Always Be Curious #308: Decoding the chip roadmap, NVIDIA's expansion, and quantum devices
This week in ABC: A deep dive into imec’s new roadmap for Logic chips, NVIDIA makes even more money, and quantum devices are heating up (pun intended)
Sup Curious Clan! ✌️ Earlier this week I published a deep dive into imec’s new Logic roadmap. If you’ve ever wondered what’s behind those mysterious node names like N2, A14, or A2, the answer is: a lot more than marketing, but also a lot less actual nanometers than you’d think. The piece walks you through key metrics like CPP, metal pitch, cell height, and the transistor architectures that will carry the industry from today to 2041. 📐🧱
Speaking of roadmaps that may blow the mind, NVIDIA dropped its Q1 FY2027 earnings this week and Jensen Huang did what Jensen does best: turn a quarterly results call into a sermon. “The buildout of AI factories, the largest infrastructure expansion in human history, is accelerating at extraordinary speed,” he declared, and honestly, the numbers back him up. The company returned a record $20 billion to shareholders, the board approved another $80 billion in buybacks, and edge computing alone pulled in $6.4 billion. And yet, the market still managed to be unimpressed. Huang reportedly told employees in a leaked all-hands that “the market did not appreciate it,” joking about the “good old days” when NVIDIA had a $5 trillion market cap. Tough crowd. 🤯💰
The broader AI capex bonanza shows zero signs of cooling. Anthropic told investors it expects Q2 revenue of $10.9 billion (up 130%) and its first ever operating profit, growing faster than Zoom did during the pandemic. ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet sat down with Reuters to confirm direct talks with Elon Musk about the now-$119 billion Terafab project, and predicted the chip market will hit $1.5 trillion by 2030 with “supply-limited” conditions for the foreseeable future. The first chips from ASML’s high-NA EUV machines are arriving within months, imec showed off a world-first quantum dot qubit fabricated with high-NA EUV, and the US government took a $2 billion equity stake in nine quantum computing firms. Meanwhile, AMD is dropping $10 billion into Taiwan’s chip ecosystem, Samsung is bonus-paying its chip workers from AI profits, and CXMT in China is forecasting a revenue surge of its own.
The boom isn’t slowing down, it’s broadening. Buckle up. 🚀
Have a good week, stay safe and sound,
👨💻The round-up in sci-tech💡
🚀 SpaceX’s ambitions are intergalactic. Its business is selling you internet. (The Wall Street Journal) 🎁
The world’s richest man needed lots of money—and a moonshot. Starlink was born.
💻 Why Sierra the supercomputer had to die (WIRED)
WIRED chronicles the decommissioning of Sierra, the IBM-Nvidia supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore that ran nuclear weapon simulations for seven years. Once the world’s second-fastest machine at 125 petaflops, it was retired last October to make way for El Capitan — and its story marks the end of an era in heterogeneous computing.
💰 Mind-blowing growth is about to propel Anthropic into its first profitable quarter (The Wall Street Journal) 🎁
Anthropic told investors it expects Q2 revenue of $10.9 billion (up 130%) and its first operating profit of $559 million. Revenue is now growing faster than Zoom did during the pandemic, with infrastructure costs falling from 71% to 56% of revenue. The company defies the “AI bubble” narrative.
📺 Inside the secretive and lucrative world of orchid breeding (BBC)
It can take a decade of hard work to bring a new orchid to market.
🤓This week in chips⚠
Decoding imec's new industry roadmap for Logic innovation
It’s the week of the imec’s ITF World 2026 and newly minted CEO Patrick Vandenameele just updated the industry’s Logic roadmap. 🔥 This roadmap is a powerful navigational tool that helps the chip industry innovate from today to tomorrow. Look closely and you’ll see it’s packed with metrics, acronyms, and diagrams. So what’s actually on there? Let me wal…
⚛️ World first: imec presents quantum dot qubit device using high-NA EUV lithography (imec)
imec unveiled the world’s first quantum dot qubit device fabricated using high-NA EUV lithography — a milestone for scalable quantum computing manufacturing.
"In the next few months, we will be looking at the first few products, in memory, in logic, being exposed on the High-NA system."
✅ ASML says first chips from new high-NA machines arrive in months (Reuters)
ASML’s CEO confirmed the first commercial logic chips produced using its next-generation high-NA EUV lithography machines are expected within months — a major milestone for advanced chipmaking.
🗺️ The semiconductor technology roadmap (IEEE Spectrum)
IEEE Spectrum’s deep look at the latest international roadmap for semiconductor technology — where the industry expects nodes, packaging, and architectures to be over the next decade.
