Research Analyst - Consumer Tokenomics

SemiAnalysis; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

SemiAnalysis LLC is hiring a research analyst for the Tokenomics team to cover consumer AI. The role involves writing reports for institutional clients and public newsletters, tracking usage and revenue, and evaluating pricing and demand dynamics across AI products such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and related apps.

The candidate should have a strong background in consumer internet business models, independent research capability, and exceptional writing skills.

Qualifications

• High agency and ability to independently develop research ideas and execute end-to-end.
• Strong knowledge of consumer internet business models (advertising, subscriptions, marketplaces).
• Background in equity research, corporate strategy, investment banking, hedge funds or similar.
• Working understanding of model economics, margins, pricing and product tradeoffs.

Responsibilities

• Write research reports for institutional clients and SubStack newsletters.
• Build panels or scrapers to track usage, retention and churn of consumer AI apps.
• Estimate consumer AI revenue by product and explain pricing effects on economics.
• Run experiments comparing consumer AI products and rank effectiveness.
• Synthesize data from app-store, web-traffic and surveys to assess market share.

Skills

High agency

Consumer internet models

Finance background

Model economics

Strong writing

Product obsession

Job description

Employment Type: Full-Time Work Setting: In-office (New York) / Remote (United States).

Work Location: United States. 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 to cover consumer AI. Tokenomics is the top of SemiAnalysis’ full stack coverage: the hyperscalers and frontier labs are where the compute goes, and consumer products are where it finally meets the user. This role owns that last mile - how AI reaches end users, how they use it, and how it gets paid for. Today that means ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and the apps built on top of them, 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

• Build a panel or scraper to track usage, retention and churn across the ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Grok apps
• Estimate consumer AI revenue by product and line (subscriptions, ads, commerce) and explain what pricing moves mean for lab economics
• Run your own experiments comparing agentic consumer products (shopping, travel, browsing) and rank which ones actually work
• Synthesize app-store, web-traffic, survey and card-spend data into a view on who is gaining share and why
• Cover publicly traded companies with a consumer AI business (Alphabet, Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Duolingo and the like): size the segment, model its contribution to revenue and capex, and tell investors whether the market has it priced right
• Work with the rest of the Tokenomics team to connect consumer demand to the compute and inference forecasts they already build

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.
• Strong existing knowledge of consumer internet business models (e.g. advertising, subscriptions, marketplaces, demand aggregators, platform distribution) and how they get valued.
• Background in equity research, corporate strategy, investment banking, a hedge fund or similar.
• A working understanding of model economics. You don’t need to map a forward pass onto hardware, but you should understand what it costs to serve a model well enough to reason about margins, pricing and product tradeoffs.
• You use these products obsessively and follow AI developments and drama in your free time.
• 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 consumer AI products, frontier labs, model economics and AI adoption.
• Building proprietary usage and adoption datasets that become core intellectual property for SemiAnalysis and differentiated resources for institutional clients.
• Deepening expertise in consumer product economics: monetization, distribution, unit economics and how they interact with serving costs.
• Developing forecasting and market-sizing frameworks to understand how model improvements, pricing and adoption translate into future AI demand.
• Leading cross-functional research with our Datacenter, Semiconductor, Systems and Engineering teams to connect consumer demand to the rest of the 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=