Taiwan

Quantinuum secured a finalized US$100 million CHIPS R&D award from the U.S. Department of Commerce to support trapped ion quantum computer manufacturing in the United States. The company also announced new collaborations with Quanta Computer and Oracle tied to its trapped ion quantum hardware. As part of the Oracle tie-up, Quantinuum will place its Helios quantum computer inside Oracle data centers to support quantum cloud computing access. Quantinuum, a quantum computing hardware and software specialist in the IT industry, has a market cap of about US$12.7b. The company said the CHIPS R&D award and Oracle data center placement support its push to integrate quantum systems with AI and high performance computing through partners such as Oracle and HPE, though heavy reported losses and the risk of delays around its Sol and Apollo systems remain open issues.

Micron Technology reported record financial results for its fiscal year 2026, crediting rising AI-driven demand and effective operational execution. The company said memory chips are becoming increasingly critical as AI evolves into what it calls "Super Intelligence," and pointed to increased technology investments and strategic customer agreements as the basis for its outlook. Micron last closed at $1,097.39, up 3%. In other chip trading, GlobalWafers rose 9.7% to NT$1,190.00, while VeriSilicon Microelectronics (Shanghai) fell 11.3% to CN¥171.68. NVIDIA ended at $230.86, up 1.1% near its 52-week high, after announcing a collaboration with Delta to enhance autonomous driving solutions using its AI technology; Advanced Micro Devices settled at $615.73, up 0.6%, and Broadcom ended at $343.64, down 2.1%.

TSMC is considering building a new chip manufacturing plant in Texas, with expectations of adding several tens of billions of dollars in investment under a multi-year plan to expand its chipmaking business in the United States. Sources say the Texas project covers the construction of multiple chip plants, and if the investment goes ahead, each plant would cost at least 20 billion dollars. Previously, TSMC pledged to invest 265 billion dollars in Arizona, where several plants are currently under construction. The Texas investment depends on whether the U.S. government extends a tax credit measure for advanced manufacturing that is set to expire at the end of this year. The plan is still at an early stage and no details have been officially disclosed. TSMC is a key chip supplier to Nvidia and Apple, with revenue from wafer manufacturing in America accounting for more than 75% of its revenue from that business this year.

Krungsri Securities Public Company Limited has raised its recommendation on the electronics sector to Bullish from Neutral, citing three reasons: the low proportion of domestic revenue, the earnings of every company in the sector trending well in 3Q26F continuing from 2Q26, and momentum carrying into 4Q26-2027. It also expects the industry's total profit to accelerate in FY27F on rising demand in both AI-related and non-AI product groups. The research team recommends buying all three stocks, with DELTA at a target price of 320 baht and KCE at a target price of 97 baht as the Top picks, based on the theme of product price increases, which will drive the highest net profit per share growth in FY27F. The industry's total profit is expected to grow 52% in FY27F, accelerating from 42% in FY26F. DELTA will grow 51% in FY27F, up from 42% in FY26F, while KCE grows from 77% in FY26F to 82% in FY27F, and HANA grows from 24% in FY26F to 45% in FY27F. The team also raised its earnings estimates for KCE by 5% in FY26F and by 28% in FY27F to reflect the positive view that KCE is entering a sustained cycle of product price increases, incorporating one more price increase in October 2026 into the estimates, on top of the two previously expected in July 2026 and January 2027. Among non-AI stocks, KCE remains preferred over HANA because it operates further upstream and has its own laminate production facility, which helps it manage raw material costs better.

MediaTek announced that its flagship Dimensity 9500 platform powers the new Samsung Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra and Samsung Galaxy Tab S12+, bringing flagship performance and on-device intelligence to Samsung's premium tablet lineup. The chip is built on TSMC's 3nm process and features an All Big Core CPU architecture, the MediaTek NPU 990 and Generative AI Engine 2.0, and a flagship 12-core GPU with hardware-accelerated raytracing and Unreal Engine 5.5+ support. Jerry Yu, Corporate Senior Vice President and Head of Smart Life Business Group at MediaTek, said the platform brings the company's latest advances in flagship performance, on-device AI and power efficiency to the Galaxy Tab S12 Series, while Drew Blackard, SVP of Product Management at Samsung, said the partnership pairs flagship performance with on-device Galaxy AI. The Dimensity 9500-powered Galaxy Tab S12 series will be available at all major retailers starting Monday, October 7.

