The neXt Curve reThink Podcast

Leonard Lee
  • 0.0 (0)
  • Business

The official podcast channel of neXt Curve, a research and advisory firm based in San Diego founded by Leonard Lee focused on the frontier markets and business opportunities forming at the intersect of transformative technologies and industry trends. This podcast channel features audio programming from our reThink podcast bringing our listeners the tech and industry insights that matter across the greater technology, media, and telecommunications (TMT) sector.Topics we cover include: -> Artificial Intelligence-> Cloud & Edge Computing-> Semiconductor Tech & Industry Trends-> Digital Transformation-> Consumer Electronics-> New Media & Communications-> Consumer & Industrial IoT-> Telecommunications (5G, Open RAN, 6G)-> Security, Privacy & Trust-> Immersive Reality & XR-> Emerging & Advanced ICT TechnologiesCheck out our research at www.next-curve.com.

  1. 3d ago

    Silicon Futures for September 2026 - Snapdragon Summit, the Bank of NVIDIA, Hugging Face, High-NA

    Send us Fan Mail Silicon Futures is a neXt Curve reThink Podcast series on AI and semiconductor tech and the industry topics that matter. This month, Leonard, Karl, and Jim unpack the hottest takes from Qualcomm's Snapdragon Summit 2026, AI Infrastructure Summit, the Bank of NVIDIA, the Open Agent Safety Platform, the emergence of EUV High-NA, and more! We break down the AI and chip trends that matter! Tune in! In this episode, Leonard, Karl and Jim talk about....  ➡️ Jim sets the agenda for our September 2026 talk. (1:58) ➡️ The Bank of NVIDIA throws its money around. (4:13) ➡️ Qualcomm's AI DC confidence at Snapdragon Summit. (4:35) ➡️ How HBC (High Bandwidth Compute) scales to mobile. (7:17) ➡️ Snapdragon 8 Elite and 8 Elite Extreme mobile SoC review. (9:28) ➡️ Qualcomm refreshes personal AI with agentic AI. (10:36) ➡️ Qualcomm expands ecosystem with healthcare. (11:19) ➡️ Qualcomm's privacy and trust for personal agentic AI. (11:57) ➡️ Qualcomm's blueprint for personal physical AI. (13:25) ➡️ DEBATE: Is Apple really behind on AI and agentic AI? (14:36) ➡️ To Meta Muse or not to Muse, that is the question. (17:15) ➡️ The growing concern about agentic AI safety. (18:54) ➡️ Are we coming to an AI reckoning? (21:05) ➡️ The asymmetrical fight against AI bad stuff. (23:01) ➡️ TSMC and Samsung pull EUV High-NA trigger. (26:46) ➡️ AI Infrastructure Summit 2026 recap. (28:35) ➡️ NVIDIA partners with D-Matrix for inference AI. (31:59) ➡️ Reclassifying GPU useful life with modernization. (34:12) ➡️ Anderon quantum foundry funded by U.S. and IBM. (35:39) ➡️ IonQ buys Skwater for vertical integration. 36:15) ➡️ The Things Conference & Edge AI. (37:37) ➡️ Ericsson & Nokia on physical AI and Space AI. (38:12) ➡️ Perception AI is the practical frontier of physical AI. (39:25) ➡️ The sobering reality & state of AI-RAN and edge AI. (40:17) ➡️ The funny math and expectations of physical AI. (41:35) Hit Leonard, Karl, and Jim up on LinkedIn and take part in their industry and tech insights. Check out Jim and his research at Tirias Research at www.tiriasresearch.com. Check out Karl and his research at Cambrian AI Research LLC at www.cambrian-ai.com. Check out Karl's Substack at: https://substack.com/@karlfreund429026 Please subscribe to our podcast which will be featured on the neXt Curve YouTube Channel. Check out the audio version on BuzzSprout or find us on your favorite Podcast platform. Also, subscribe to the neXt Curve research portal at www.next-curve.com and our Substack (https://substack.com/@nextcurve) for the tech and industry insights that matter. NOTE: The transcript is AI-generated and will contain errors. DISCLAIMER: This podcast is for informational purposes only.

