Dylan Patel is an American semiconductor analyst and the founder and chief analyst of SemiAnalysis, a research firm covering logic, memory, packaging, foundries, and the AI compute stack. His work is cited in policy analysis, investor research, and government briefings on AI compute.
Background
Patel founded SemiAnalysis as a research shop covering logic, memory, packaging, foundries, and the AI compute stack. Over the 2022–2026 period, SemiAnalysis became a widely used public source on topics including TSMC CoWoS capacity, HBM supply from SK Hynix, Samsung, and Micron, Huawei's Ascend manufacturing economics, Nvidia hyperscaler allocations, and the mechanics of chip export-control evasion.
Roles
Patel is the founder and principal analyst at SemiAnalysis. The firm publishes a mix of paid subscription research and public essays. Patel is also a frequent guest on long-form technology and AI podcasts, including appearances with Dwarkesh Patel, BG2, and Lex Fridman.
Work
SemiAnalysis has published sustained public analysis of the semiconductor supply chain for AI, covering CoWoS, HBM, EUV capacity, advanced packaging, and data-center power. Patel has produced early and repeated quantitative analysis of Chinese AI compute, including Huawei Ascend unit economics and yields (Source: Raw Sources/SemiAnalysis - Huawei Ascend Production Ramp.md), SMIC node capability, and chip-smuggling flows. SemiAnalysis CoWoS and HBM allocation analysis has been used as a reference by US policymakers and investors (Source: Raw Sources/SemiAnalysis - CoWoS and HBM Supply Chain.md). His commentary also addresses hyperscaler data-center buildouts, including capex trajectories, power constraints, and Nvidia pricing power.
Published work includes SemiAnalysis public essays and subscriber research (2022–present), the SemiAnalysis CoWoS and HBM supply-chain analysis (Source: Raw Sources/SemiAnalysis - CoWoS and HBM Supply Chain.md), and the SemiAnalysis Huawei Ascend production-ramp analysis (Source: Raw Sources/SemiAnalysis - Huawei Ascend Production Ramp.md).
Positions and statements
Patel works as an analyst rather than an advocate, but several consistent positions appear in his writing and commentary.
On export controls, he has repeatedly argued that US controls have meaningfully constrained Chinese compute while also documenting leakage through smuggling and through gray-market Nvidia channels. On compute as a governance surface, he writes from an industry-mechanics angle that aligns with the CSET and Lennart Heim view that compute is the most tractable layer for governance, in contrast to an academic-policy framing. His Huawei Ascend and DeepSeek analyses have repeatedly pushed back on confident claims that Chinese frontier compute was structurally uncompetitive. He argues that the binding constraint on frontier training by 2027–28 is electricity and grid interconnect rather than chips.
Relationships
- related: Semiconductor Supply Chain — the concept area his work most addresses
- related: Export Controls (AI), Compute Governance
- related: Lennart Heim — parallel compute-focused analyst in the policy-research world
- related: DeepSeek — subject of multiple SemiAnalysis pieces