Chip wars, EU antitrust & more (December 4, 2025)

Good morning,

Today’s AI world feels like a power grid under maximum load. Big Tech is racing to own the chip layer, regulators are turning up heat on Meta, and Google just had its most-Googled year ever. Let’s jump into the wild ups and downs shaping the industry.

Let's dig in👇

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⚙️ Chip Wars & Power Plays

🔧 Amazon’s Nvidia rival becomes a multibillion-dollar business

Andy Jassy says Amazon’s Nvidia competitor chip is scaling fast, with AWS pitching its in-house silicon as a serious alternative for high-volume AI workloads. The move signals Amazon is preparing for a world where it controls the full compute pipeline. Nvidia dominance is safe for now, but the cracks are forming.

💰 Alphabet’s secret $900B AI chip advantage

Alphabet’s AI chips are a potential 900 billion secret sauce according to new reporting showing how deeply the company relies on its custom silicon. The chips underpin Google’s entire AI stack and quietly influence margins across Search, Cloud, and YouTube. If Google keeps this moat, rivals face an uphill cost battle.

🇨🇳 China’s Cambricon plans to triple chip output

Cambricon aims to triple chip output as the country doubles down on homegrown AI hardware. Its ambition is clear: fully replace Nvidia GPUs in China’s data centers. The scale-up is massive, but matching Nvidia’s ecosystem will take years.

🔎 Regulation, Rivalries & Recognition

🧩 EU opens antitrust probe into Meta's AI practices

EU launches antitrust probe into Meta over use of AI in WhatsApp and Instagram, specifically focused on whether Meta unfairly combines user data for training. Europe is continuing its push to shape global AI rules through aggressive enforcement. Meta now faces another multi-year legal battle that could reshape its AI pipeline.

🌊 OpenAI acquires Neptune to accelerate model training

OpenAI agrees to acquire Neptune in a move aimed at optimizing training pipelines. This follows months of pressure from Google’s rapid model improvements. Streamlining training is increasingly the competitive edge in the model race.

🔍 Gemini becomes Google’s top trending search term

Gemini was Google’s top trending search term for the entire year, beating out global sports events and political news. This reflects how deeply AI entered mainstream awareness in 2025. Google’s branding push around Gemini is clearly landing.

🧰 Tools of the Day

→ Pylar, an AI framework for building custom agents
→ Dagster Cloud, a production-grade data orchestration layer for complex pipelines
→ Protaige, a lightweight tool for generating structured product documentation

✍️ Prompt of the Day

Act as a personal strategist. I’ll tell you what I’m currently working on, you then help me identify the 3 highest-leverage actions I should take today, and rewrite them as clear, doable steps that would noticeably move my week forward.

⚡ Quick Hits

→ Anthropic and Snowflake lock a $200M partnership to bring AI to enterprise
→ Google Workspace launches Studio Agents for everyday workflows.
→ Meta won’t fund world-model startup despite LeCun’s public enthusiasm.
→ Dartmouth teams with AWS and Anthropic on a campus-wide AI initiative.
→ AI startup Fortell reimagines hearing aids with real-time sound interpretation.
→ Startup taps geothermal energy source to fuel sustainable compute.
→ Nexus keeps fund diversified rather than going all-in on AI.
→ Nvidia trains 8B-tool-using model to better manage complex workflows.

🧾 TLDR

Chip wars everywhere: Amazon, Alphabet, and Cambricon all made major moves, while regulators tightened their grip on Meta. OpenAI grabbed a new company to speed up training, and Google crowned Gemini the most-searched term of 2025. The AI race continues to accelerate across hardware, models, and global policy.

Best,
David