RSS Amplifier

Blog

The Fog Signal™

The convergence of AI, telecom, and edge computing is rewriting your industry. The Fog Signal cuts through it. Weekly executive intelligence from 40 years at Silicon Valley's frontier.

thefogsignal.substack.comSource feed ↗13 posts

Live Last read · last published · next check

Written by

Latest posts

The Last Mile Has a Meter On It

18% of firms have adopted AI and 57% of those stop at three functions. The Sextant on why the completed action is now the unit of return, and its meter.

The Pulse™ | Week 35: The ceiling is not the plan

Nevada authorized 7,000 robotaxis, and Tesla expects 2,500. NVIDIA guaranteed $105B behind OpenAI's Ohio lease and invested $1.5B. Groq raised at half.

The Residual Value Trade

NVIDIA's $500B financing push moves no capital. The 25% residual value floor does. Who holds the tail on a four-year-old GPU once the compute is financed?

The Pulse™ | Week 34: Someone else holds the asset

NVIDIA arranged $500B for AI infrastructure and kept it off its balance sheet. Anthropic leased 191 MW. Cisco's margins fell as AI orders quadrupled.

Nobody Grants Permission to an Org Chart

59% of enterprises run AI agents and 26% can govern them. The Sextant on why permission, not capacity, now sets the revenue date and the volume ceiling.

The Pulse™ | Week 33: Permission is the last gate

Zoox charges its first fare August 10 under a 2,500-vehicle NHTSA exemption, AST reaches orbit, and the EU AI Act starts enforcing. Five signals.

The Captive Fab

Terafab is no TSMC competitor. Eighty percent of its capacity is a radiation-hardened chip for orbit, and what Intel really brings is packaging, not the node.

The Pulse™ | Week 32: The conversion test

Azure crossed $100B and Meta's profit fell 14% the same week. The Pulse Week 32 on why AI capacity must now prove conversion across IIoT, telecom, edge and AV.

Who Owns the Return?

Hyperscaler spending rose 77% while 57% of enterprises still show no return. The Sextant on the layer, the unit, and the owner that decide whether AI pays back.

The Pulse™ | Week 31: The price of the layer

AMD's Helios rack sells inference on tokens per dollar as NVIDIA, AT&T, Tesla and Siemens turn IIoT, telecom, edge and AV toward compute economics.

The Absorption Ladder

NVIDIA's Nokia AI-RAN launch is not a radio story. It is the next rung in a strategy of absorbing every compute-adjacent vertical, while Ericsson refuses.

The Pulse™ | Week 30: Owning the inference layer

Meta's Iris ASIC, Nokia's Nvidia AI-RAN and a $4.175B OT-security deal show IIoT, Telecom, Edge and Autonomous leaders moving to own the AI inference layer.

The Constraint That Finances the Others.

The AI buildout runs through a few interlocked balance sheets. The Sextant on circular financing, counterparty concentration, and what boards owe shareholders.