The semiconductor industry is not a competitive landscape but a hierarchy of control. From design to fabrication to acceleration, value concentrates in the layers that define, constrain and allocate compute across the global economy.
Infrastructure
Physical and digital networks shaping connectivity, productivity and the foundations of modern economic activity.
Berkshire Hathaway is often seen as a collection of companies. In reality, it operates as a system of infrastructure assets — railroads, energy grids and networks that form the invisible backbone of the economy and enable long-term capital compounding.
A quiet transition is underway at Berkshire Hathaway. As Greg Abel steps forward, capital is no longer just allocated — it is being structured into systems. Infrastructure, energy and networks are becoming the true drivers of long-term economic power.
SCINTIL Photonics has unveiled an integrated DWDM eLSFP module with eight lasers on a single silicon photonics chip. The breakthrough could reduce optical complexity and energy consumption, enabling scalable high-bandwidth connectivity for next-generation AI data center networks.
Artificial intelligence appears weightless, yet it runs on energy-hungry machines nearing physical limits. As moving data becomes costlier than computing it, engineers are turning from electrons to photons. This shift toward light-based hardware may determine the scalability, economics, and geopolitics of AI.
The global race for artificial intelligence is often framed as a competition of scale: larger models, more parameters, faster GPUs. Yet beneath this visible layer lies a quieter crisis. As AI systems grow, the energy required to move data between chips, racks and clusters is beginning to exceed the energy needed for computation itself.
