Apple's fall event on Sept 9 (ET) was the first since John Ternus took over as CEO. Tim Cook transitioned to executive chairman.
The event was not a full lineup refresh. Apple unveiled iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max, along with its first foldable, iPhone Duo. It also introduced Apple Watch Series 12, Apple Watch Ultra 4, and AirPods 5...
+7On Sep 8, Qualcomm announced a multi-generation partnership with Amazon to co-develop custom, scalable chips for large-scale AI data centers, focused on AI inference. The two will also jointly develop optical interconnect solutions supporting up to 1.6T rates, along with next-gen, forward-looking technologies.
$Qualcomm(QCOM.US) had disclosed at its Jun 24 Investor Day that it had secured hyperscale customers in custom ASICs and connectivity. This announcement reveals its collaboration with $Amazon(AMZN.US)...
+4AI compute arms race vs. an e-com war of attrition? The choice isn’t hard; we’re just too slow. Moving too slow comes at a cost.
Marvell announced it issued warrants to Alphabet for the first time, sending its shares up 10%+.
Meanwhile, AVGO sold off, reflecting fears that $Marvell Tech(MRVL.US) could win Alphabet's TPU orders.Here, Dolphin Research walks through both companies' deal structures and the implications.
We summarize the key terms and potential impact below.1) Marvell–Alphabet agreement
First, the specific arrangement Marvell signed with Alphabet: the commercial agreement was executed on Jul 29, 2026...At the 2026 Investor Day (see Trans here), WDC laid out eye-popping metrics. Management provided the following outlook:
1) FY27 (through Jun-27): bit growth in the mid-teens, with prices edging up modestly each quarter. This implies the hyper-inflationary phase in NAND pricing has ended. The next four quarters should see steady, incremental price increases.2) FY28–FY30: a) Revenue to grow in the mid-to-high teens, driven mainly by bits (volume). Dolphin Research adds that the company is assuming bit demand CAGR of ~18%, with little to no price contribution...Today (17th), the latest Jul. retail sales print looked soft again. After a tentative pickup last month, growth turned lower this month, weakening Dolphin Research's confidence in a 2H consumption rebound.
The good news is online retail remains more resilient. Even amid strong headwinds, online penetration continues to edge up. As a result, online physical goods retail still grew over 3%, well ahead of overall retail at 0.6%.Dolphin Research still views Q2 as this year's trough for e-commerce growth, but has trimmed expectations for the pace of recovery in Q3. Considering last year's comps...Over the past two days, the rally in new cloud platforms such as $Nebius(NBIS.US) and $Coreweave(CRWV.US), together with recent results and earnings calls, underscores that AI cloud demand is clearly outstripping supply.
However, at Nebius, 1–3 yr medium-term contracts price compute at $20–25bn/GW, and to secure better pricing the company withholds some retail capacity to auction to customers, selling to the highest bidder. Those lots have cleared at up to $50bn/GW...$Alphabet(GOOGL.US) $Alphabet - C(GOOG.US) delivered a solid Q2 print. Cloud revenue growth and a still-healthy expansion in backlog are key proof that AI spend is being put to work.
Yet despite a near-replay of Q1, the market reaction flipped, with shares down 7% after the print. This came on top of an earlier pullback as repeated delays to Gemini 3.5 Pro weighed on bullish sentiment. Rising uncertainty over AI ROI...Global markets left investors stunned last week as rumors and speculation ran rampant amid the sell-off.
Beyond liquidity deleveraging triggered by South Korea's rate hike and geopolitical tensions, the market consensus pointed to another culprit: the release of the K3 model. This sparked renewed debates over the long-standing 'U.S.-China tech rivalry' narrative. K3 represents a significant leap for Chinese LLMs, noticeably narrowing the gap with frontier models. Leveraging structural cost advantages in model architecture, talent, and power, along with an open-source edge, it provides end-users with a high-quality alternative. Dolphin Research believes...After $Meta Platforms(META.US) began weighing compute leasing, it stoked worries that the compute supply chain may be peaking. While the market debated whether this was a stopgap or a long-term strategy, Meta answered with three concrete moves: it is serious about the compute biz.
Expanding data centers is the most straightforward prep. Mass-producing in-house ASICs aims to cut cost and lift ROI.
The newly launched LLM, Muse Spark 1.1, is the true upside surprise in Dolphin Research's view. These three changes will likely push near-term Capex higher...