Cal-Comp Electronics (Thailand) Public Company Limited, or CCET, is benefiting from rising data storage demand driven by global data center investment, particularly in the Storage business across both HDD and SSD, as well as hardware products related to data centers and processing systems. The company has invested in expanding SSD production capacity and has a new plant that has already begun operations, which helps increase its readiness to accommodate shifts in product mix. Data from the Investors Association indicates that CCET has consumer SSD, data center SSD, and AI server SSD in its business plan. Meanwhile, Thailand is gaining an opportunity to attract a new wave of foreign direct investment from the expansion of the semiconductor, PCB, and advanced electronics industries, which will help enlarge the country's electronics ecosystem. Key issues to monitor going forward are order growth, the ramp-up of the new plant, an increasing share of SSD and value-added products, and maintaining margins in line with revenue expansion.

Wells Fargo says semiconductor capital-equipment companies could be the biggest near-term beneficiaries of a potential TSMC expansion of 2-nanometer production. Analyst Joe Quatrochi wrote that reports of the possible capacity increase should be viewed as a potentially incremental positive opportunity for semi cap companies, though timing, size and node details are still unconfirmed. Building additional 2nm capacity would require significant spending on lithography, deposition, etching and inspection equipment, adding a layer of demand for suppliers supporting TSMC's fabs. Quatrochi pointed to the so-called Silicon Prairie as a logical location for a potential second U.S. campus, citing existing semiconductor operations in Texas from Texas Instruments, Samsung, Coherent and Terafab, plus TSMC's design service center in Austin. TSMC's major 2nm customers include Apple, Nvidia, AMD and Qualcomm, with Google, Broadcom, Marvell, Amazon and OpenAI also expected to use the advanced process.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing rose about 0.9% to $457.175 at 10.55am EST Tuesday as investors weighed a possible return to AI stocks, with JPMorgan arguing the recent pullback has made semiconductor valuations more attractive. TSMC's second-quarter results showed $40.2 billion in revenue and a 60.3% operating margin, and its board approved roughly $29.44 billion for chipmaking capacity, advanced packaging and factory construction. The shares sit 25.61% above the $363.95 GF Value estimate, leaving little room for a stumble. Strong AI demand can justify a premium, but investors now need to see new capacity come online with solid yields and enough customer orders to keep it busy.

EVgo Inc. has announced a next-generation charging system capable of delivering up to 750kW of charging power. Design, development, and testing of the new charger are being carried out at EVgo's Innovation Lab in El Segundo, California, with co-development support from longtime partner Delta Electronics, making EVgo one of the only American charging networks to design its own chargers. CEO Badar Khan said the 750kW architecture future-proofs the network, noting that charge rates on the EVgo network are up nearly 20% over the last two years. The design draws on learnings from 1.8 million customer accounts and data from over 10 million sessions per year, and includes better cable maneuverability, a touchless payment interface, and NACS connectors as part of EVgo's strategy to double its addressable market. The system is expected to charge the fastest charging vehicles in the U.S. market in around 10 minutes, and the final charger design is expected to be unveiled in 2027 as EVgo begins deploying the new architecture.

