How Dylan Patel and SemiAnalysis Grabbed Sway in Silicon Valley

The 29-year-old has adeptly navigated the blurred lines between media, tech and investing, turning himself into a hybrid of all three.

For Dylan Patel, founder of SemiAnalysis, an influential AI industry newsletter and research firm, Nvidia deserves the kind of dogged observation and study the tabloid press once devoted to Princess Diana. He scrutinizes the chip giant’s new products, documents its delays and scoops details about its inner workings. His information mongering is so relentless that he sometimes irritates the company, which he said once blacklisted him from its events for a short time after he published some of what Nvidia would discuss at an upcoming conference.

Still, a month ago, Patel, 29, enjoyed a moment no rising star from the traditional media world could ever expect: public praise from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. At the latest GTC, the company’s much-watched developers’ summit, Huang name-checked Patel and prominently mentioned a new SemiAnalysis assessment of chip performance, InferenceX, which gave top marks to Nvidia.

“He only said two people’s names the entire presentation: mine and the OpenClaw guy’s,” said Patel, happily reflecting on the plaudits from SemiAnalysis’ glassy, sunlit new offices in downtown San Francisco. (To be fair, Huang did also mention a few others in his passing asides and thank-yous, including Sequoia Capital’s Alfred Lin.) “He put our logo up, and he talked about the slide for five minutes—that’s very unique.”

And yet, Patel said he didn’t shy away from publishing a pessimistic note about Nvidia’s Rubin chips—the kind of report that might displease the company—several days later. That decision, he insists, shows that flattery won’t stop him from poking an almost $5 trillion bear.