industry

the industry is not ready for TikTok

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In April 2024, several technicians from the statistical service of the US Department of Agriculture raised their eyebrows at the same time: sales of cottage cheese had skyrocketed so enormously that, evidently, it could only be a mistake. So, as protocol dictates in these cases, they picked up the phone and They started calling, one by one, all the producers. It wasn’t a mistake. Two years later, that same “wave” reaches a factory in Vilalba, in Lugo. There, Entrepinares (the largest cheese manufacturer in Spain) is about to spend more than 20 million euros to also become the Spanish king of cottage cheese. What is happening? How is it possible that in the land of Cabrales, Manchego and Maó that flat, dull and amorphous thing called a cottage is triumphing? But let’s start with the Mercadona line… because there we find many of the answers. As I say, Entrepinares will allocate more than 20 million to produce, in its Vilalba plant, about seven million kilos of this product. The change for the company is greater than it seems because, despite being the largest cheese factory in Spain, it does not produce fresh cheese. Spain has never been a place very fond of fresh cheese. It’s not that there isn’t any (from cottage cheese to mata or ‘Burgos cheese’), but the storage conditions complicated its popularity. Such is the situation that, during all these years, Mercadona has not been able to find a national supplier for its cheese. This has meant that there have been several changes of supplier and that the product is sold out with quite a striking frequency. It wasn’t a big problem as long as the demand was small and controllable; but now the situation has changed. What happened to cottage cheese? For the confused: we are talking about a grainy, unpressed curd that contains about 12 grams of protein per 100 and just 4% fat. In reality, if we want to fully understand what happened, we have to think of it more than as a cheese… as a “protein supplement” that is made with milk. That’s why it didn’t have any success: the “cultural gap” didn’t exist until the protein rush created it. And what if he made it: cottage consumption in Spain grew by 61% in 2025seven times more than fresh cheese, according to NIQ. 61%? It sounds like a lot (a lot) and it is, but there is something of a trick to it. After all, the cottage cheese started almost from scratch. Cottage cheese remains almost anecdotal in the Spanish cheese market as a whole. However, the growth pattern is global and even in much more mature markets (such as the US or the United Kingdom) growth is around 20% and the +41.9%. The question that everyone has is the same: fashion or fixed category? And there the opinions are varied. While analysts such as John Crawford maintain that It’s not something temporary (two years of double-digit growth in value and volume is not a fad) others like Mike McCully are more cautious (and “believe that the boom comes after two decades of decline because of TikTok”, which suggests that it may go away as quickly as it came). Be that as it may, what is clear is that this story goes beyond cheese. It is about how our food systems are suffering (and will suffer) pressures from extremely volatile ‘states of opinion’. It is, above all, that we are not prepared for it (and being prepared will cost us a lot of money). Image | Caroline Roose In Xataka | There is a brand devouring the cheese industry in Spain thanks to Mercadona: Entrepinares

“stop copying what the industry develops”

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In 1969, the first message in the history of the Internet was as ambitious as it was brief: it was supposed to be “LOGIN”, but the system crashed after transmitting just “LO”. That failure was born inside DARPAthe great military laboratory of the United States that would end up lighting the network that moves the world today. Half a century later, the Navy seems to want to repeat the play: let the market do its thing and reserve truly disruptive innovation for what only war needs. The great course correction. The United States Navy has just assumed something that had been hanging in the air for years: its innovation system had become too slow, cumbersome and, above all, redundant. Rachel Rileyhead of naval research, has put on the table in the Defense media an almost brutal idea for its simplicity: stop spending public money on copying what private industry is already developing on its own. His message has been direct: if there are possible benefits, private capital will eventually arrive. The military mission, therefore, should not compete with that, but rather focus on what no one else wants or can finance. “Stop copying.” That’s the core of doctrinal change. For decades, the Office of Naval Research functioned as a large parallel laboratory that often followed paths similar to those of the private sector. Now the order is different: reduce bureaucracy, simplify processes and assume that speed matters more than ever. Riley summed it up with a phrase that sets the tone for this new stage: “speed is the word of the year in our business. Stop copying what the industry builds.” Ultimately, it is a strategic admission: in a technological war, time is already worth as much as technology itself. What only the State can build. The new frontier according to Rileyis in those capacities that do not have a civil market. His example was devastating because it was simple: “there is no commercial need for very quiet tubes that move underwater for a long time.” He was talking, of course, about submarines. That phrase sums up the new investment criterion: if the market will never do it, the Pentagon must do it. And that weighs especially heavily in 2026, with the AUKUS agreement underway and submarine warfare recovering centrality in the Indo-Pacific against China. From experiment to real war. The best example of this transition It’s the Sea Hunter. What began as an experiment in 2017 to hunt submarines and clear mines has taken almost a decade to become a real operating asset. That period is precisely what the Navy wants to reduce. The problem is no longer proving that something works, but integrating it before it gets old. The logic is clear: fewer eternal laboratories, more prototypes that reach the fleet quickly. The rescue that changed the conversation. The proof that this model is beginning to work came just weeks ago: a Saronic Corsair autonomous naval drone rescued for the first time to two downed pilots of a Boeing AH-64 Apache off the coast of Oman. The most revealing data was not only the rescue, but time: four months from the first test to a successful real mission. For the Defense Innovation Unitthat is exactly what they are looking for: rapid iteration, immediate adaptation and practical usefulness, even for functions that the system had not even been designed to fulfill. The war of autonomous masses. Be that as it may, the real bottleneck is not in building one drone, but a hundred. Both Riley and Jarred Conley agreed on the same obsession: Go from a human controlling a drone to a human controlling entire swarms. Riley ridiculed many of the current approaches as “little kids playing football,” all running after the same goal without coordination. That’s why the Navy is studying how insects and birds are organized to convert that biological logic into military doctrine. Because the next revolution will not be the individual drone, it will be something more like the intelligent mass. Bureaucracy as an internal enemy. If you like, the most important thing about all this is that the Navy seems to have understood something that the war in Ukraine has been proving for years: Innovating fast matters more than perfecting slowly. For decades, the Pentagon believed it could control every phase of development. Now he begins to accept that his role must be another: detect gaps, finance them and let the industry do the rest. The warning is clear and powerful: the military future no longer seems to be won by inventing everything, but by knowing what is worth inventing. Image | Jasmin Aquino, US Army In Xataka | 230 years ago, the Navy made something that is still useful today: an extremely accurate map of the Bay of Cádiz In Xataka | The US moved its aircraft carriers away from Asia to protect them: China has just published a manual to hunt them from 3,000 km

