@SmallCapSnipa Korea’s grid infrastructure is a genuinely tighter bottleneck than in the US given the country’s smaller landmass and existing industrial power demand.
Big Tech’s AI spending hasn’t even peaked yet.
Barron’s reports $GOOGL, $MSFT, $AMZN and $META have already committed hundreds of billions to AI infrastructure, and analysts expect capex to climb even higher through 2026.
$GOOGL kicks off earnings July 22, with FactSet pegging Q2 capex at $44.9B, double the $22.4B spent a year ago. $MSFT reports July 29, $AAPL July 30.
Goldman’s Eric Sheridan just raised his $AMZN capex forecast, now modeling $827B cumulative spend from 2026 to 2028, citing tight AI hardware supply and rising costs for chips and memory.
Synopsys Is Quietly Walking Away From the Fab Floor to Chase AI Chip Design
$SNPS is reportedly ending its chip fab manufacturing control software business as it shifts focus toward AI-driven chip design, according to Reuters.
The affected products are EES and FDC, automation software that acts as the central nervous system inside semiconductor fabs, monitoring equipment and catching defects before they turn into costly production problems. Synopsys told more than 10 chipmakers back in April and May, including Samsung, SK Hynix, Kioxia, and Qorvo, that this is an “end of life” move: no new versions going forward, maintenance only from here.
The reasoning lines up with where Synopsys has been pointing its resources. The company closed its $35 billion acquisition of Ansys in 2025, and in March 2026 unveiled technology aimed at letting AI agents take over much of the chip design process. Freeing up engineers from fab-floor support work to focus on that higher-margin AI design business appears to be the underlying logic here.
Reaction from customers has been mixed. Samsung says it already has compatible alternatives in place with no expected production impact. SK Hynix declined to comment. Some chipmakers were reportedly already building in-house tools of their own, which may have made Synopsys’ offering less essential to begin with.
Ticker to watch: $SNPS itself for how this pivot toward AI design tools plays out financially, plus $CDNS as its closest EDA competitor, and $PDFS (PDF Solutions), a pure-play in the fab yield and manufacturing analytics space Synopsys is stepping back from.
This is actually Q1 2026 data being recirculated, not fresh news, Berkshire’s cash pile hit $397.4B back at the end of March, largely from 14 straight quarters of net stock selling ($24.1B sold vs $15.9B bought in that quarter alone). Buffett himself called markets a “church with a casino attached” at the May annual meeting, and Greg Abel, now CEO after 60 years without Buffett at the helm, has kept that same defensive posture unchanged rather than deploying the capital.
A Chinese EV maker’s pickleball sponsorship just became a proof point for a newly listed events company.
$KINL, which IPO’d on SGX Catalist in April, says its inaugural PPA Asia 500 Singapore Open has sold over 80% of tickets, with weekend sessions fully sold out.
Leapmotor $9863.HK is the title sponsor through Stellantis ASEAN, the regional arm of $STLA, which holds a stake in Leapmotor’s international joint venture.