Delta Electronics unveiled its new AI Modular Data Center and Microgrid Solutions at Data Center World Asia 2026 in Singapore, aiming to accelerate deployment and boost the energy efficiency and resilience of AI infrastructure. The prefabricated AI MDC integrates next-generation 800 VDC In-Row Power and liquid cooling systems for fast deployment and scalability of AI data centers based on the NVIDIA Vera Rubin architecture. The showcased 800 VDC In-Row Power architecture features 660kW output power, up to 98% AC-DC efficiency, 480kW capacity in battery backup units, and aluminium capacitors to optimize GPU workloads. Delta's prefabricated AI Containerized Data Center Solutions deliver up to 60 kW per rack of AI compute within the footprint of a single parking space, with a Liquid-to-Air CDU system achieving a PUE as low as 1.19. The Microgrid Solution integrates renewable energy, energy storage, Solid Oxide Fuel Cell systems and Solid State Transformers that directly convert medium voltage power to 800 VDC, while Delta's thermal management portfolio includes a dedicated cold plate for the NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72. Jason Yuan, President of Southeast Asia and ANZ at Delta Electronics, said AI workloads are scaling faster than most data centers were designed to handle, and that infrastructure planning must move from reactive to integrated and future-ready.

ASE Technology Holding Co., Ltd. reported August 2026 consolidated net revenue of $2.56 billion, or NT$82.25 billion, up 34.6% year-over-year in U.S. dollar terms. The company's core Assembly, Testing, and Material division, known as ATM, drove the surge with $1.59 billion, or NT$51.29 billion, in revenue, a 41.4% year-over-year jump. The monthly momentum builds on second-quarter 2026 results, when net revenue reached NT$191,064 million, up 26.7% year-over-year, and net income attributable to parent shareholders soared to NT$21,068 million. In that quarter, ATM revenue hit NT$126,148 million, up 36.3% year-over-year, with gross margin expanding 130 basis points sequentially to 27.3% and operating margin expanding to 15.7%. ASE shares rose 3.74% on the day of the August revenue release.

Activist investor Flashlight Capital Partners has sent a letter to SECOM's board demanding an overhaul of the Japanese security group's overseas strategy. The Singapore-based firm notes that SECOM's May 2023 roadmap targeted overseas revenue of 10% of sales by March 2028, but with 18 months remaining overseas revenue stands at just 5.4%, barely above 5.3% three years ago. Flashlight Capital criticized SECOM's neglect of S-1 Corporation, whose revenue equals 24% of SECOM's but is excluded from consolidation because SECOM's 26% stake falls below the J-GAAP threshold, and called on SECOM to raise its stakes in S-1 and Taiwan SECOM to at least 50% for under JPY156bn, which would lift overseas revenue to roughly 28%. The firm also asked the board to develop a new roadmap with stretch targets and to assess whether current leadership is right to execute the growth plan, with Chief Executive Officer Sanghyun Lee arguing SECOM trades at 6.6x EV/EBITDA versus 9.9x for Verisure and that its share price could re-rate to JPY10,000, 57% upside from current levels. Flashlight Capital posed five questions to the board and requested a response by October 23, 2026.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing is expanding 2-nanometer production faster than previously expected as major customers increase their commitments to the new technology. The company could reach monthly 2nm output of about 120,000 wafers by the end of 2026, compared with earlier estimates of 90,000 to 100,000, according to Taiwan's EDN. Apple, Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, Qualcomm and MediaTek are reportedly lifting 2nm orders by 10% to 20%, giving TSMC additional visibility as customers prepare next-generation processors and AI accelerators. In the second quarter, 2nm represented 3% of TSMC's wafer revenue, while technologies at 7nm and below accounted for 77%, and high-performance computing made up 66% of revenue, up from 60% a year earlier. TSMC has projected 2026 2nm capacity growth as it ramps multiple facilities in Taiwan.

VisionPower Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (VSMC), a joint venture between Vanguard International Semiconductor and NXP Semiconductors, has opened its first 12-inch (300 mm) wafer fab in Tampines, Singapore, a $7.8B facility. Following the completion of construction, the plant has entered risk production, with full commercial manufacturing scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2027. Representatives from TSMC and other partners, along with customers, suppliers, industry associations, and government agencies, attended the opening, the company said.