  2. 6d ago

    Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit 2026 Recap (with Prakash Sangam)

    Send us Fan Mail In this episode of the neXt Curve reThink podcast, Leonard Lee is joined by special guest, Prakash Sangam, Principal Analyst at Tantra Analyst, to recap Qualcomm's biggest event of the year, Snapdragon Tech Summit 2026, which took place in Maui, Hawaii. Prakash and Leonard cover the following topics in their recap of Qualcomm's Snapdragon Summit 2026: 👉 Overview of the Snapdragon Summit program, key themes & impressions. (2:12) 👉 The smartphone takes center stage with Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen6. (4:25) 👉 Personal AI theme expands with agentic AI. (7:15) 👉 Agentic trust in the coming era of agentic commerce. (10:39) 👉 A showcase in heterogeneous AI & agentic computing. (14:50) 👉 Memory architecture changes of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen6. (19:54) 👉 Could agentic AI make the NPU matter? (21:28) 👉 Is there a gaming versus AI trade-off? (22:50) 👉 What happened to 5G and modem leadership? (23:50) 👉 HBC (High Bandwidth Compute) scales from data center to smartphone. (24:55) 👉 Qualcomm's personal agentic AI push with Liquid AI.(25:08) 👉 Smart glasses and AI companions. (31:12) 👉 Qualcomm scales healthcare for the Snapdragon wearable ecosystem. (32:10) 👉 Modular makes a case for Qualcomm's heterogeneous AI strategy. (34:26) 👉 Qualcomm introduces dev programs to catalyze smart glasses ecosystem. (37:42) 👉 Snapdragon X2 Plus powers latest Surface and Lenovo IdeaPad Vibe. (39:20) 👉 Is Googlebook Qualcomm's AI PC moment? (41:02) 👉 The operating system is the on-device agentic AI platform. (46:39) 👉 Manchester United Surface and back-of-shirt partnership with Microsoft. (51:22) Check out Prakash Sangam and his research at Tantra Analyst at www.tantraanalyst.com. Also check out the Tantra's Mantra Podcast.  Please subscribe to our podcast which will be featured on the neXt Curve YouTube Channel. Check out the audio version on BuzzSprout or find us on your favorite Podcast platform.  Also, subscribe to the neXt Curve research portal at www.next-curve.com for the tech and industry insights that matter.

  3. Aug 29

    Silicon Futures for August 2026 - Hot Chips 2026, Optane, OpenAI Jalapeño

    Send us Fan Mail Silicon Futures is a neXt Curve reThink Podcast series on AI and semiconductor tech and the industry topics that matter. This month, Leonard, Karl, and Jim unpack the hottest takes from Hot Chips 2026 and the incessant drama that is AI & AI infrastructure! Are we on the verge of a major shift in AI HPC computing as the AI focus shifts from training toward inference and agentic AI? What is the impact of the broadening memory crisis and innovations in sparse MOE models on the future of AI computing architectures? What does the introduction of OpenAI's Jalapeño mean for the future of AI HPC architectures and chips? We break down the AI and chip trends that matter! Tune in! In this episode, Leonard, Karl and Jim talk about.... ➡️ IBM's dual-ISA core with native Arm + zArchitecture (4:54) ➡️ How will HRL Labs impact IBM's quantum leadership? (8:11) ➡️ What were the key themes of Hot Chips 2026? (10:13) ➡️ Should Optane be resurrected for AI HPC? (12:50) ➡️ 3D-memory stacking & PIM (Processing in Memory) (13:24) ➡️ HBF: What is it good for? Fad or frontier? (13:45) ➡️ The economics & margins of the memory industry! (15:17) ➡️ Our takes on NVIDIA's Q2 2027 earnings results! (20:20) ➡️ Bill Gates AI essay and physical AI in context... (29:49) ➡️ For AI data centers, can coding be enough? (32:02) ➡️ NVIDIA partners with D-Matrix on inference & agentic! (33:31) ➡️ Why do we compare AI scaling with Moore's Law? (37:38) ➡️ Is tokenomics the only thing that matters? (39:44) ➡️ Is the AI ROI debate over or early days? (40:52) ➡️ Beyond disaggregation & distributed AI inference! (43:20) ➡️ OpenAI tapes out Jalapeño from RTL in 9 months! (45:50) ➡️ Did DeepSeek change everything or nothing? (54:30) Hit Leonard, Karl, and Jim up on LinkedIn and take part in their industry and tech insights. Check out Jim and his research at Tirias Research at www.tiriasresearch.com. Check out Karl and his research at Cambrian AI Research LLC at www.cambrian-ai.com. Check out Karl's Substack at: https://substack.com/@karlfreund429026 Please subscribe to our podcast which will be featured on the neXt Curve YouTube Channel. Check out the audio version on BuzzSprout or find us on your favorite Podcast platform. Also, subscribe to the neXt Curve research portal at www.next-curve.com and our Substack (https://substack.com/@nextcurve) for the tech and industry insights that matter. NOTE: The transcript is AI-generated and will contain errors. DISCLAIMER: This podcast is for informational purposes only.