China is strangling critical materials that the US needs for its technology industry. It’s a two speed war

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In early May, Trump went to China on an official trip and took an entourage of CEOs on Air Force One. They were all from the technology (Cristiano Amon, Tim Cook, Elon Musk or Jensen Huang, for example), but also others energy, the space industry or semiconductors. One of them was Jim Anderson of Coherent, who was very interested in something very specific: why China is taking more than necessary in issue export licenses of indium phosphide. Anderson is blown away by indium phosphide for a very specific reason: It’s an essential material for high-speed optical chips. And, although it may seem very specific, it turns out that it is the key piece that the data centers new generation of the United States. And China, as with other strategic materials and metals, is in control. Optical chips. Data centers house miles and miles of visible cables that connect servers to the network and power, but they are not the only ones. Within each device, the chips are linked by cable and it is a functional technology, but with a limit that is beginning to be reached. If you want to improve latency and bandwidth (and, therefore, the performance of artificial intelligence platforms), you must rethink the internal connection to communicate the chips. That’s where optics come into play. By connecting chips by laser, the performance of the equipment is multiplied and Nvidia is so convinced of this that, a few months ago, invested 4 billion dollars in two companies: Lumentum and Coherent. They estimate that, with copper that is at its limit, connecting clusters of thousands of processors by laser is the solution to the physical problem that they are beginning to encounter. They are components with a very high degree of specialization and a series of materials from the rare earth which, as we have said on numerous occasions, are under the control of China. Indium phosphide is not a rare earth derivative, but it is a strategic material. Strangling the market . And therein lies the problem. The United States wants to promote its technological independence (because they have Big Tech, but practically everything is manufactured outside the United States) and, to achieve this, they need a series of materials that are not in their possession. China has that dominancebut with each restriction and veto that is applied to them from the US, they respond with the same currency, but vetoing what American technology companies need so much: rare earth metals. That is why they are classified as minerals, metals and strategic components, and indium phosphide is among them. China produces approximately 70% of the world’s indium and started to apply restrictions to the supply chain in February 2025. This has caused not only prices to skyrocket by 250%, but also American technology companies to pressure to reverse the situation. The main complaint is that, instead of directly blocking the finished products, it slows down the entire process because They are capable of conditioning the export of the materials used to create those products. Therefore, the optical module ecosystem cannot scale as quickly as hyperscalers need. Domino. Taking this situation into account, what is happening with these security systems advanced photonics It is exactly the same as with NAND chips: all the fish are sold for the next few years. In this sense, as consumers we absolutely don’t care because it is something that only affects AI companies, but it is estimated that Lumentum will have everything sold out in 2026, 2027 and… 2028, despite having quadrupled its production. It not only affects American companies, since the Taiwanese VPEC and LandMark Optoelectronics are also suffering interruptions in the supply of the material. And it doesn’t matter if Lumentum or Coherent are multiplying their capacity by opening new plants because the raw materials continue to leave China and, if those export controls are in place, It is an insurmountable funnel. The other side of the coin. On the other hand we have the Chinese industry. In recent years, its technologies have taken a giant leap, expanding its capacity and beginning to make waves in the international conversation with both user level components (RAM memory and computers) and in the high technological spheres (photonics and semiconductors). Because China has detailed the plan to become the world’s leading technological power by 2030 and it is clear that they have both a very defined roadmap and, above all, the materials necessary to achieve that goal and which companies are the ones that will define that future. Huawei or SMIC are two proper namesbut there are others like Yuanjie that have skyrocketed in the stock market. The reason? They are the ones who are creating photonics components for data centers. In Xataka | Huawei no longer competes: it is building its own parallel reality

In China, ‘bookfluencers’ are the sales engine of the publishing industry. The problem is that no one can read 700 books.

