The Future of Chips in the AI Era | Fractile's Walter Goodwin & ARM's Sir Robin Saxby

Nobody has shown why there should be a limit to how much we can benefit from intelligence. If that holds, AI could be the first market in semiconductor history without a bust.

Walter Goodwin, founder and CEO of Fractile, and Sir Robin Saxby, founding CEO of ARM, joined me on Forecast 2050 to discuss the future of semiconductors in the age of AI on the heels of Fractile’s $720M Series C. We’re delighted to be an investor with Fractile at Nebular.

Extended Show Notes: https://substack.com/home/post/p-224512051

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

01:24 Starting Fractile

06:01 Inference Is the Profit Center

09:39 Chips Over My Dead Body: The Founding of ARM

18:45 The Art of the Opinionated Chip

25:09 Breaking the Memory Wall

32:15 How ARM Picked Winners

38:23 Robin Calls a Correction

42:51 The Stickiness of the Transformer

46:49 Is There a Limit to AI Demand?

56:11 How TSMC Became the Standard

57:44 AI-Designed Chips

1:03:52 Brutal Honesty

Walter Goodwin is the founder and CEO of Fractile, a London-based chip-first frontier AI company building chips and systems to run frontier models far faster than today's hardware can.

Sir Robin Saxby is the founding CEO and former chairman of ARM, the largest company by market cap ever to come out of the UK.

Fractile: https://www.fractile.ai

Walter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/walter-goodwin/

Walter on X: https://x.com/goodwin_ml

Robin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robin-saxby-b3a8482a/

Forecast 2050 is a series about the next 25 years—and the builders, thinkers, and leaders shaping what comes next.

Finn on X: https://x.com/FinnMurphy12

Finn on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/finn-murphy-16160465

Nebular is a venture capital firm based in New York City. Head to nebular.vc for more info.