MediaTek’s Big AI Bet: How Nvidia + ARM Are Reshaping the Future of Computing

Hey, everyone. Welcome back here to Text Drug tv. I'm really happy to have Olivier Blanchard Olivier Blanchard if you're from the US and you've want to just brow it.

But Olivier is an analyst with, from, uh, with Futurum. He, I've interviewed him before and he, he writes a lot. com.

Covers a lot. He's gonna tell us about it. Olivier, welcome to Text Drunk TV.

Again, it's great to have you on. Hey, thanks for having me. It's always good to be on.

Thank you, Olivier. For those folks who may not be familiar with your area of expertise and kind of, you know, your beat that you cover, give them a little insight. Yeah, so I'm a research director with, uh, the Futurum Group, uh, as you mentioned.

And my primary focus is AI devices. So basically any kind of physical ai, any manifestation of AI that's not in the cloud. So a smart ring, a smartwatch, a PC that has AI built in, uh, AI enabled phones, all the way up to robots and smart speakers, smart TVs, smart cars, um, and anything that's not bolted down, uh, in a data center that has a, some kind of AI capability is my focus.

So it's a very wide and broad portfolio, uh, very interesting one, uh, but one that also sort of like, uh, helps map how some of the same players keep turning up in the, in, in different places, uh, especially on the semiconductor Omicron. Got it. Um, let's, well, first of all, I, I mentioned the Futurum group is where people can follow you and your research and notes and so forth.

And, um, I, I wanna make sure people get that before we even go any further. But Olivier, I wanted to speak to you today about a company called, I believe it's Media Tech, right? That's M-E-D-I-A-T-E-K.

So I, I have to admit, this was a, a company that was new to me. That's Fair. That doesn't mean anything, right?

'cause God knows, I don't know everything. But for our audience out here that may not be familiar with Media Tech, how would, how would you describe it to them? Media tech's a really interesting company.

Uh, they're definitely not a household name. They're a little bit the way Qualcomm used to be 10 years ago, uh, where everybody get, might have heard the name or a lot of people might have heard the name, but it didn't quite know what it did. Um, media Tech is, doesn't even have that kind of level of, of name recognition, at least not in the United States.

I think overseas, uh, on global markets, it's, it's definitely more, more visible. Um, but essentially it's, it's a company that, uh, is that kind of started in, in the, or made its bones in the, the mobile world market. Um mm-hmm.

Essentially it's, it's the world's largest provider of smartphone chip sets, which you might not have known, uh, at least by volume and, and definitely a, a global leader in, in cross platform semiconductors. So they can be found, found in a lot of places. Um, I would say that, that the majority of their revenue, um, is, is from mobile.

I think it's just over 50%, 52%, 53% of revenue is mobile. Uh, and then Smart Edge platform. So basically everything else is about 43% of their revenue.

Um, but they have one particularity, um, which is that at least up until recently, they were essentially a, a sort of like, how do you, how, what's a a polite way of saying it, they were sort of like the low to mid range semiconductor d uh, um, provider for mobile handsets, um, in terms of price points, right? They were sort of like, your, your budget phones, Your mass market, Your mass market phones, right? Um, two Qualcomms sort of like super premium stuff.

And in recent years, what we've seen them is actually get out, well, they're not getting out of it, but they've expanded market into that premium segment, but they're market Coming up market. Yep. Yeah.

Yeah. They're coming up with some really good stuff. Um, again, not a huge footprint in the United States, but overseas.

Internationally, uh, they definitely make their mark and they're, they're a company to watch. You know, that's a very common sort of strategy. You see it in a lot of maturing markets.

Olivier, you have, you have folks who come, let's say from a bottom level up that were aimed at an S-M-B-S-M-E kind of markets, if you will. And then you have the big enterprise guys who want to come down market. You have the down market guys who wanna come up market and somewhere they meet in the middle.

Right? And, and, uh, and that's where you determine market shares. So it sounds like media tech though, is ascending and into upmarket and, and look, it's, a lot of people tell you it's a lot harder going up than it is going down too sometimes, right?

It, it can be, especially when those markets are obviously a premium is smaller than mass market. Yeah. So they can be the number one, you know, global, uh, smartphone, SOC shipments company.

They can be 10th largest global semiconductor company by revenue in the world, but still struggle to, uh, to penetrate those markets that are very mature, uh, and, and very well protected. Yeah. I'm reminded of a conversation I had with a very good friend of mine, uh, Byron Nicoletti.

Byron is the CEO founder of a company, company called People Cert, one of the largest training providers in the world. They own and operate the IL uh, it, you know, service management language. They also have DevOps Institute and some others.

But Byron always told me in a business, you like a business that has a very wide base Yeah. Rather than just the top of the pyramid. He said, I'll always take the base of the pyramid versus the top of the pyramid.