The analyst at Kasikorn Securities Public Company Limited presented statistics on the impact of floods on the SET Index, noting that since 2006 flooding has occurred in Thailand more than 7 times, and the SET delivered negative returns of about 1% over a one-month period, except in 2011 when major flooding pushed the SET down 14%. The groups that outperformed were led by ICT and banks, while the finance and insurance groups fell about 2%. The electronics group fell the most, down 8%, most of which stemmed from 2011, because that flood round hit the industrial sector hard. On the economy, excluding 2011, the monthly impact was in the range of 10 to 50 billion baht, or an impact on GDP of no more than 0.1-0.3%. And if assessed from the upside of extending the half-half co-payment policy program by 2 months, it could put the GDP forecast in a range of 2.0% plus or minus. For investment strategy, Kasikorn Securities assesses the impact of this flood round on its 2026 EPS forecast as fairly limited, and estimates the SET support range at 1,565-1,580 points. It still views the decline as an opportunity to gradually accumulate bank, power plant and electronics stocks, namely KTB, BBL, DELTA and BGRIM.

Wayve has locked in a commercial partnership with Mercedes-Benz to integrate its automated driving tech into at least one model set to be deployed within the next two years, a Level 2 product that still requires the human driver to remain engaged. The deal follows similar partnerships with Nissan and Stellantis, and earlier this year Wayve announced a partnership with Nissan and Uber to launch a robotaxi service in Tokyo. Meanwhile, about 80% of Waymo's roughly 4,000 robotaxis are in California and Texas, with its Texas fleet growing by more than 49% in the past three weeks. Aurora, which is developing and commercializing self-driving trucks, said it is targeting more than 30,000 driverless trucks in operation by 2030 and plans to have more than 200 driverless trucks by the end of the year. In other news, Zoox grounded its autonomous vehicle test fleet in Atlanta after safety drivers were potentially exposed to carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, or hydrogen sulfide gas inside its vehicles last month, prompting one worker to file a complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. On the deals front, Carro is considering a dual listing on the Nasdaq and the Singapore Exchange, Spinny and PMI Electro Mobility Solutions have both filed confidentially for IPOs, EcoCeres reportedly plans to raise about $1 billion in a Hong Kong initial public offering, and Ultraviolette raised $85 million and brought on Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan as an adviser.

Advanced Micro Devices announced a collaboration with Advantech to accelerate Edge AI workloads using AMD embedded and GPU platforms, while MindWalk has moved OpenFold3 into production on AMD Instinct GPUs. The Advantech alliance focuses on scalable, partner-led Edge AI solutions, with Advantech's WEDA ecosystem putting AMD Ryzen AI Embedded processors into pre-validated edge platforms that can be rolled out across industrial fleets. MindWalk's OpenFold3 work on Instinct MI325X GPUs reaches into life sciences prediction workloads, supported by inference microservices for regulated, production-grade scientific use cases. The company said the announcements line up with its existing narrative of expanding AI infrastructure across accelerators, software and full systems, and that MindWalk's validation of AMD Inference Microservices and the Kubernetes native path into regulated production supports the view that ROCm and related tooling can lower switching costs for third party models. AMD investors are watching how many additional production case studies using AMD Instinct GPUs and inference microservices appear through 2027 across sectors like life sciences, security and edge industrial systems.

Intel has expanded its Edge AI reach through a new collaboration with Advantech Co., Ltd. focused on Advantech's Edge AI ecosystem, deploying Intel hardware and software alongside Advantech platforms to support industrial and embedded AI workloads at the network edge. Intel also highlighted ongoing product development in brain-inspired computing, including neuromorphic style processors aimed at more energy-efficient AI inference. Intel is a large US semiconductor manufacturer with a US$644.2b market cap, supplying computing hardware and related services worldwide. The company's alignment with Advantech and its brain-inspired chip work back management's effort to refocus the portfolio on AI workloads, though organizational complexity and capacity constraints remain a flagged risk to execution. The clearest proof point from here is whether Intel starts disclosing concrete wins tied to WEDA and neuromorphic projects, such as named industrial deployments, container catalog usage, or dedicated brain inspired SKUs in upcoming earnings materials over the next few reporting cycles.

