In this episode of The Circuit, hosts Ben Bajarin and Jay Goldberg review major updates across the semiconductor industry, beginning with AMD’s Advancing AI Day where they discuss CEO Lisa Su’s performance, the technical details of the Helios rack-scale architecture, and AMD&#x27;s strategic fit for inference with partners like Anthropic. They next unpack Intel’s strong quarterly earnings, pointing out that the company beat revenue and margin estimates while confirming customer traction for its 18A and 14A process nodes, despite mixed market reactions over its conservative CapEx approach. The hosts then analyze the broader semiconductor capital equipment (semicap) sector, arguing that increased CapEx from key fab operators will drive sustained demand for equipment makers. Finally, they cover Texas Instruments’ solid quarterly report, noting signs of recovery in automotive and industrial markets along with surging demand for power semiconductors used in AI data centers.

EP 185: AMD Advancing AI, Intel Earnings and WFE Demand

The Circuit

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Circuit. I am Ben Bajarin. Greetings programs. I'm Jay Goldberg. Well, we had another action packed week across the industry. This week with a couple of moments, we had AMD's Advancing AI Day that we were boots on the ground with. We had Intel Earnings, which then sent a whole slew of conversations in the industry.

So we're going to cover all those topics and more and some of the little fingers that they extend into. But let's start with AMD. You know, we obviously Keynote was good for us. They had a couple of technical deep dives that I think are super interesting that I want to talk about. But let's talk broad strokes.

Firstly, I want to make the point, and while we are all massive fans of Lisa Su and have been forever, I think this was her best keynote presentation wise. Like, candor wise. Style wise. Like, I thought it was really good. Like, she's been great in the past, but I think sometimes like I've been like, get a little bit more excited, Lisa.

Like, really, like, really feel like we're, we're having a friendly chat, you know, and kind of like, like, and I thought this time she did a great job. So, so presentation style, tone, candor, all that stuff. I thought this was her best, her best keynote. I, so just, I want to set the record straight. Neither of us were actually wearing boots. We were on the ground.

Nobody, nobody's wearing boots except for one camera grip guy. I saw he was wearing boots and a skirt. So it was, it was, it was, it's 2026. It was a, it was a good event. Actually, no, I'm lying.

EP 185: AMD Advancing AI, Intel Earnings and WFE Demand

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.

EP 185: AMD Advancing AI, Intel Earnings and WFE Demand

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast, not the earnings call.

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.