Where are DeepSeek and other Chinese AI firms going to be getting their chips over the next 5 years? @​jordanschneider says that without Nvidia hardware, they're just not going to be able to keep up. "There's this ratio between the US semi ecosystem and the China semi ecosystem. The capacity is like 15:1. "And you can project that out pretty clearly, doing some math around how much capex is being spent, how much equipment is being acquired, yield rates, etc." "So where is [DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng] going to get the chips? He's probably going to get as much Nvidia as he can get." "But the larger takeaway with the Chinese and Western ecosystems is that the Western one is way better capitalized and has way more straightforward access to chips, which is basically an order of magnitude better over at least the next 5 years." "So it's going to be rough sledding for Chinese firms." "The Chinese AI IPOs are making like, $500M. Or like $1B. And it's cute. But it's not $3 trillion. Or even $10B. And the reason that's the case is that they're not on the frontier — so they can't charge a premium — and they're compute-constrained." "If all the firms have is access to Chinese chips, it's going to be really difficult to make a lot of money, and keep paying for more chips, in the way that the Western labs have been able to mobilize the entire global financial system." ▻