Research Analyst - Tokenomics

Employment Type: Full-Time
Work Setting: In-office / Remote
Work Location: San Francisco (Preferred) / Remote
Work Hours: Office hours
Find out more here: https://semianalysis.com
About SemiAnalysis

SemiAnalysis is an independent research and analysis firm specializing in the Semiconductor and AI industries. Our in-depth coverage spans the entire supply chain, from semiconductor fabrication processes to cutting-edge AI Models, software, and infrastructure. We are recognized as the leading authority on the semiconductor supply chain, with the highest concentration of industry experts within one team, and a deep-rooted passion for delving into the intricacies.

We are a global team of analysts, each with extensive networks across the semiconductor supply chain and AI ecosystem, publishing industry shaping articles while participating in numerous conferences annually.

Our newsletters reach more than 200,000 subscribers worldwide, including senior management and c-suite leaders at the leading semiconductor and AI companies.

We also offer three core products:

• Industry Models – we develop and publish industry models on accelerator shipments, datacentre demand and supply, GPU total cost of ownership, and more. We work with hyperscalers, neoclouds, many of the world’s largest hedge funds, and government agencies.

• Core Research – our public equity markets product, geared towards financial investors, distils our deep technical research and knowledge into key insights on technology and product trends.

• Consulting and Technical Due Diligence – We conduct custom research and project work to guide key strategic and investment decisions for the largest private equity funds, leading venture capital firms, companies across the AI ecosystem, and government agencies.

Position Overview

We are hiring a research analyst for our Tokenomics team. Tokenomics is the top of SemiAnalysis’ full stack coverage. Today, we primarily focus on the hyperscalers and frontier labs, but anything related to the development and diffusion of AI is fair game.

Responsibilities

Ultimately, your job is to write research reports for our institutional clients and public newsletters for our Substack. However, the actual process behind writing a report can vary greatly. For example, you might

• Set up and run your own experiments to figure out how important a better CPU is for faster agents

• Synthesize all the information online about open vs closed source pricing trends and explain what this means for the future of the industry

• Work with our engineers to test all the private inference endpoints from companies like Fireworks and Nebius and rank them

• Build your own benchmark to evaluate new model releases

• Work with our Datacenter team to figure out how OpenAI and Anthropic’s share of total compute changes over the next few years

We mean it when we say that “anything related to the development and diffusion of AI is fair game.”

Requirements

• High agency. Strong candidates can independently come up with interesting research ideas and execute on them end to end.

• A basic technical understanding of LLM inference. You should be able to clearly walk through a single forward pass and explain how each step maps onto hardware.

• You follow AI developments and drama in your free time. If you’re not on AI Twitter, it’s probably not a good fit.

• You’re an exceptional writer. You can distill complex technical topics into clear, compelling takeaways for a generalist audience

• You want your career to be a significant source of meaning in your life.
  

Growth Areas

This role has significant room to expand in scope as the Tokenomics team grows. Depending on your strengths and interests, you could develop into areas such as:

• Owning major research verticals across frontier AI labs, hyperscalers, inference providers, model economics, and AI adoption.

• Building proprietary benchmarks and datasets that become core intellectual property for SemiAnalysis and differentiated resources for institutional clients.

• Deepening technical expertise across LLM inference, model architecture, hardware performance, serving infrastructure, and AI system economics.

• Developing forecasting and market-sizing frameworks to understand how model improvements, pricing, compute availability, and adoption translate into future AI demand.

• Leading cross-functional research with our Datacenter, Semiconductor, Systems, and Engineering teams to connect developments across the full AI stack.

• Becoming a recognized industry expert through flagship institutional research, public writing, and engagement with leading AI companies, investors, and technical experts.

• Shaping the direction of the Tokenomics research agenda, identifying emerging questions before they become consensus topics and turning them into differentiated research.

• Taking increasing ownership of projects and eventually mentoring other researchers as the team expands.

SemiAnalysis LLC participates in the E-Verify program to confirm the employment eligibility of all newly hired employees. For more information, visit e-verify.gov.

• E-Verify Poster: https://www.everify.gov/sites/default/files/everify/posters/EVerifyParticipationPoster.pdf

• Right to Work Poster: https://www.justice.gov/crt/case-document/file/1133936/dl?inline=