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In China, publishers have discovered a rich vein thanks to bookfluencers. Reviews on social networks such as Douyin (the Chinese TikTok) or RedNote have become the sales engine for many books in recent years. However, the volume of books and the intense competition between these influencers has led to the credibility of the model beginning to be questioned. what has happened. They tell it in world of chinese. A book content creator posted a 25-minute video exposing another professional colleague who has more than half a million followers. In the video, he shows a paper almost 5 meters long with a list of 700 books that this bookfluencer had supposedly recommended on his social networks. There wouldn’t be any problem if it weren’t for the fact that they were the readings of a single year. It comes out almost two books a day. Authenticity not found. There is even more and, when reviewing the reviews, he found something curious. They were full of repeated and very exaggerated phrases. For example, this influencer felt “transformed” by 17 different books and “healed” by 33 more. We don’t know if he used AI to summarize the books and do the reviews, but clearly they weren’t real reviews. The online community of readers had been criticizing the lack of authenticity for some time and this video was the last straw. Read for the algorithm. Reading fans criticize the model that has been created with online recommendations. For several years now, the publishing industry has made these influencers a key resource to promote their launches, but with the passage of time, the volume of readings and the need to keep up to date with all the trendsis transforming reading from a leisurely and private activity to something manufactured for the “by weight” algorithm. The business works. Video reviews are giving publishers very good results, as in the case of the novel ‘The Last Quarter of the Moon’, which went from 600,000 copies to more than 6 million after a famous influencer recommended it. Large publishers allocate a specific budget and pay commissions of between 15 and 30% of the sales generated through their channels. The dependence on this promotional model is such that, according to editor Bai Bai, “In many cases, if no influencer is willing to take charge of a book or promote it, the book is practically doomed to failure at the moment of its publication.” A precarious job. Although publishers turn to these creators and give them good commissions, it does not mean that it is exactly a grateful job. There is enormous competition between creators, who have to constantly be up to date with trends in order to satisfy the algorithm and have their content go viral. Still, income is very unstable, pushing creators to post more reviews and exaggerate the impact the books have had on them. Anqian Reads, one of these bookfluencers, says “The ironic thing is that since I’ve been a book influencer, I have less time to read.” Image | 愚木混株 Yumu in Unsplash In Xataka | Universities are discovering something: fewer and fewer students are reading long essays without losing concentration

turn the retiree into a millionaire industry

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In Japan there is a curious business tradition: some companies they continue hiring retirees so that they continue working after officially retiring. They do so because labor shortages and an aging population have turned the elderly into a resource increasingly valuable for the economy. Now it is China’s turn. Beijing no longer expects a baby boom. For years, Beijing tried stop the collapse birth rate through incentives, regulatory changes and campaigns aimed at encouraging families to have more children. However, the demographic reality has imposed with force. Births continue to fall and forecasts point to an increasingly aging China. Given this scenario, he had the financial times that the country is changing its approach: instead of focusing all its efforts on increasing the number of young people, it is building an economic strategy around an increasingly evident certainty, that hundreds of millions of citizens They will be over 65 years old in the coming decades. The silver economy. Yes, because the answer is named “silver economy”a concept that seeks to convert the needs, consumption and services aimed at older people into one of the great engines of the Chinese economy. The Government estimates that this market could reach 30 billion yuan by 2035, a gigantic figure driven by an elderly population that will exceed 400 million people and will represent more than 30% of the national total. At a time when the real estate crisis has weakened one of the main pillars of Chinese growth, the authorities see in retirees a new source of economic activity capable of mobilizing investments, companies and employment. A fair that shows the future of the country. The best demonstration of this transformation could be seen at a big fair held in Shanghai dedicated to elderly care, rehabilitation and health. More than 600 companies came to exhibit products specifically designed for an aging society. The event offered a very different image from China just a decade ago: exoskeletons for walking, robotic assistance systems, rehabilitation devices, smart beds, adapted furniture, specialized health products and technological solutions aimed at improving the quality of life of elderly people. Technology turns to the elderly. Many of the innovations presented had a common element: automation. Companies from very diverse sectors are trying to apply advanced technology to reduce the physical and economic burden associated with aging. Among the products displayed there was everything from connected diapers to mobile applications, to sensors installed in shoes capable of analyzing the way you walk and detect risks of falls or vibration therapy systems inspired by space technologies, also devices intended to facilitate the care of dependent people. Basically, the idea is to use technology to replace heavy tasksrepetitive or difficult to cover by human personnel, a challenge that will become increasingly important as the elderly population increases. Companies that change objectives. One of the most revealing aspects is how many companies are redirecting your businesses. Products originally designed for children are being adapted for adults. For example, companies specializing in infant milk have begun to develop nutritional formulas for the elderly. Educational technology manufacturers that previously sold tools for schoolchildren now market devices aimed at teaching calligraphy, music or new skills for retirees. The business logic is simple: while the children’s market contracts due to the drop in births, the older segment grows year after year and offers much more attractive prospects. A new generation of retirees. The change also reflects a social transformation. Today’s Chinese seniors have more income, more free time and different expectations than previous generations. They are no longer limited to covering basic needs, but demand leisure, training, cultural activities, physical well-being and personal experiences. Senior universities, music courses, sports activities and learning programs are gaining popularity among a population that wants to stay active for longer. For many companies, this group is no longer seen as a dependent group and is becoming in a consumer with own spending capacity. Turn a problem into an opportunity. It’s the end, obviously. The silver economy represents an attempt to transform one of China’s biggest structural threats into an economic opportunity. An aging population will continue to pose enormous challenges for pensions, healthcare and the labor market, but Beijing is trying extract economic value of a trend that he already considers irreversible. Instead of waiting for a recovery in birth rates to solve the problem, the country is reorganizing entire sectors to serve an increasingly aging population. In a way, China has assumed that it will have fewer children than it dreamed of and is betting on something different: turning its retirees into the center of a multi-billion dollar industry capable of sustaining part of its future growth. Image | Pixabay, timquijano, World Bank Photo Collection In Xataka | In the midst of a race towards immortality, China believes it has found a way for us to live 150 years: with grapes In Xataka | China knows that its population is going to collapse but it already has a long-term plan to solve it. Of course, thanks to AI