  4. Aug 3

    Silicon Futures for July 2026 - AMD Advancing AI, Open model debate, OpenAI's rogue agent crisis

    Send us Fan Mail Silicon Futures is a neXt Curve reThink Podcast series on AI and semiconductor tech and the industry topics that matter. This month, the world of AI and semiconductors has gone truly mad. Drama and volatility are the only ways to describe what we witnessed in July with AI agent swarms going rogue, a frantic effort to save open-weight models from being banned by the U.S. government, and AMD coming to market with their first rack-scale AI supercomputing system to take on NVIDIA's dominance.  In this episode, Leonard, Karl and Jim talk about some of the top headlines from July of 2026.  ➡️ AMD Advancing AI 2026 highlights (3:47) ➡️ AMD + Cerebras partnership for inference AI (4:18) ➡️ AMD's strategy for heterogeneous AI inference compute (7:04) ➡️ AMD touts CPU portfolio and diversity for AI (10:34) ➡️ Is agentic AI compute the same as AI training compute? (13:57) ➡️ Is AMD's ecosystem 18-month behind NVIDIA's? (17:29) ➡️ Could ROCm.ai be a CUDA equalizer for AMD? (19:46) ➡️ Are we in the infancy of AI still? (24:54) ➡️ Will closed AI models and labs continue to lead? (26:34) ➡️ AI for security vs. AI for threat actors. Who wins? (33.39) ➡️ Is the gigawatt a good metric for "AI capacity"? (37:57) ➡️ QUANTUM NEWS! IBM acquires HRL Laboratories (43:58) ➡️ What to make of Intel's public commitment to 14A? (43:58) Hit Leonard, Karl, and Jim up on LinkedIn and take part in their industry and tech insights. Check out Jim and his research at Tirias Research at www.tiriasresearch.com. Check out Karl and his research at Cambrian AI Research LLC at www.cambrian-ai.com. Check out Karl's Substack at: https://substack.com/@karlfreund429026 Please subscribe to our podcast which will be featured on the neXt Curve YouTube Channel. Check out the audio version on BuzzSprout or find us on your favorite Podcast platform. Also, subscribe to the neXt Curve research portal at www.next-curve.com and our Substack (https://substack.com/@nextcurve) for the tech and industry insights that matter. NOTE: The transcript is AI-generated and will contain errors. DISCLAIMER: This podcast is for informational purposes only.

  5. Jul 7

    Silicon Futures for June 2026 - COMPUTEX, Nebius Inflection, Qualcomm Investor Day, and more..

    Send us Fan Mail Silicon Futures is a neXt Curve reThink Podcast series on AI and semiconductor tech and the industry topics that matter. Leonard Lee (neXt Curve), Karl Freund (Cambrian AI Research), and Jim McGregor (Tirias Research), unpack a dense and drama-filled month in AI and chips. U.S. AI labs start a whining campaign as Chinese open-weight models threaten the AI world order, NVIDIA resuscitates the AI PC, neoclouds lay out their vision for reinvention, Apple flexes its agentic AI muscle, Qualcomm brings heterogeneous computing to the AI data center game, and much more. In this episode, Leonard, Karl and Jim talk about some of the top headlines from June of 2026. ➡️ Jim's takes from COMPUTEX 2026 (2:41) ➡️ The agentic workstation and revival of the AI PC with NVIDIA RTX Spark (3:22) ➡️ WWDC 2026: Strike 3 for Apple Intelligence? - (10:25) ➡️ Revisiting Apple's AI strategy (11:20) ➡️ Neocloud takes from Nebius Inflection 2026 (16:03) ➡️ Neocloud and their enterprise pivot play beyond GPUaaS (18:40) ➡️ Leonard's take on Cisco Live! 2026 (21:43) ➡️ The race to reduced the procurement-to-first-token for AI clusters (23:55) ➡️ The great closed AI model drama (26:49) ➡️ The great U.S. AI lab whining campaign (32:00) ➡️ Inflective reflections on Qualcomm's Investor Day 2026 (34:10) ➡️ Qualcomm's Reverse Ricky Bobby move (37:57) ➡️ Qualcomm's hybrid approach to the AI data center opportunity (43:44) ➡️ Apple's dramatic move to raise prices thanks to memory crunch (49:05) Hit Leonard, Karl, and Jim up on LinkedIn and take part in their industry and tech insights. Check out Jim and his research at Tirias Research at www.tiriasresearch.com. Check out Karl and his research at Cambrian AI Research LLC at www.cambrian-ai.com. Check out Karl's Substack at: https://substack.com/@karlfreund429026 Please subscribe to our podcast which will be featured on the neXt Curve YouTube Channel. Check out the audio version on BuzzSprout or find us on your favorite Podcast platform. Also, subscribe to the neXt Curve research portal at www.next-curve.com and our Substack (https://substack.com/@nextcurve) for the tech and industry insights that matter. NOTE: The transcript is AI-generated and will contain errors. DISCLAIMER: This podcast is for informational purposes only.

