Every quarter, I like to do a small update to give our readers a behind-the-scenes look at what is happening. Often, there is a big difference between what folks see publicly and the inner workings of STH, so I like to peel that back. This quarter we hit our sixth property with over 100,000 views/ month and travel has been back with force.

Previous Updates

If you want to check out how this series has evolved, here are the links to the previous ones:

STH 2019: Q1 – Q2 – Q3 – Q4

STH 2020: Q1 – Q2 – Q3 – Q4

STH 2021: Q1 – Q2 – Q3 – Q4

STH 2022: Q1 – Q2 – Q3 – Q4

STH 2023: Q1 – Q2 – Q3 – Q4

STH 2024: Q1 – Q2 – Q3 – Q4

STH 2025: Q1

It is amazing how time flies.

STH Q2 2025 Letter from the Editor 6 Properties and Travel

Something fun with STH is that we now have a bit of scale that surprises people. Usually, folks read the STH main site or they watch the STH YouTube channel. Most do not do both, and that is something we have discussed since we have very little overlap between them. At this point, those are our two best-known publications along with the forums which have been around for some time.

What is new is that we have three other publications now that are going out to many folks. The STH Newsletter has grown slowly and steadily over the past several years. Even though we only do a weekly mailing, that is now reaching a lot of folks. The perhaps lesser-known properties now getting over 100,000 views/ month are the STH Labs YouTube channel where we post our shorts. This has been a project for some time since I do not like mixing the types of video we produce. We still need to produce more on the shorts side, so hopefully we get there late Q3 or early Q4, but at least we have a second channel that is growing.

Even newer on this list is the Axautik Group Substack currently running at over 100,000 page views per month. It may not seem huge, but that one is going quickly both in terms of subscribers and views. To be frank, it still needs some work, but it is getting there. I think we are at least getting a better grasp on what goes to Substack versus what goes to STH which is a great first step. Three quarters in, and the growth is solid.

AI Will Decimate This High-Margin Networking Business by Patrick Kennedy We are already seeing companies will slow-burn AI deployment as a result Read on Substack

Something that is certainly not helping, is all of the travel. Computex takes a week out of the quarter. The fun part is that we filmed things in a January trip to Taipei that are still being released today like the recent CXL Paradigm Shift ASUS RS520QA-E13-RS8U 2U 4-Node Server Review. You can see that I lost a bit of weight from being in Taipei in January to when some of the rest of this was filmed.

Projects like the Inside the Dell Factory that Builds AI Factories also take a lot of time since they are usually a few hours to prep cameras, batteries, microphones, and so forth, then fly out one day, film the next, then fly back the following. Even blurring out barcodes is usually 1-2 full days of efforts to identify what needs to be blurred, then actually tracking them through videos.

Sam and I recently went to Ohio, which was a three day trip. We got back Wednesday, worked in the studio on Thursday, and by Thursday night I was on the plane to do a sales training Friday morning in California. Just to give you some sense, I just did 15 flights in 18 days and 17 flights in 22 days. Most were short hops, but I have been making it to the airport and gate on average 3 minutes before boarding starts just to cut down on the amount of time I am in airports.

One item that I feel like we have been missing is the fun pieces that I want to do, but they end up being lower priority. Those are what seem to suffer the most when we travel like this. Usually the summer is a slower time so it is easier to get those done. Also, as I look to the second half of 2025, I do not see many major server platform launches, so usually, that means I get to do more content based on fun ideas I have.

Hiring in Scottsdale

It is time to scale the team a bit. Last quarter Sam joined us as the primary camera person in studio. If you have seen some of the hand art in B-roll shots in the studio, that is his since some folks were getting confused in comments.

We are also bringing back Joe behind-the-scenes this month to help speed production. We are also working on bringing someone else back over the the next few months in Arizona.

Recently, however, I had a discussion with someone who has been working on STH for around 9 years and is looking ahead to actually retiring. That will probably happen over the next 6 months or so, but it will be a big change for us. We are going to save that for a future Letter.