AI has caused the collapse of even a non-AI industry: gas turbines

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When everyone runs away, Meta’s former CTO stays. While the majority of Silicon Valley investors have abandoned the C thesisfile Tech —tired of promises that do not turn into real business—, Mike Schroepfer just announced that it has raised 250 million dollars to do exactly the opposite. Its background, Gigascale Capitalhas closed its first round with institutional investors to back founders who, in their own words, are “rebuilding the brick-and-mortar economy.” The news comes at a time when the climate technology sector has a difficult reputation. As explained TechCrunch, “Conventional wisdom” has been soured by the “Climate Tech” label. Schroepfer, known in the industry simply as Schrepis challenging the market consensus. Or as the same media describes it: “Zigging when most are zagging” (zigzagging when everyone goes in the other direction). Does this bet make sense? First of all, we must understand the underlying problem: gas turbines, the most conventional electricity generation system that exists, currently have a waiting list that extends until the early 2030s. It is not that there is a lack of green technology, it is that there is simply a lack of energy. And companies trying to connect to the electrical grid are finding it increasingly difficult. The person responsible. And the question is, who has accelerated that demand to this point? Artificial intelligence. The sector has undergone a structural change in recent years, driven precisely by the energy demands of AI. Data centers consume huge amounts of electricity and networks cannot cope. Faced with this situation, many companies are trying to generate their own electricity. As Schroepfer himself notedthe “bring your own energy” model (Bring-Your-Own-Power) will become a decisive competitive advantage in intensive industries. But there is no easy path there either: even traditional turbines have a waiting list. As Pulse 2.0 detailsaccelerated electrification, industrial relocation, AI deployment and increasingly extreme climate events are simultaneously putting pressure on physical infrastructure that has been aging for decades. The business of scarcity. The company, Gigascale, was founded in 2023 by Schroepfer along with Victoria Beasley and Evaline Tsai. The fund emerges from a process that the former Meta executive describes as a systematic study of the climate sector during the pandemic. In three years they have built a portfolio of more than 25 companies in areas ranging from clean energy and grid infrastructure to critical minerals, advanced manufacturing and what they call “physical AI”: applications of artificial intelligence to design, manufacture and deploy real-world systems. Schroepfer’s investment logic does not pivot on environmental virtue, but on competitiveness. Their argument is the following: solar went from producing 40 gigawatts a year to 600 in a decade because it became cheaper. “The companies we support win because they are cheaper, faster and more reliable. This is how adoption scales. Climate impact is the result of systems that work better,” declared in a statement. When the waiting list is the opportunity. The fund’s portfolio already has specific names that illustrate this philosophy: New energy generation: Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Xcimer Energy (which achieved the first flash of its commercial laser system in late 2025) are working to make nuclear fusion a reality. For its part, Radiant is moving toward one of the first commercial deployments of nuclear microreactors in the United States. Infrastructure for AI: Arbor Energy has signed an agreement with GridMarket to supply up to 5 gigawatts of clean, zero-emissions energy to data centers. In parallel, Fractile announced a $136 million expansion to manufacture AI processors specifically designed to reduce electricity consumption. Circular and industrial economy: Heron Power, founded by Drew Baglino – former Tesla vice president for propulsion and energy division – develops industrial power electronics. In addition, companies like Dioxycle have signed multi-year agreements with giants like L’Oréal to convert captured CO₂ emissions into ethylene to make packaging. There is an underlying irony. The world has been debating for years how to decarbonize for environmental reasons. And it turns out that the catalyst that is making the transformation of the energy system urgent and inevitable is not any climate summit: it is Artificial Intelligence. As investors flee the label Climate Tech Considering it too ideological or unprofitable, the demand for energy is so brutal that not even the most conventional gas turbines can cope. The opportunity exists precisely because the problem is real. And Schroepfer, who comes from building the systems that consume that energy, is very clear about it. Image | Unsplash Xataka | From “tokenmaxxing” we have moved on to “tokenwasting”: the level of waste in AI is reaching unprecedented levels

