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Running the wire
Funding XCures closes $46M Series B round at $127M post-money valuation Funding Qualcomm acquires Modular for ~$4B to bolster AI software stack and data center play Chips OpenAI & Broadcom unveil Jalapeño, custom LLM inference chip with 9-month design cycle Chips SK Hynix ships HBM4E memory samples: 16Gbps, 48GB per stack, 20% power gain Funding Qualcomm in talks to acquire Tenstorrent for $8–10B, expanding RISC-V AI chip portfolio Chips TSMC hikes advanced node prices 5–10% across 7nm and newer nodes Chips OpenAI unveils Jalapeño custom inference chip with Broadcom Chips OpenAI-Broadcom custom chip project stalls; Broadcom demands Microsoft purchase guarantee before funding Market Cerebras Q1 profit beats but warns gross margins compress to 36–38% in Q2 Funding SK hynix files for $29.4B Nasdaq listing to fund AI memory fabs and EUV tools Breaking Microsoft AKS on bare metal reaches public preview; adds Ray and Fleet Manager for edge-to-cloud AI Research GPT-5 solves 3-year T cell mystery in minutes; suggests deoxyglucose-IL-2 mechanism, enables wet-lab validation Policy EU proposes Chips Act 2.0 to strengthen semiconductor capacity, reduce strategic dependencies Market SK Hynix plans $29B Nasdaq ADR listing on July 10, eyes HBM supply dominance Chips ASE raises 2026 capex to record $8.5B on AI packaging demand; LEAP revenue up 118% YoY Funding ByteDance seeks $20B offshore loan to fund $70-100B annual AI capex race Policy EU Chips Act 2.0 shifts focus from fab capacity to chip demand, design, and full value chain Policy EU Commission proposes Chips Act 2.0 to bolster chip independence, target €20B in funding Chips NVIDIA A100 black market prices triple in China amid U.S. smuggling crackdown and customs freeze Policy US awards SandboxAQ $500M CHIPS grant for AI-driven semiconductor materials discovery Funding XCures closes $46M Series B round at $127M post-money valuation Funding Qualcomm acquires Modular for ~$4B to bolster AI software stack and data center play Chips OpenAI & Broadcom unveil Jalapeño, custom LLM inference chip with 9-month design cycle Chips SK Hynix ships HBM4E memory samples: 16Gbps, 48GB per stack, 20% power gain Funding Qualcomm in talks to acquire Tenstorrent for $8–10B, expanding RISC-V AI chip portfolio Chips TSMC hikes advanced node prices 5–10% across 7nm and newer nodes Chips OpenAI unveils Jalapeño custom inference chip with Broadcom Chips OpenAI-Broadcom custom chip project stalls; Broadcom demands Microsoft purchase guarantee before funding Market Cerebras Q1 profit beats but warns gross margins compress to 36–38% in Q2 Funding SK hynix files for $29.4B Nasdaq listing to fund AI memory fabs and EUV tools Breaking Microsoft AKS on bare metal reaches public preview; adds Ray and Fleet Manager for edge-to-cloud AI Research GPT-5 solves 3-year T cell mystery in minutes; suggests deoxyglucose-IL-2 mechanism, enables wet-lab validation Policy EU proposes Chips Act 2.0 to strengthen semiconductor capacity, reduce strategic dependencies Market SK Hynix plans $29B Nasdaq ADR listing on July 10, eyes HBM supply dominance Chips ASE raises 2026 capex to record $8.5B on AI packaging demand; LEAP revenue up 118% YoY Funding ByteDance seeks $20B offshore loan to fund $70-100B annual AI capex race Policy EU Chips Act 2.0 shifts focus from fab capacity to chip demand, design, and full value chain Policy EU Commission proposes Chips Act 2.0 to bolster chip independence, target €20B in funding Chips NVIDIA A100 black market prices triple in China amid U.S. smuggling crackdown and customs freeze Policy US awards SandboxAQ $500M CHIPS grant for AI-driven semiconductor materials discovery
Breaking

Microsoft AKS on bare metal reaches public preview; adds Ray and Fleet Manager for edge-to-cloud AI

Microsoft announced at Build 2026 that Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) now runs directly on bare-metal hardware in public preview, eliminating the hypervisor layer and giving workloads direct access to NVLink, RDMA, and high-performance networking. The feature targets large language model training and latency-sensitive inference where virtualization overhead measurably impacts performance and cost. AKS on bare metal integrates with Azure Arc for cloud-native provisioning and management, so the experience remains consistent whether running on edge devices, data centers, or cloud regions.

Simultaneously, Microsoft announced Anyscale on Azure (managed Ray in public preview) for orchestrating distributed AI workloads across CPUs and GPUs on dynamically scaling AKS clusters. Azure Kubernetes Fleet Manager is now generally available, extending centralized policy, workload placement, and RBAC governance across hybrid and multi-cloud cluster estates. These updates aim to make Kubernetes—rather than bespoke AI infrastructure stacks—the operational backbone for training and inference at scale.

Managed System Node Pools are now GA, auto-managing system component capacity and patching to prevent resource contention with GPU workloads. AI Runway, a Kubernetes-native model-serving framework, enables users to select models, validate GPU requirements, estimate costs, and launch production endpoints via KAITO provisioning and vLLM runtimes. The bare-metal support is initially available on validated Dell and HPE servers; broader certification follows by year-end.

For infrastructure architects: The bare-metal option signals enterprise acceptance of Kubernetes for AI production when the virtualization tax becomes unacceptable. Combined with Fleet Manager (now GA), this positions AKS as a unified control plane from edge to cloud, reducing operational fragmentation for organizations managing diverse hardware topologies and sensitive workloads.

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