And there's, you know, that sounds sort of like what we're dealing with here. Perhaps there is a base of the pyramid versus the top of the pyramid. Um, it's nice to be up and down the whole pyramid though, isn't it?

It It is. If you can Yeah. Ask Apple if you, right.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Who by the way, announced they're partnering with Google for, for Siri now, so it's gonna Be, yes.

That's a good thing. Gemini, under the hood, under the covers. I think I, I think a a a Google powered or Gemini powered Siri is, is good for everyone.

Absolutely. Well, my security friends may have something to say, but it's another story. Olivier, let's go back to Media Tech though.

Yeah. Um, they recently had some news. I know you're working on some new research notes and so forth, but, um, without letting the cat out of the bag of anything we're not supposed to talk about, what can you tell us about new news over there?

Right. Yeah, so I'll, I'll leave the, the top secret stuff. Top secret.

Uh, but one thing I, I would, um, um, I would like to focus on is Media Tech's partnership, increasing growing sort of connective tissue with Nvidia. Um, and I wanted to dispel any rumors because they've been working on so many things together that, Hey, is Nvidia gonna acquire media Tech? Is is like, is there something going on?

As far as I know, no, and I've asked the the question repeatedly. Uh, the answer is always categorically no. And it's not no wink wink.

It's like, no, no. It's like the, the two companies, uh, are very happy to be independence and doing their own thing, but there are affinities there, there, there are things that Media Tech does very well that Nvidia doesn't, and there are things that Nvidia does very well that Media Tech doesn't. And so we've seen them partner on a number of, uh, of projects, uh, lately.

And so the, the wine that's especially dear to my heart, because I spent the last year and a half focusing so much of my energy on the A IPC, um, uh, segments, and how, uh, even though it's been a little bit disappointing in terms of use cases, the, the PCs being, uh, empowered by AI capabilities, that's, that's definitely a big inflection point for the PC and personal computing. Um, even though it, it might take a few years to get us to a point where PCs truly operate like AI enabled machines. But anyway, um, media Tech and Nvidia have been, have been working together on this.

And one of the things that that came out last year that I think was a bit of a game changer for the A IPC segments, um, was NVIDIA's DX Spark, uh, platform, which is basically a, um, a Blackwell super chip powered desktop that looks like a Mac mini. It just looks like a, a little, right. Um, you can put it in a bag, it's small enough, not fit in your pocket, but fit in a bag, you put it on your, on your desktop, and, and you have this little AI supercomputer that has a GB 10, um, NVIDIA chip in it.

But the, I would say at least 50% of the board looks like media tech ip. And so this, this combination of NVIDIA and Media Tech shows how these two companies can, uh, collaborate together to bring something very unique and very important to that space. And I'm already seeing them also partnering, uh, in the automotive market, which isn't, um, as big for semiconductors as you would think it should be, especially since intelligence is like getting into all these vehicles all the time.

And they could do more things, whether it's automatic or self-driving, or just all of the sensors and sensor intelligence and cockpit intelligence with, um, assistance and agents making their way to the cockpit where you can talk to your car and it talks back. Um, it's, it's still a, a very nascent market, but it's growing very quickly. And, uh, media Tech has a platform for automotive called Immensity Auto, uh, that they're working with in conjunction with Nvidia.

And so again, you see the power and the market power of Nvidia, uh, in its name recognition, sort of attaching itself to Media Tech, which is kind of not very popular, but this workhorse that can scale really well across all of these different areas. Um, and one of the particularities of, of media Tech and where it matters with Nvidia is Media Tech is primarily just an ARM-based architecture semiconductor company. They use arm, uh, and so does Nvidia.

And so there's this natural sort of architectural affinity there where, um, arm on arm arm with arm, uh, low power, high performance works really well for these types of Edge AI applications like automotive, pc, smartphones, uh, IOT and, and even, um, as, as it's becoming like the, the theme of the year after cs, uh, robotics, robotics is gonna beat this year. So the, I haven't seen any major Announce Physical ai. Physical ai.

Yeah. I haven't seen a, a lot of major announcements from Media tech regarding physical AI robots. Uh, but I'm, I'm sure that will come, uh, very shortly.

There's, there's no way it doesn't. Excellent. Olivia, thanks for giving us this sneak peek behind the curtain, if you will, on Media Tech and bringing it to our audience's attention.

We appreciate it. Keep up the great work. As I mentioned, if you wanna read Olivier's coverage of Media Tech as well as all the other great, I mean, his whole AI empowered device thing, what, what a great time to be in that space, right?

com, check it out there, Olivier. Thank you. Hope to see you back here soon on Techstrong tv.

Thank you. Thank you.