‘solo-maxxing’ is Gen Z’s answer to the stifling dating industry

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It’s Friday night. A decade ago, the routine for a person in their early 20s would have been predictable: choose clothes in front of the mirror, reserve a table at a trendy restaurant and go out in the hope of meeting someone. Today, that same scene is interrupted by a lethal crossroads of notifications on the mobile screen: the notice of rent collection, the status of the bank account and, in the background, the endless catalog of faces on a dating application. By adding up the expenses, the user does the math and reaches a clear conclusion: falling in love is an unaffordable luxury. He cancels the plan, closes the app and stays home. Love is not dead, but its business model has gone bankrupt. Generation Z faces a perfect storm where inflation, the housing crisis, job insecurity and psychological exhaustion after years of digital overexposure have turned traditional romance into a risky sport. Faced with a scenario where a date can cost hundreds of euros and rejection seems more public than ever, dating applications are facing a structural problem: their users are discovering that singleness is not only cheaper, but also much less exhausting. The data paints an uncomfortable picture for the entire romance industry. According to a report by Bank of Montreal collected by Fortunethe total cost of a date in the United States—including dinner, transportation, drinks, and preparations—now reaches $189. Among Generation Z the figure climbs to $205 per meeting, while millennials are close to $252 after experiencing a 32% cost increase. Faced with this emotional inflation, the response has been simple: spend less or not spend at all. A report from Bank of America reveals that 53% of young people from Generation Z He doesn’t spend a single dollar a month on dating. Among those who do, most try to stay below $100 a month. Inflation is not only making the shopping basket more expensive or making it difficult to access housing. It is also transforming the way an entire generation relates to each other. The phenomenon already has visible consequences. a study cited by Newsweek points out that 46% of members of Generation Z do not have any romantic relationship, compared to 28% of millennials and 26% of Generation X. Even large technology platforms are noticing the change. Spencer Rascoff, CEO of Match Group, recently recognized that applications like Tinder can be “intimidating” for those under 30 years of age, in a context marked by the drop in active users and the growing exhaustion towards the traditional model of dating apps. The Spanish case: when rent eats up social life Although many of these trends were first detected in the United States, the Spanish context adds additional pressure: housing. According to the latest data of the Emancipation Observatory of the Youth Council of Spainthe average rental price absorbs 98.7% of a young person’s salary. The risk of poverty among young people who live in rent increases drastically once the cost of housing is taken into account. The problem goes beyond economic figures. For decades, romantic relationships followed a relatively clear sequence: meet someone, become independent, live together and, eventually, start a family. Today that chain has been broken. Spain registers some of the highest ages of emancipation in Europe. Millions of young people continue to live with their parents much longer than they would like, not by choice but by economic necessity. In this context, the problem is no longer just paying for a dinner or a drink. It is also having your own space where you can build intimacy, coexistence or a shared life project. Precariousness not only delays the purchase of a home. It also delays relationships. As Holly O’Neill summarizedBank of America executive, Generation Z is discovering that adulthood has a much higher price than they imagined. However, money explains only part of the phenomenon. The call “paradox of preparation” describes an increasingly common contradiction among young people: they want stable emotional ties, but they feel less and less prepared to initiate them. After years of living much of their relationships through screens, many members of Generation Z perceive dating as an emotionally demanding experience. The fear of rejection still exists, but it is now combined with a constant feeling of public exposure. Social networks have turned every relationship into a small media event. Make a couple official on Instagram using a hard launch or hint at her through a soft launch It can feel like a public statement that is difficult to reverse if the relationship fails. As a result, the first step becomes increasingly complicated. An appointment is no longer requested. Instagram is requested. Then come weeks of messages, reactions to stories, and intermittent conversations that often never lead to a real meeting. The potential connection exists, but the action is suspended indefinitely. The rise of solo-maxxing In this context, a new philosophy has emerged, baptized in social networks as solo-maxxing. Far from presenting singleness as a transitory situation or a waiting stage, this trend redefines it as a conscious choice. Being alone is no longer necessarily interpreted as a sentimental failure, but as a strategy to protect time, money and emotional stability. A MyIQ survey reveals that almost half of young people between 18 and 34 years old consider that being single is more peaceful than being in a relationship. A third say they actively avoid dating to preserve their mental well-being. Behind this trend there is a logic that is difficult to ignore. If each romantic interaction involves increasing economic costs, emotional uncertainty, and a high risk of disappointment, singleness ceases to be a provisional state and becomes a rational decision. For many young people, peace of mind has become an asset too valuable to risk. The crisis is also forcing us to rethink the way people get to know each other. For years, dating apps promised that an infinite number of options would make it easier to find a partner. The result, however, has often been … Read more

