Think About Figma. Figma isn’t just design software: it’s a collaboration platform for making software. I call it the OS for design. That, by extension, means that Figma is much better positioned than it might seem for AI: instead of an agent making everything, agents will work alongside humans, with Figma as the coordination layer. Still, there will be challenges, particularly when it comes to the business model. I covered all this and more in Wednesday’s Daily Update — Ben Thompson
- The Future of the U.S. Semi Supply Chain. On this week’s episode of Sharp Tech we took a long look at Intel and the future of U.S. chipmaking in the wake of comments from Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan that cast uncertainty on the company’s plans to forge ahead with its 14A foundry. Without customers, is it time for Intel to abandon its leading edge efforts altogether? And given the apparent progress at both Samsung and TSMC, is it possible that the future of made-in-America chips doesn’t depend on Intel at all? Ben covered the Intel news in Monday’s Update and then doubled back to analyze TSMC and Samsung’s prospects on Tuesday, and the podcast was a conversation that tied the whole story together. Elsewhere, we discussed Big Tech’s continued dominance in the AI era, the Tea fiasco, AI doomerism that doubles as great marketing, and my brave, principled decision on Apple’s storage plan. — Andrew Sharp
- Is Trump Softening on China? Over the past few weeks there have been signs and reports that President Trump is softening his stance toward China and looking to broker a deal with Xi Jinping. For example, a ban on Nvidia’s H20 chips was lifted in July, all other proposals for chip controls have been tabled for now, and the Administration may have been mollifying China by denying permission to Taiwan’s President Lai-Ching Te to transit through the U.S. on a planned trip to Latin America later this summer. So is Trump now dovish on China? The answer is subject to interpretation, and we had a great time discussing it on this week’s episode of Sharp China. As I noted toward the end, the U.S. remains engaged in an incredibly aggressive trade strategy that may have the net effect of undermining China’s export model not just with the US, but the whole world. Given that context, proceeding with caution on ancillary issues may be reasonable. — AS
Stratechery Articles and Updates
- TSMC Earnings; A16 and TSMC’s Approach to Backside Power; Intel Earnings, Architecture, and AI — TSMC and Intel’s approach to backside power are downstream of their cultures: customer-centric versus self-serving. It may doom the latter.
- Tesla and Samsung, Customer Service and Intel, The U.S. Semi Supply Chain — Tesla is making future chips with Samsung, likely cementing the Korean company as the industry’s second supplier.
- Figma S-1, The Figma OS, Figma’s AI Potential — Figma is well-placed to succeed in an AI world, because they are an operating system. However, they need to move quickly to capitalize, and that explains why they are going public.
Dithering with Ben Thompson and Daring Fireball’s John Gruber
Asianometry with Jon Yu
- Whatever Happened to China’s Bandit Phones?
- With Directed Self Assembly, the Chips Make Themselves (Kinda)
Sharp China with Andrew Sharp and Sinocism’s Bill Bishop
Greatest of All Talk with Andrew Sharp and WaPo’s Ben Golliver
Sharp Tech with Andrew Sharp and Ben Thompson
This week’s Stratechery video is on Content and Community.