The Shift Toward Specialized AI Chips

The AI hardware narrative is taking another turn. Nvidia (NVDA) just teamed up with Groq on what's being characterized as a $20 billion opportunity focused on inference computing. Here's what matters: ASICs—application-specific integrated circuits—aren't experimental anymore. They're becoming critical infrastructure for companies running inference workloads that need to be both cheap and fast.

Training massive AI models still demands brute-force GPU power, but inference is different. Once your model is trained, running it efficiently at scale requires different economics. That's where specialized chips shine, and that's why this partnership signals a broader industry shift.

Year-End Trading Conditions

We're entering the last full trading week of the year, with markets closed only on New Year's Day. No half-day sessions this time around, but liquidity will be noticeably thin. That means price action tends to reflect positioning adjustments rather than genuine conviction. Traders are typically managing existing exposure, not building new positions, which makes technical signals less trustworthy until normal trading volumes resume in January.