DeepSeek is good, pretty and very cheap. And above all, the weapon to create a Chinese hardware industry independent of Nvidia

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The arrival of DeepSeek-V4-Pro It hasn’t caused that much of a stir. like the one caused by DeepSeek R1 a year and a half ago, but we may be facing an even more important model. If that version revealed to the world that China was advancing spectacularly in this race, this other one is beginning to allow us to glimpse something else more interesting. What most people see is a very decent model and above all “low priced”. Which hide the company It’s another more important thing: achieve independence from Nvidia and US hardware. what has happened. Last Friday, those responsible for DeepSeek announced something surprising: their promotional offer with a 75% price cut to use their DeepSeek-V4-Pro model will be maintained permanently. That makes this model offer very decent features (but not exceptional) for a really low price: 1M entry tokens 1M tokens output DeepSeek-V4-Pro 0.435 0.87 GPT-5.5 5 30 Opus 4.7 5 25 Gemini 3.5 Flash 1.5 9 Good, pretty and very cheap. It is true that the performance of DeepSeek-V4-Pro is inferior to that of rival models from OpenAI, Anthropic or Google. Artificial Analysis tests indicate that the DeepSeek model is at a very good level, but it is also much cheaper than its competitors. This is especially relevant for agentic tasks that consume many tokens and that with this model become accessible and very affordable. According to Artificial Analysis, DeepSeek is close to the performance of the best models in the industry, and although it is slower in its responses, it is also much cheaper than the frontier models from OpenAI, Anthropic or Google. A different strategy. How is this company going to make money? It does not have subscription plans like its local competition (GLM, Kimi) or the western one (ChatGPT Plus, Claude Pro). It also does not have voice or image models. It does not have an AI agent for programming that competes with Claude Code. It publishes the open weights of its models and shares its technical innovations with the industry (and with its competitors). For those who closely follow the company and these decisions, the strategy is clear. DeepSeek’s goal is not to win the AI ​​model race. Their goal is to build a Chinese AI hardware industry that doesn’t depend on Nvidia or TSMC… and get paid their share in that process. Hardware independence. China has a structural problem in this AI race: sanctions and vetoes imposed by the US make you unable to access the most advanced chips nor to ASML UVE photolithography. And since China cannot currently compete in terms of computing power, what its companies are doing is ensuring that their AI models need less computing power to achieve similar results. Efficient architectures. The Mixture of Experts (MoE) and Multi-head Latent Attention (MLA) architectures are two key weapons in this strategy. The first already existed but was adapted by DeepSeek for their model: with it only part of the total parameters of the model are activated to answer the query without losing precision. What MLA does is compress the attention information (the so-called KV Cache) with which the model maintains the context of a conversation, reducing it by 90%. Both techniques allow us to reduce the need to use high-speed HBM memories, something that is also striking in order to reveal DeepSeek’s probable strategy. The importance of KV Cache. As the GDP analyst explains in Xthat use of MLA allows that for one million tokens, DeepSeek-V4-Pro only needs 5.48 GB of HBM memory. Competitors like Zhipo AI, which develops GLM 5, need 60 GB for the same, while Alibaba’s Qwen 3 needs 89 GB. This advantage allows DeepSeek to offer much lower prices to obtain performances similar to those of its competition, but it also means that DeepSeek models can run on Chinese memory chips that cannot compete in speed with HBM modules. Goodbye HBM, hello NAND and SSD. These innovations open the door to the use of NAND memories and even SSD drives to process this data, and there YMTC enters the scenea Chinese Flash memory manufacturer that is slowly becoming a global giant. Also CXMTwhich manufactures DRAM memoriesbecomes an alternative here and the reason is equally interesting: DeepSeek introduced a memory search module in LLMs called Engram which is also intended to avoid excessive dependence on HBM memories. How to bypass the CUDA monopoly. Nvidia continues to have a fundamental element in CUDA to maintain its market dominance, but here DeepSeek too has proposed an alternative. Is called Tile Kernels and these are software cores created with TileLang (a variant of Python for this field) that allow governing advanced AI chips (GPUs). Huawei as an invisible ally. Those responsible for Huawei recently indicated that its new Ascend AI supernodes fully support DeepSeek v4 models. Precisely this provides another fundamental advantage to the company, which thus avoids (at least in part) total dependence on the use of Nvidia chips and prepares to further strengthen Huawei’s relevance in a market in which until recently Jensen Huang’s company was queen and mistress. Open models to attract the hardware industry. US companies continue to maintain their closed and proprietary models, but DeepSeek is one of the many Chinese startups that publish them with open weights. With this, what she and the others intend to do is not only attract AI developers and users, but also create a hardware ecosystem that adopts these architectures. DeepSeek invites its rivals to use techniques such as MoE or MLA precisely so that all these advances become a de facto standard and hardware manufacturers also adopt them and integrate them in an optimized way into their designs. A round of 10,000 million to advance. The company is also preparing a financing round in which they intend to raise 10,000 million dollars and with which they would achieve a valuation of between 45,000 and 50,000 million dollars. Still far from the mammoth valuations of OpenAI or Anthropic (already close to a billion dollars) but certainly … Read more