  6. May 27

    Silicon Futures for May 2026 - Qualcomm hyperscale AI, Cerebras IPO, Huawei 1.4 nm

    Send us Fan Mail Silicon Futures is a neXt Curve reThink Podcast series on AI and semiconductor tech and the industry topics that matter. This month, the AI narrative has rediscovered its mojo with hyperscalers continuing to double down on their CapExc on AI infrastructure, while realizing unrealized "other income" from their investments in AI startups and labs as the likes of Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI prepare to go public. We didn't cover it in our discussion, but yes, Elon Musk lost his case against OpenAI. Too bad.  Regardless, another action packed month in May 2026.  In this episode, Leonard, Karl and Jim talk about some of the top headlines from May of 2026.  ➡️ Qualcomm's mystery hyperscaler customer? ➡️ The geopolitical risk of playing the AI game  ➡️ Huawei teases "1.4 nm" chip and novel architecture  ➡️ Cerebras finally IPOs!  ➡️ NVIDIA's Q1 FY27 results and new reporting structure  ➡️ Memory vendors are now $trillion market cap  ➡️ Will Apple use Intel Foundry for Apple Silicon? ➡️ The state of Intel Foundry business  ➡️ Alex Katouzian joins Intel to head up Client Computing Physical AI  ➡️ AMD proving they are more than AI accelerators  ➡️ Is the AI infrastructure boom driving IoT revival?  ➡️ AMD, Arm, NVIDIA, Intel, and the CPU boom ➡️ Dell's pivot toward warm-water cooling  ➡️ Dell leans into AI workstation!  ➡️ NVIDIA investments in Taiwanese AI startups  ➡️ "Other income" unrealized gains of AI investments  ➡️ All eyes on COMPUTEX 2026 Hit Leonard, Karl, and Jim up on LinkedIn and take part in their industry and tech insights. Check out Jim and his research at Tirias Research at www.tiriasresearch.com. Check out Karl and his research at Cambrian AI Research LLC at www.cambrian-ai.com. Check out Karl's Substack at: https://substack.com/@karlfreund429026 Please subscribe to our podcast which will be featured on the neXt Curve YouTube Channel. Check out the audio version on BuzzSprout or find us on your favorite Podcast platform. Also, subscribe to the neXt Curve research portal at www.next-curve.com and our Substack (https://substack.com/@nextcurve) for the tech and industry insights that matter. NOTE: The transcript is AI-generated and will contain errors. DISCLAIMER: This podcast is for informational purposes only.

  7. May 8

    Edge Continuum: Where AI belongs from sensors to cloud (with Azita Arvani)

    Send us Fan Mail It was great to have a chance to share the stage with Azita Arvani, Stanford Sloan Fellow at Sensors Converge 2026 to talk about the "Edge Continuum" as it relates to edge AI and what I call the Perception Edge (Sensors + Edge AI). Azita and I talk about what the edge continuum is, what is shaping the present and future of the perception edge, where AI makes sense across the edge, and what the role of sensors and edge AI will play in physical AI. Thanks to David Drain and the Sensors Converge team for setting us up with this spot to share with this year's attendees! Congrats on another great event!

  8. May 7

    Edge AI Foundation at Sensors Converge 2026 (with Pete Bernard)

    Send us Fan Mail I had a great time hanging out with Pete Bernard, CEO of EDGE AI FOUNDATION at Sensors Converge 2026 which took place at the Santa Clara Convention Center this week. We had a chance to chat about the key trends that we see shaping what I've been calling the Perception Edge. What is it? Simple. Sensors + Edge AI. Check out our brief conversation where we touch on the implications of this convergence of sensor technology with edge AI, the possibilities created, and the critical mindset shifts we need to make to appreciate and capitalize on the change and opportunity that is coming at the Perception Edge.

See All (209)

About

The official podcast channel of neXt Curve, a research and advisory firm based in San Diego founded by Leonard Lee focused on the frontier markets and business opportunities forming at the intersect of transformative technologies and industry trends. This podcast channel features audio programming from our reThink podcast bringing our listeners the tech and industry insights that matter across the greater technology, media, and telecommunications (TMT) sector.Topics we cover include: -> Artificial Intelligence-> Cloud & Edge Computing-> Semiconductor Tech & Industry Trends-> Digital Transformation-> Consumer Electronics-> New Media & Communications-> Consumer & Industrial IoT-> Telecommunications (5G, Open RAN, 6G)-> Security, Privacy & Trust-> Immersive Reality & XR-> Emerging & Advanced ICT TechnologiesCheck out our research at www.next-curve.com.

Information