Larry Dignan

SK Hynix said it will accelerate its Yongin Semiconductor Cluster for completion in 2033 instead of 2045 to address AI memory demand. The company will expand its facilities in South Korea and invest more than $714 billion based on today's currency rates.

The effort is part of a Samsung, SK Hynix and South Korea plan to create an AI memory giant via four new memory chip making plants. The combined investment for South Korean companies is $1 trillion.

SK Hynix said:

"Originally scheduled for completion in 2045, the Yongin Semiconductor Cluster now aims to complete its fourth fab by 2033, bringing its construction schedule forward by 12 years. With phased investments in manufacturing facilities and production equipment, total investment in the Yongin Cluster is expected to reach KRW 600 trillion.

In addition, SK hynix will expand its production base in Cheongju(through an investment of KRW 100 trillion), while investing KRW 400 trillion in the Southwestern Region to develop a new semiconductor cluster, as the region is expected to provide the large-scale site and supporting infrastructure—including reliable electricity and water supply—required for the company’s next manufacturing hub."

Although the increased capacity is nice, if current demand holds you have years of memory price increases ahead.

The New York Times is reporting that OpenAI may put off its IPO because it may not be able to land a $1 trillion valuation. The tech industry goes crazy. Apparently, SpaceX's IPO, which popped and dropped and is holding above the IPO price for now, worries OpenAI. Keep in mind that SpaceX's math is ridiculous even if it is halved from the IPO price.

Simply put, OpenAI isn't ready for its confessional with investors, sure isn't ready for quarterly reports and sure isn't ready to encounter non-believers on Wall Street. I'm bummed though, I really wanted to financial gymnastics on paper (pixels).

Onsemi said it will acquire Synaptics in an all-stock deal valued at $7 billion. Onsemi said Synaptics will boost its total addressable market and position the company better in physical AI deployments.

Adobe said it will acquire Topaz Labs, which develops image and video enhancement models. Topaz Labs will be combined with Adobe's Firefly and Firefly Services as well as Creative Cloud apps.

Apple's online store went down today as if new products were launching. When the store returned, Apple had new prices. The company raised prices for most products excluding the iPhone, but the AI tax is probably coming for Apple's iconic smartphone too.

Not surprisingly, most of the price increases were tied to the Mac lineup where some models saw a $500 increase and another saw a $1,300 jump. MacRumors had the changes by product.

The reason for the price increases is simple: Memory costs. Memory is in tight supply and all you have to do is look at Micron's latest earnings report to see pricing power goes a long way.

Elastic said in an SEC filing that it is cutting 7% of its workforce and taking a non-cash charge of $22 million to $25 million. In addition, Elastic said Ken Exner, Chief Product Officer, will resign to pursue another opportunity.

Elastic said:

"The Company plans to continue hiring in key strategic areas and locations, including continuing to grow headcount in customer-facing go-to-market functions, and expects total headcount to grow this fiscal year compared to last fiscal year, as it continues to invest in future growth opportunities."

Constellation Research analyst Mike Ni said:

"Elastic's organizational changes embraces the broader market shift from observability to operational intelligence. The next opportunity isn't simply helping enterprises understand what happened. It's enabling AI to make trusted operational decisions at scale. Elastic already has strong assets in telemetry, search, security, and contextual retrieval. The challenge now is turning those capabilities into the runtime intelligence layer that guides autonomous operations."

A few fun facts as Bitcoin breaks below $60,000. Strategy (MSTR) is down another 10% today to $93 or so and now has a market cap of $36.5 billion. Its Bitcoin reserve holdings are worth $50.35 billion. Who's buying? Strategy shares are down 75% over the last 12 months. Here's a look at the metrics.

Don't call Commodore's retro phone dumb. The Commodore Callback 8020 is a flip phone designed for digital detox. The company revealed a base price of $399. There appears to be a market for a phone that blocks social media and keeps you from doom scrolling.

Commodore is the brand behind that old PC you had as a kid. If you're young enough it's possible Commodore is a totally new brand to you.

The big pitch:

"The Commodore Callback 8020 is a premium, privacy-first, digital detox device built to block social media apps at the hardware level using patent pending technology, while still running 99% of essential Android apps, playing studio-quality Hi-Def music, and shooting with a premium Sony 48MP camera."

Nebuis has added a bevy of new features for its cloud operating platform with the launch of Nebius AI Cloud 3.6, which includes Nebius Echo, an AI agent for controlling cloud infrastructure with natural language. The release also includes developer experience improvements and new enterprise security and governance controls.

A CloudZero survey of 260 senior finance pros found that 87% of them need to tie AI spending to business outcomes within the next year. And only 22% of them can do that today. In addition, 66% of boards now condition more AI funding on proof of return.

Here's Esteban Kolsky's CEO Dashboard series in full.

• The CEO’s AI Dashboard (a series begins)
• CEO's AI Dashboard Series: Business Value (#2)
• The CEO’s AI Dashboard, Part 3: Data Readiness
• The CEO’s AI Dashboard, Part 4: Infrastructure Readiness

New Relic said it will add New Relic Autopilot and New Relic Ground Truth to its platform. Customers will be able to deploy an automated SRE agent operated by New Relic or enhance existing AI agents.

The company also announced integrations with AWS Kiro.