There is a million-dollar industry selling stoicism on the internet. His recipe for success is to do just the opposite of what Stoicism says.

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“My father is hooked on stoicism.” A few days ago, a Reddit user told thatin the last six months, his father had been deep into all kinds of YouTube videos about stoicism. “He spends hours watching (…) what seems AI-generated self-help garbage, made to validate ego and increase paranoia of the people.” “The strange thing is that real Stoicism seems like it is made to teach you self-control and emotional discipline, but it has become more reactive, cynical and critical,” he explained. And, really, It’s not strange at all. ‘Stoick’ is a soccer player Shiromani Kant The truth is that, today, becoming a Stoic does not mean reading Marcus Aurelius but rather following accounts, buying books, subscribing to newsletters, watching videos and consuming content. A content that, by the way, is adjoining with pop psychology, “CIA manipulation tactics,” mind games, “reading people” techniques, and other genres of conspiracy thinking. We have been hearing for years that philosophy “is back”that masculinity is in crisis and does not stop looking for alternative options, that a handful of ideas from 2,000 or so years ago are changing the way thousands of people face their daily lives. It’s time to treat that “wave” for what it is: a huge lie. No matter where we look (and except for a small group of popularizers that fit in the trunk of a car), Stoicism is neither a real philosophical movement nor a collective practice. Modern stoicism is a niche market for content creators—books, newsletters, subscriptions, merchandising, courses—who make a living precisely from the discomfort they claim to alleviate. The boom of pop stoicism Jan Demiralp As I have told on other occasionsin 1965, during the Vietnam War, the pilot James B. Stockdale He was returning from a combat mission when he was hit by enemy fire. Passed seven years in unspeakable conditions; between torture and humiliation specifically designed to break him from the inside. But he was lucky. In his own words, the only thing that helped him overcome captivity was the memories of a small book that had been given to him during his time at the university: the Enchyridion, the best-known book by Epictetus, one of the great Stoic philosophers in history and to whom the motto “sustine et abstine“(“endures and renounces”). In it, in the EnchyridionStockdale understood that the “reflective mind” could distance itself from brute and instinctive emotion and return to what was experienced with clarity of judgment and equanimity to find peace of mind. Not only did he understand it, but he spent much of the rest of his life spreading and defending it. In general terms, Stockdale is the fundamental piece of the reconversion of classical Stoic philosophy into pop culture; the place where Epictetus connects with late US capitalism. I tell this to make it clear that the fashion for stoicism is nothing new. It has been on the rise for half a century and, at least a decade, completely out of control. What has happened in recent years is that this ‘boom’ has been consolidated as an industry. The r/Stoicism subreddir (where I got the story that opens this text) went from 840 members in 2012 to 610,000 in 2024. On TikTok, the hashtag #stoicism gathers 645,000 posts. Ryan Holiday He has sold more than 10 million copies of ‘The Daily Stoic’, has more than three million followers on Instagram and two on YouTube. And, in Spanish, we also have examples of this genre of philosophical self-help. Philosophical self-help? We might think that calling a philosophy more than 2,000 years old “self-help” is audacious on my part. However, academic criticism specialized in Stoicism has reached (it has been difficult, but it has reached) the same conclusion. Massimo Pigliucci (professor at the City College of New York and one of the most important and rigorous neo-Stoics) coined the term ‘broicism’ in 2019 to discover the ‘masculinist’ appropriation of this philosophical school. In 2022, Mark Dery published “How Stoicism Became Broicism“. This is a very interesting text (and debatable in some points) that very clearly x-rays the problem I am talking about. In 2025, in fact, the researcher Erhan Ağaoğlu published an analysis about stoicism on TikTok which makes clear the identification between this “stoicism” and the patterns of aggression, self-isolation, self-improvement and the vindication of traditional masculinity. There are those who believe that this is problematic and those who argue that it is not. What there is no doubt about is that it is not stoicism, neither classical nor modern, nor of any kind. It is, in any case, ‘ultra-processed pseudo-philosophy’ ready to consume in the context of the attention economy. A very successful one, yes: not all cultural products show that ability to scale in this marked way. Why is this happening? Jaime Spaniol Sociologists who are working on the topic agree that there are, at least, three factors that explain it. The first is the “replacement of traditional frameworks related to the in-person community (religious or not).” The hypothesis is that a sector of the population has emerged (especially young and male) that does not have ‘frameworks of meaning’ to manage adversity. Stoicism, like all the movements that are emerging around it, have become a kind of ’emotional toolbox’ without religious or therapeutic component. The second factor would be a certain “crisis of masculinity.” That crisis is what They have been trying to suture the ‘manosphere influencers’ since Jordan Peterson and it is part of the tectonic movements that are turning Stoicism into ‘pseudophilosophy’. Finally, the ‘platformization of absolutely everything’. That is, the dynamics that facilitate and promote platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, YouTube or X. Where some people want to see a renewed interest in philosophy, there is a push by algorithms for short, imperative and motivational content. And what’s the problem with all this? The first consequence of this phenomenon is that what we now understand as ‘stoicism’ is nothing like classical stoicism. But surely that is not the most important thing. Because the … Read more

