Blog

Memory & Flash Crisis Update (March 2026)

Steve McDowell February 28, 2026

The global memory market entered 2026 in a state of structural supply constraint. AI infrastructure demand has reallocated semiconductor manufacturing capacity toward HBM for GPU accelerators, creating scarcity in conventional DRAM and NAND flash products.

Verizon’s Pivot Opens the Door: Why Private 5G Pioneers Are Prime M&A Targets in 2026

Michael McDowell February 16, 2026

Real, paying customers are driving demand for edge inference in manufacturing and logistics, and Verizon is backing that with One Fiber.

Why Cisco Builds Silicon for the Data Center but Buys It for Wi‑Fi

Michael McDowell February 12, 2026

Two domains. Two silicons. One intentional strategy.

The Carrier Pivot: What Verizon’s AI Strategy Signals for the Next Phase of Private 5G

Michael McDowell February 11, 2026

What stands out is Verizon’s insistence that this is not speculative infrastructure building.

Call Notes: Compute Hardware & Semiconductor Ecosystem

Steve McDowell February 9, 2026

Every quarter I participate in a call for buy-side investment analysts focused on compute hardware and the broader semiconductor ecosystem. Here, I’m sharing the raw notes from that call.

Explainer: What Does It Mean to “Support Apache Iceberg” in a Storage System

Steve McDowell February 8, 2026

Over the past several years, “Apache Iceberg support” has quietly become table stakes in modern data infrastructure conversations. Storage vendors list it in press releases, lakehouse platforms lead with it and architects assume it.