Bualuang Securities says DELTA's growth outlook from AI and data centers has strengthened after Morgan Stanley raised its power assumptions for the Vera Rubin rack to 234kW from 149kW, and for Rubin Ultra to 600kW from 415kW, reflecting power demand that comes not only from GPUs but also from memory, networking, power delivery systems and cooling across the entire rack. As a result, Morgan Stanley now estimates global server and rack power demand in 2026 to 2028 at 18GW, 35GW and 52GW, compared with Bualuang's assumptions of 15GW, 20GW and 25GW respectively. Even after deducting US electricity constraints, this still equates to global installations of about 28GW per year, above Bualuang's assumption of 20GW per year. For DELTA, the higher power usage per rack supports both the value of power delivery systems and cooling systems per rack, while Morgan Stanley has raised its liquid cooling capex assumption by 30% and sees cooling as an increasingly essential infrastructure. In addition, the 800VDC architecture improves system efficiency by about 5%, cuts copper usage by about 45% and supports racks drawing more than 1MW. In the short term, component constraints look set to ease gradually in the third quarter of 2026, with Delta Taiwan's power electronics sales in July up 59% year on year and 17% month on month, before falling 9% month on month in August but still 40% above the same period last year. DELTA's third-quarter 2026 sales are expected at 2.2 billion US dollars, up 34% year on year and 10% quarter on quarter, with a gross margin of 29.2% and core profit of about 9 billion baht, up 21% year on year and 60% quarter on quarter, before the fourth quarter of 2026 has a chance to set a new record high on deliveries of orders backlogged from the second and third quarters of 2026. Bualuang maintains its Buy recommendation with a target price of 330 baht and keeps its weighting on the electronics sector at market weight.

Kasikorn Securities estimates the SET index will swing within a range of 1,590 to 1,620 points today amid geopolitical concerns that have pushed Brent crude up 3.6% and driven the 10-year US Treasury yield to 5.198%, an increase of 8.4 basis points. However, the latest progress shows that US and Iranian negotiators are discussing a step-by-step agreement that could see Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for the US lifting its blockade of Iranian ports, with Qatar acting as mediator. Meanwhile, talks between Trump and Xi Jinping are trending positively, focusing mainly on AI, which is expected to benefit the chip and technology industries further. Domestically today, attention is on Thailand's August export figures, with the market expecting 347 billion dollars, or a rise of 24.8% year on year, seen as positive for the export sector. Today's strategy focuses on gradually accumulating fundamentally strong stocks with positive catalysts, with DELTA and CK recommended. For DELTA, the fundamental price is 300.00 baht, viewing the recent correction as merely a short-term reset, while AI demand remains strong from accelerating hyperscaler capex and rising demand for power and cooling systems per rack. Gross profit margin and earnings are expected to recover in the second half of 2026 after pressure from chip costs, inventory, and product mix eases, with normal profit expected to post a CAGR of about 32% in 2026 to 2028. The buy recommendation is maintained, with the stock trading at about 63 times 2027 PER, below the target of 92 times. For CK, the fundamental price is 29.27 baht after selling 200 million BEM shares at 6.50 baht per share, reducing its holding to 40.95% and bringing in about 1.3 billion baht in cash for working capital. It is expected to recognize an extraordinary gain of about 242 million baht after tax in the third quarter of 2026, though net profit in that quarter will still fall year on year from a high extraordinary profit base, while normal profit is expected to be flat to slightly higher on construction work and lower interest expenses. The buy recommendation is maintained, with a positive view on liquidity and the opportunity to win government projects in 2027, where bidding is expected to open for no less than 200 billion baht. The stock trades at a 2026 PER of only 13.3 times, even though its share of profit from BEM will decline slightly.