This is how India prepares its next big leap in the chip industry

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When we think about making chips, India is not usually the first country that comes to mind. We think of Taiwan, South Korea, the United States or China, but India often appears in another box: that of software, technological services or the assembly of electronic products. Precisely for this reason this movement is interesting. We are witnessing firsthand how a huge country seeks to advance towards one of the deepest and most difficult parts of the technological chain. The announcement is supported by a very specific alliance: Tata Electronics and ASML have signed a memorandum of understanding for the future Dholera semiconductor plant in Gujarat. The facility, which the release presents as India’s first 300mm commercial factory, has a planned investment of 11 billion dollars and will be aimed at producing semiconductors for a wide range of sectors. The agreement, Reuters points outwas signed on May 16 during Narendra Modi’s visit to the Netherlands, also attended by Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten. India’s commitment to chips is beginning to cease to be a promise The news comes accompanied by some interesting technical data that is worth analyzing carefully. The 300 mm figure may sound like a measurement of the chip, but it actually talks about the silicon wafer on which the semiconductors are manufactured, indicating the diameter of that circular surface, not the size of the transistors or the size of the final chips. It is a standard industrial platform for large-scale production, because it allows working with many units on the same wafer before cutting them and taking them to the next phases of the process. Furthermore, the statement places the Tata collaboration with PSMCPowerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation, as the gateway to a technology portfolio that includes 28nm, 40nm, 55nm, 90nm and 110nm. That list helps land the project much better than the 300 mm label, because it tells us which process families the plant plans to handle. In practice, we talk about analog and logic chips for automotive, mobile devices, consumer electronics, connectivity, IoT, embedded memory and other industrial uses. This is precisely where the Dutch company occupies a central position in the semiconductor industry. Their contribution does not simply consist of “setting up machines”, but rather supporting the start-up of the factory with lithography tools and solutions, the phase that allows the circuit patterns to be transferred to the silicon wafers. ASML also speaks training local talent, supply chain resilience and R&D infrastructure. It is a way to accompany Tata not only in the purchase of equipment, but in the industrial learning necessary for the plant to scale. ASML is known for its most sophisticated machines, but that doesn’t mean every deal of yours involves EUV either High-NA EUV. In this case, the available information speaks of lithography solutions for a process-oriented plant that they do not belong to the most advanced frontier. With these data, and in the absence of ASML detailing what specific systems it will supply, the most prudent reading is to place the project in the field of lithography DUV and the support ecosystem that allows stable production. TWINSCAN NXT:1980Di, one of the DUV machines that would fit with a factory like Tata’s This agreement comes at an interesting time for the Dutch company. ASML continues to occupy a central position in the sector, but the adoption of its most advanced technology is not being uniform among its large clients: TSMC, for example, continues to evaluate High-NA EUV, although for now it prefers to rely on current EUVs and process improvements rather than assume the cost and complexity of the new generation. Its executive Kevin Zhang summed it up with a very clear phrase: “I like the technology, but not the price.” In this context, an alliance like Tata’s reminds us of something important: the Dutch firm not only stands out for its most extreme machines, but also for its ability to accompany factories in different stages of industrial maturity. Reuters places the agreement in a broader context than that of a single factory. India has pledged billions of dollars in subsidies to attract semiconductor plants and related manufacturing, with eight projects underway, while Modi has encouraged Dutch companies to invest in areas such as semiconductors, renewable energy, digital technologies and health. At the same time, Dutch companies in the sector look for new markets and more geographical diversification in a scenario marked by export controls and trade restrictions linked to technological rivalry between the United States and China. As we can see, the move does not put India, at least for now, at the top of the semiconductor industry, but it does bring it closer to manufacturing chips at scale with proven processes and sustained demand. That difference matters. The industry does not only live on the most advanced semiconductors, but also on a huge base of components present in devices that surround us, such as everyday electronics and the automotive industry, as well as those that play in another field, such as industrial systems. Images | Tata Electronics | ASML In Xataka | Manufacturing 60 machines a year may not seem like much. In practice, those of the European ASML are setting the pace of AI

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