🎙️ Helpt het geheim van ASML ons naar de volgende BSML? / Will the secret of ASML help us to the next BSML? (De Technoloog)
In this Dutch podcast, Ben van der Burg and Mark Beekhuis dive into ASML’s history with author Susanne van der Velden. Which patterns can be recognised, what is the ASML DNA, and what have always been its weak points?
🤝 ASML CEO confirms direct talks with Elon Musk about Terafab (Tom’s Hardware)
ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet confirmed he has spoken directly with Elon Musk about the Terafab project — now projected to cost up to $119 billion in Texas — and called Musk “very serious” about the plans.
🤖 Intel CEO: ‘We used to have leadership in data center, we lost that. I’m trying to bring that back’ (CNBC)
In a candid CNBC interview, Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan acknowledges Intel lost its data centre leadership and outlines his plan to win it back.
🇨🇳 SMIC founder and AMEC CEO urge Chinese fabs to test domestic chip tools on production lines (Tom’s Hardware)
China’s chip industry pioneers are pushing local fabs to put domestic tools — including DUV lithography systems — into production lines, accelerating the country’s drive toward self-sufficiency.
📈 Chinese memory makers accelerate DDR5 development, targeting 8,000 MT/s DRAM speeds (WCCFtech)
Chinese memory manufacturers are accelerating their DDR5 development roadmaps, aiming for 8,000 MT/s speeds and closing the gap with global leaders Samsung and SK Hynix.
🇺🇸 US government takes $2 billion equity stake in nine quantum computing firms (Ars Technica)
The US government is taking a $2 billion equity stake across nine quantum computing companies — an unusual industrial-policy move to secure US leadership in quantum.
⚛️ Quantum computing grants for IBM, Rigetti, GlobalFoundries (The Wall Street Journal) 🎁
The US has awarded large quantum computing grants to IBM, Rigetti, GlobalFoundries and others as part of the $2 billion industrial-policy push.
🤝 AMD announces more than $10 billion in Taiwan ecosystem investment (AMD)
AMD’s official announcement of more than $10 billion in investment across the Taiwanese semiconductor ecosystem — strengthening ties with TSMC and Taiwan-based suppliers.
🦾 AMD begins production ramp of 256-core EPYC Venice on TSMC’s 2nm node (Tom’s Hardware)
AMD’s next-generation EPYC Venice processor — featuring 256 cores — is entering production ramp on TSMC’s 2nm node, a major step in the AMD-NVIDIA-Intel arms race for data centre CPUs.
🇹🇼 Intel’s glass substrate bet inches closer to reality as first prototypes co-packaged optics pictured (WCCFtech)
Intel’s long-promised glass substrate packaging is moving from R&D to reality, with the first co-packaged optics prototypes now publicly visible.
⚡ Laser-driven spintronic memory device switches 1,000x faster than DRAM (Tom’s Hardware)
Researchers built a non-volatile spintronic memory device that switches in just 40 picoseconds — about 1,000 times faster than DRAM — while generating almost no heat.
🎁 Samsung chip workers to receive bonus payouts on AI profits (Quartz)
🤯🤯 Samsung is rewarding its semiconductor division workers with bonus payouts after record AI-driven profits, as the company tries to boost morale amid ongoing union tensions.
📈By the numbers📉
📊 NVIDIA announces financial results for Q1 fiscal 2027 (NVIDIA)
“The buildout of AI factories — the largest infrastructure expansion in human history — is accelerating at extraordinary speed,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “Agentic AI has arrived, doing productive work, generating real value and scaling rapidly across companies and industries. NVIDIA is uniquely positioned at the center of this transformation as the only platform that runs in every cloud, powers every frontier and open source model, and scales everywhere AI is produced — from hyperscale data centers to the edge.”
📊 AI eats the world (Ben Evans)
Twice per year, Ben Evans releases his macro trends deck. And for some weird reason, it’s been called “AI eats the world” for a while now. 😆
📊 Gartner forecasts worldwide AI spending to grow 47% in 2026 (Gartner)
Gartner projects global AI spending will grow 47% in 2026, reaching levels that reshape IT budgets and competitive dynamics across industries.
🇨🇳 China’s CXMT expects revenue surge as memory chip demand soars (Reuters)
Chinese DRAM maker CXMT expects a significant revenue surge as global memory chip demand outstrips supply — a sign that China’s domestic DRAM ambitions are gaining traction.
❤️For the love of tech❤️
Starship’s twelfth test flight (SpaceX)
On Friday, May 22, 2026, at 5:30 p.m. CT, Starship lifted off from Starbase, Texas on its twelfth flight test. This was the first flight of the Starship and Super Heavy V3 vehicles, the Raptor 3 engines, the first flight from Pad 2, and the first Starship flight to deploy modified Starlink satellites to image Starship in space.
Always Be Curious is the personal newsletter of Sander Hofman, Communications Manager at ASML. Opinions expressed in the introduction of this curated newsletter are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.