The Ministry of Commerce reported Thailand's trade figures for August 2026, with exports expanding 24.3% year-on-year. Although this was below the market expectation of 24.8% year-on-year, it accelerated from 21.6% year-on-year in July 2026. Meanwhile, imports expanded 25.1% year-on-year, below market expectations and below July 2026's 30.0% year-on-year and 36.7% year-on-year respectively. Among export goods that grew well in the agricultural product group were fresh, chilled, frozen and dried fruit, up 24.0%; rubber, up 23.2%; fresh, chilled and frozen shrimp, up 18.8%; and processed chicken, up 10.5%. In the agro-industrial product group, pet food grew 17.5% and canned and processed seafood grew 4.8%. In the industrial product group, video and audio equipment and parts grew 1,155.7%; telephones, equipment and parts grew 151.2%; electrical transformers and parts grew 55.6%; computers, equipment and parts grew 42.1%; electrical appliances and parts grew 40.9%; integrated circuit boards grew 19.2%; and gems and jewelry, excluding gold, grew 3.2%, returning to growth after contracting the previous month. The research team at Phillip Securities sees this as positive sentiment for export stocks in the categories that grew well, as well as stocks related to those export goods, and views it as a boost for industrial estate and utility stocks. It selected 17 standout stocks: in the agricultural product group, CPF, NER, STA and TEGH; in the agro-industrial product group, AAI, ITC and TU; in the industrial product group, CCET, DELTA, HANA, HTECH and KCE; and in the industrial estate and utility group, AMATA, BGRIM, GPSC, ROJNA and WHA.

Shares of Delta Electronics (Thailand) Public Company Limited, or DELTA, rose 2.75% to 262 baht, up 7.00 baht, on trading value of 4.88 billion baht. Bualuang Securities recommends buying with a target price of 330 baht and keeps its weighting for the electronics sector at market weight. Bualuang research expects DELTA's fourth-quarter operating results to have a chance of setting a new record high on deliveries of orders backlogged from the second and third quarters of this year. Meanwhile, component supply constraints are likely to gradually ease in the third quarter. Delta Taiwan's Power Electronics sales rose 59% year on year and 17% month on month in July, before falling 9% month on month in August, but were still 40% higher than a year earlier. Bualuang research also expects third-quarter sales of 2.2 billion US dollars, up 34% year on year and 10% quarter on quarter, a gross margin of 29.2%, and core profit of about 9 billion baht, up 21% year on year and 60% quarter on quarter. Higher power usage per rack supports the value of power delivery and cooling systems per rack, while Morgan Stanley has raised its liquid cooling capital expenditure assumption by 30% and sees cooling as an increasingly essential infrastructure. In addition, the 800VDC architecture helps improve system efficiency by about 5%, cuts copper usage by about 45%, and supports racks drawing more than 1MW.