At the same time, if you are in the Phoenix, Scottsdale, Mesa area and want to get involved, feel free to reach out. After the last Letter, I had a great breakfast which is set to upend how we do our networking testing.

We just need to scale.

The STH YouTube Update

This quarter, the growth of the STH YouTube channel slowed as we headed into summer. We reached 900K subscribers. We are exiting the quarter with around 960,000 subscribers.

My best guess is that we will crest 1,000,000 sometime in September 2025 at this rate. Summers are slow, and that is OK. Another challenge we have is that doing the tour videos is something I really enjoy. At the same time, they take a lot of time and effort. Just blurring out barcodes is often 1-2 days of effort. I find myself constantly underestimating the level of effort it is taking to do these which is hurting our production schedule. Our goal this summer is to work on the mix of types of content we produce to mix normal effort and higher-effort pieces better.

Although we did not make a new set, we made progress. Set #2’s lighting changed significantly after we increased the height of one of the F34 crossbeams by ~1m. As a result, the reflections on the TV behind me are going to be less visible. This was a project that we just have not had time to do over the past few months, so it was great to take things apart and re-do.

We have started building a second set now opposite set #2 that has a rack for demo purposes. Perhaps that will make a Q3 introduction.

The Axautik Group Update and Substack

In Q1, we rolled out our new analyst arm, the Axautik Group. This is the “Analyst” part of our Analyst-Influencer-Other model. We had quite a few popular pieces this quarter.

The Axautik Group will produce content designed more for the financial communities. Some folks will be upset that AG content will be priced more for those communities. This is not a replacement for STH in any way. Instead, it will be designed to take much of what we learn by doing STH and turn it into formats we can monetize.

AMD Helios and MI350 Offer Hope for the NIC, PCIe Retimer, and PCIe Switch Markets by Patrick Kennedy AMD’s next-gen platforms offer a ripe playground for those snubbed by NVIDIA Read on Substack

There is a question of whether this will be more of a subscription model or selling one-off reports. We started doing a Substack in August. That Substack has been growing really well and is becoming an important revenue source in 2025. It is now runing at a clip of over 100K views/ month this quarter which is not bad.

If you can subscribe at work, this will be a bigger focus in 2025 and into 2026.

STH Labs: The Shorts Channel Update

As a 2024 project, we have the new STH Labs shorts channel here. That has been in a slow growth mode for the last few quarters.

I want this to grow more, but it is stuck right now as we are putting a lot of effort into fixing production scheduling on the main channel.

Subscribe to the STH’s Newsletter and YouTube

Did you know STH has a free weekly newsletter that comes out on Saturday with curated “Top 5” pieces from the week? We know you cannot visit every day, so we can deliver our picks for weekend reading directly to your inbox. Subscribing to the newsletter is easy. Here is the form.

Get the best of STH delivered weekly to your inbox. We are going to curate a selection of the best posts from STH each week and deliver them directly to you. Your email address: By opting-in you agree to have us send you our newsletter. We are using a third party service to manage subscriptions so you can unsubscribe at any time. Leave this field empty if you’re human:

We are not selling your e-mail addresses and MailChimp is managing everything at this point so you can subscribe and unsubscribe from the list as you want.

We are not promoting the newsletter via overlays and pop-ups. Those are very effective, but they are bad for readers. I do not like them, so as long as I have a say, we are not going to have newsletter signup overlays. I run STH as something I would want to visit daily even if I did not work on it.

Finally, subscribe to our YouTube and check it out here. Since that is a big focus at this point.

Subscribing to STH’s newsletter helps you see my favorite pieces of each week and a preview of the next week. Subscribing to the STH YouTube channel also helps us demonstrate our reach beyond just the website. Sometimes, doing things like showing power consumption or fan noise is easier than writing about it. This has also been something important for STH over the past few months. We have to demonstrate reach, and simple things like subscriber counts help explain reach.

Final Words

Thank you to all of our readers, Substack subscribers, clients, the STH team, and our advertisers for making everything possible. Folks can probably notice that we are pushing a lot of changes in 2025. There are some growing pains, but many of these need to happen to ensure STH is set up for the next several years.