Alan Cohen

We attended CEO Jensen Huang's keynote at GTC 2026 in San Jose. We expect the stock to hold its initial gains (up 2%) following an upbeat event that we believe satisfied two key investor expectations. First, given its disclosure of $1 trillion of datacenter revenue orders through 2027, Nvidia provided visibility into a strong growth outlook for 2027, consistent with our estimates and well above the Street - which we think can help resolve investor concerns around “peak CapEx” in 2026. Second, Nvidia’s launch of Groq's LPX rack helps cement the company’s commitment to the inference market - which we think is a critical, yet increasingly competitive growth market within AI infrastructure. We maintain our Buy rating as we continue to see a positive catalyst path ahead for the stock in the coming months, including greater visibility into hyperscaler CapEx plans (and Nvidia’s growth) in 2027, plus new LLMs trained on Blackwell that should help the company re-assert its performance leadership.

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As AI workloads eat up global computing supply, DRAM prices are surging like never before—creating major challenges for teams trying to plan out their data center spend. One of my portfolio companies, Mext, is addressing the largest cost component in the datacenter: server memory (DRAM). From being on the board of Redis for the last twelve years, I’ve learned a lot about the various aspects of this problem and approaches to solving them. Mext found a breakthrough, using new AI techniques, for dramatically reducing the amount of server-DRAM required to run applications, all while maintaining performance. It intelligently manages the server’s memory, keeping hot pages (i.e., those in use by applications) in fast DRAM and offloading cold pages (i.e., those less used) to a much less expensive memory tier (e.g., NVMe Flash). Key to the approach is ensuring cold memory pages that are about to be accessed by an application are back in DRAM before the application needs them or notices that they were gone. This is done without modifications to the application or the OS – so it can run in the cloud or on-premise. Mext thus allows applications to either run using less DRAM or keep their DRAM footprint but do more with it. They're hosting a webinar along with Fred Weber (former CTO of AMD) on Jan 22nd at 10am pacific time. You can register here: https://lnkd.in/gXe9GCeE

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When most people hear "solid-state," they think storage. But in Santa Clara, xMEMS Labs just gave that term new resonance, literally. The company just raised $21M in Series D funding led by Boardman Bay Capital Management, with Cloudview Capital, CDIB-TEN Capital, Harbinger Ventures, Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital, and other strategic investors tuning in. This isn't another round of capital, it's an #amplifier for a company turning silicon into a new language of #sound and #cooling for the AI era. Founded in 2018 by Joseph Jiang and Jemm Liang, xMEMS spun out of piezoelectric R&D at TSMC and turned what was once wafer-level theory into commercial hardware. Joseph Jiang, a veteran of Knowles, Fortemedia, and InvenSense, leads with precision and swagger, while Jemm Liang, who built Ultrachip from the ground up, drives the engineering with surgical focus. Co-Founder & CLO Wei-Fu Hsu, the former MediaTek exec and IP expert, ensures xMEMS' innovation is as protected as it is disruptive. Their play? A monolithic MEMS platform that transforms voltage into vibration, silicon into sound. Unlike legacy coil speakers and fans, xMEMS tech doesn't move parts, it moves markets. Over 500K MEMS speakers shipped in 1H'24, backed by >250 global patents. The Cypress & Sycamore lines redefine what "small" can do: 1mm-thin, full-range, and capable of sub-bass response once thought impossible in earbuds. Their XMC-2400 µCooling chip, 1mm-thin, fan-on-a-chip, inaudible, moves 39cc/sec of air at just 30mW. That's not cooling, that's choreography at a molecular level. Dr. Chester Hwang, named CTO on Oct 15, 2025, joins to push that curve further. Alongside veterans Mike Housholder (VP Marketing & Biz Dev), Jim Wargnier (VP N.A. & EU Sales), James Lee (VP & Korea GM), Steven P. Bentley (VP Sales), and Martin Lim (VP MEMS Tech), xMEMS is scaling at semiconductor speed. They're already in BleeqUp's AI sports glasses and teamed with Dongguan Rayking Electronics for TWS modules. When OEMs talk "next-gen," they're talking xMEMS-level integration. For investors like Boardman Bay's Will Graves, this isn't just sound engineering, it's signal intelligence. With AI pushing devices thinner, faster, and hotter, xMEMS' piezoMEMS platform sits at the intersection of #acoustics and #thermals, where every millimeter matters. Backing them is a bet that the next wave of #sensorytech won't just compute, it'll feel alive. So what's next? Scaling production, expanding capacity, and embedding xMEMS' silicon pulse into everything from earbuds to AI #datacenters. In a world chasing speed, silence, and fidelity, xMEMS isn't following the beat, they're building the frequency the future will hum to. #Startups #StartupFunding #VentureCapital #SeriesD #AI #Sound #SoundEngineering #Semiconductors #Data #DataDriven #Technology #Innovation #TechEcosystem #StartupEcosystem #Hiring #TechHiring If software engineering peace of mind is what you crave, Vention is your zen.

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Varun Sivaram has a truly unique ability to pull together stakeholders across AI, energy, and policy. This is exactly why Earthshot Ventures invested in Emerald AI - there is a grand bargain to be struck in getting data centers online fast if they're willing to bring flexibility to the grid, and Varun is the man to strike that bargain. The latest illustration - bringing together $5T in market cap consisting of the world's leading chip company and the 5 leading IPPs in the US to make this happen!

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""This $100M funding propels TensorWave's mission to democratize access to cutting-edge AI compute," said Darrick Horton, CEO of TensorWave. "Our 8,192 Instinct MI325X GPU cluster marks just the beginning as we establish ourselves as the emerging AMD-powered leader in the rapidly expanding AI infrastructure market.” The new capital will fuel TensorWave’s operational growth, team expansion, and the accelerated deployment of its Instinct MI325X-powered training cluster. This growth comes at a pivotal moment, as demand for AI computing resources continues to outstrip supply and organizations seek alternatives to limited infrastructure options."

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Another AI data center acquisition. NIXXY (NASDAQ: NIXX), a technology company developing and providing AI-powered business services, today announced it has acquired the EDGE data center assets of Everythink Innovations Limited, (“EIL”), a telecom and edge infrastructure provider with existing operations in Fremont, CA, and Vancouver, Canada. This strategic acquisition accelerates Nixxy’s rollout of its AI data infrastructure layer and provides immediate revenue scale and infrastructure capacity aligned with communications, AI, and data monetization applications by securing its own facilities and its ability to host its AI applications. #AI #artificialintelligence #datacenter #datacenters #AIinfrastructure

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