Kasikornbank Securities stated that Trump and Xi Jinping held their first discussions on AI, with Trump supporting free development to maintain the United States' advantage, while Xi was open to setting boundaries and stressed that AI must remain under human control. Although the two sides remain at odds over chip export restrictions, they have begun seeking a joint risk-management mechanism, and have extended the trade truce to January 10, 2027. The research team views this as positive for sentiment toward DELTA and industrial estate and power plant stocks that stand to benefit from AI and data center investment, should chip and trade tensions between the United States and China ease.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing plans to raise wafer foundry prices by 3% to 6% starting in 2027, with the largest increases targeted at advanced process nodes used in high performance computing and AI chips. Management is preparing the multi-year pricing update as capacity remains tight for AI-related demand and advanced packaging through 2030. The move is intended to give the company more room to earn a return on heavy spending for 2nm and other advanced facilities, tilting its foundry model further toward higher-value capacity rather than pure volume. Raising prices first can signal confidence in tight supply, but it also invites Samsung and Intel to adjust their own pricing, and any meaningful discount or aggressive incentives from rivals could pull future AI programs or advanced packaging work away. The key test for investors is whether customers lock in multi-year agreements through 2027 at the higher wafer rates, especially on 2nm and related advanced nodes, with disclosed capacity commitments, utilization data around those leading processes, and management commentary on pricing discipline as the metrics to track.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and ASML Holding announced a collaborative industry initiative on September 8 to transition the semiconductor sector to a 12-inch Extreme Ultraviolet photomask format, replacing the 6-inch masks chipmakers currently use for High NA EUV systems. The shift aims to boost scanner productivity, eliminate stitching constraints on ultra-large chips, and lower long-term advanced node manufacturing costs, with the initiative targeting a pilot line by 2031 and 12-inch High-NA production by 2033. TSMC plans to adopt High-NA EUV starting in 2030, with the 12-inch masks providing a multi-year roadmap for scaling complex AI architectures. For ASML, establishing a 12-inch standard locks in the long-term economic case for its High-NA scanner line, supporting its 15% revenue expansion outlook, while for TSMC the larger format helps defend its leading-edge and AI/HPC manufacturing dominance. The decade-long roadmap carries execution risk, as the entire global supply chain, from mask blanks and inspection equipment to automated handling, must retool from scratch, and TSMC faces near-term gross margin dilution from its N2 ramp and overseas fab expansions while ASML contends with gross margin pressure in late 2025 and geopolitical growth uncertainties through 2026.

ASML Holding won broader customer commitments for its roughly $400 million High-NA EUV machines, even as its U.S. shares fell about 1.8% to $1,713.41 in Thursday morning trading. Intel is already using High-NA in volume production on selected chip layers, Samsung plans to bring the technology into DRAM production in 2028, and TSMC targets advanced chip production from 2030. ASML says its EXE:5200B can print features 1.7 times smaller than its current NXE systems in a single exposure, potentially sparing customers costly manufacturing steps. The catch is price: chipmakers need enough output and yield gains to earn back the cost of each machine, and ASML needs those gains to turn early commitments into lasting demand. At $1,713.41, the shares sit 35.5% above the roughly $1,260 GF Value estimate, a premium that puts pressure on High-NA to deliver on the factory floor.

Synopsys announced new collaborations with TSMC spanning A14 design enablement, AI-assisted engineering workflows, CoWoS support for multi-die designs, and unified multiphysics signoff. The companies said Synopsys has achieved A14 certification across digital and analog flows and enabled agentic AI capabilities, giving customers a methodology spanning implementation through signoff to accelerate design convergence on TSMC A14 technology. In analog design, Synopsys is collaborating with TSMC on device routing enablement on A14, a key milestone for advanced analog place-and-route automation. Synopsys said its 3DIC Compiler platform now enables designers to co-design and simulate integrated voltage regulators on TSMC CoWoS technology in a unified environment, and that it continues to work with TSMC on co-packaged optics design on TSMC COUPE technology. On TSMC's N2P process, Synopsys achieved key IP enablement and tape-out milestones for AI and HPC designs including PCIe 7.0, HBM4, LPDDR6/5X/5, 224G Ethernet PHY, UCIe, OTP, and advanced SLM process, voltage, and temperature monitoring IP, and recently completed 64G UCIe IP tape-outs on both 2nm and 3nm process nodes.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC, is seeing strong customer interest in its next-generation A14 process technology well ahead of volume production, with customer tape-outs already underway and running ahead of schedule, management said during the second-quarter 2026 earnings call. A14 is TSMC's second-generation nanosheet transistor technology, designed to deliver 10% to 15% higher performance at the same power or 25% to 30% lower power at the same speed compared with the 2-Nanometer technology, along with nearly 20% higher chip density. TSMC said an internal product-like vehicle has demonstrated close to 90% device performance, while a 256-megabit SRAM achieved nearly 90% yield, and the company expects A14 to enter pre-production in 2027 followed by volume production in 2028. TSMC also introduced A13 and A12 as extensions of the A14 family, with A13 designed to achieve more than 6% die area savings through a 97% optical shrink and A12 expected to bring superpower rail technology to the A14 platform, both slated for volume production in 2029. Separately, Micron announced a successful demonstration of the world's first 512GB DDR5 module on multiple server platforms, with AMD and Intel actively validating the module, and ON Semiconductor unveiled its Embedded Power Platform, a scalable architecture that uses the silicon wafer itself as the foundation of the package.

