7investing's Semiconductor Roundtable

<p>There are few industries more important to the world than semiconductors.</p> <p>$600 billion worth of chips are sold across the globe each year that go into everything -- from permanent-pressing washing machines to application-crunching datacenters to self-aware automobiles. The world's thirst for computing is continually increasing and the chip industry is shifting into a higher gear to keep up.</p> <p>Yet it's not just market demand that heavy influences this industry's key players. Significant geopolitical implications are present as well, with developed economies needed cutting-edge chips as a crucial part of their national security. Many countries are scrambling to find ways to guarantee domestic chip supply, to avoid a potentially debilitating supply disruption.</p> <p>What does all of this mean for investors? Are there companies who have efficiently leveraged their fixed costs to achieve massive economies of scale? Are there newcomers or less-well-known companies who are necessary to the process and are opportunities to investors? And is the gravitational pull of national interests serving as an advantage to certain companies and as a huge headwind to others?</p> <p>To answer those questions, 7investing hosted a special "Semiconductor Roundtable" this month. 7investing lead advisors Simon Erickson and Krzysztof Piekarski were joined by external guests Jose Najarro and Nick Rossolillo.</p> <p>In the roundtable discussion, each panelist presented a key part or factor of the semiconductor industry. They also introduced a few of the important companies within it.</p> <ul> <li>First, Jose discussed the chip designers. He described how consumer-facing applications like self-driving automobiles or OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot are powered by cloud datacenters, which use super-efficient chips designed by companies like <strong>NVIDIA</strong> (Nasdaq: NVDA) and <strong>AMD </strong>(Nasdaq: AMD). The computing horsepower necessary to run artificial intelligence algorithms is increasing quickly, meaning there's a s