Alphabet's Google has opened pre-orders for Googlebook, a new premium laptop category for Android users built around its Gemini AI tools. Starting at $899, the first models come from Acer, Asus, Dell, HP and Lenovo, running on Intel or Qualcomm chips with up to 14 hours of battery life. The launch marks Google's first flagship ChromeOS attempt since the Pixelbook in 2017 and Pixelbook Go in 2019, pushing the Chromebook formula from low-end student hardware into premium territory with tighter Android integration and Gemini features that draft and organize text, answer questions about on-screen content, and resume tasks handed off from an Android phone. The move comes as Apple pushes down-market in pricing with its $699 MacBook Neo. Alphabet shares were up 1.48% intraday.

TSMC spent $15.59 billion on capital expenditure in its June 2026 quarter, its largest quarterly outlay in the past eight quarters and about 42% above the $10.98 billion spent in the prior quarter, as the company raised its 2026 capital budget for a third time this year, from $52 billion to $56 billion in January, to the high end of that range in April, and to $60 billion to $64 billion in July. On the Q2 2026 earnings call, CFO Wendell Huang guided third quarter gross margin down 170 basis points to 66%, citing 3 to 4 percentage points of dilution from the steep ramp of TSMC's 2 nanometer process, even as the June 2026 quarter's gross margin reached 67.72%, its highest in two years and consistent with the 67.7% figure cited by CEO C.C. Wei. Huang said TSMC generated about $24.5 billion in operating cash flow that quarter, enough to cover the $15.59 billion in CapEx and roughly $4.9 billion in dividends without new borrowing. TSMC is trading at 22.46 times forward normalized earnings, close to its 22.41 times two year average and well below the 29.65 times high in that range, after a mid September selloff tied to AI safety warnings from Anthropic's Dario Amodei and OpenAI's Sam Altman rather than anything specific to TSMC. Institutional 13F filings dated June 30, 2026 show a split Street, with Coatue raising its TSMC stake 7.6% to 9.3 million ADRs and Situational Awareness lifting its position to 2.6 million shares, while Lone Pine cut its stake 92.7%, SoftBank cut 71.5%, and Viking Global cut 29%.

Taiwan's data center market is projected to grow from USD 1.97 billion in 2025 to USD 5.72 billion by 2031, a compound annual growth rate of 19.44%, according to a new ResearchAndMarkets.com report. Taipei remains the island's leading data center destination, supported by hyperscale developments and cloud regions, while submarine cable investment is strengthening Taiwan's position as a major digital infrastructure hub in Asia. In October 2025, Meta announced an investment in Candle, a submarine cable project connecting Taiwan with Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore; the approximately 4,971-mile cable is expected to deliver transmission capacity of up to 570 terabits per second and become operational in 2028. Taiwan's government plans to provide approximately USD 28.7 billion in funding by 2030 in support of its 2050 Net-Zero Transition, covering renewable energy, hydrogen, grid modernization, energy storage and related programs. In June 2025, Amazon Web Services launched its first Taiwan cloud region in Taipei with three availability zones and announced plans to invest approximately USD 5 billion in the country's data center infrastructure, while in November 2025 Foxconn announced the development of an AI data center using NVIDIA's GB300 NVL72 platform, expected to become operational in the first half of 2026. The report covers 25 existing data center facilities and six upcoming facilities across more than five cities, and names established colocation operators including Chief Telecom, Chunghwa Telecom, Far EasTone Telecommunications, NTT Communications, Taiwan Mobile and Vantage Data Centers, with potential new entrants including Apple, Microsoft, Keppel Data Centres and SC Zeus Data Centers.