Hello world, its Monday, November 9th, 2026
Nvidia’s board opened an independent investigation into whether Jensen Huang was the target of Chinese intelligence, about a week before the company reports earnings. Japan got its largest chemicals deal on record as Mitsui Chemicals agreed to buy photoresist maker JSR for ¥1.84 trillion. TSMC pushed back on a report that it is planning 3D DRAM for Nvidia, Elon Musk’s Terafab told Japanese toolmakers it wants a million wafers a month, and Microsoft is giving Oracle back its older GPUs.
Let’s get into it. --Austin & Vik
Latest episode: 3D Stacked DRAM for Inference: d-Matrix’s Sudeep Bhoja — listen on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Full transcript: daily.semidoped.com.
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Nvidia’s board opens an investigation into Jensen Huang
On Sunday, Nvidia’s board said a committee of independent directors, working with outside counsel, will investigate reports that Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort. The board said it has no reason to believe U.S. national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised, and that it has confidence in Huang. The same day, Nvidia published an email in which Huang told employees he had been unfaithful to his wife and would cooperate fully with the review.
The reporting goes back to the New York Times, which said last month that Huang had a relationship with Alice Huang (no relation), a former executive at Singapore’s Megaspeed whom, according to the Times, U.S. authorities concluded was a Chinese intelligence asset. Megaspeed is an Nvidia cloud partner that U.S. agencies have been investigating over whether it helped get restricted chips into China. The Wall Street Journal reports its name came up in recent Entity List deliberations, though it has not been added. Nvidia had earlier described the pair’s interactions as not unusual, and Reuters says it could not independently verify the Times’ claims.
The bigger risk for Nvidia is in Washington, where a CEO who has lobbied for looser China export rules now faces questions about a suspected Chinese asset. House Republicans had already asked Huang for a briefing before Sunday’s statement.
Markets split on Monday. Nvidia was down about 5% in premarket trading, while TSMC rose 4.68% and the Taiex closed up 4.94%, its second-largest point gain ever, after Taiwan pledged to support the market. In Seoul, Huang’s daughter Madison, an Nvidia senior director, cancelled her trip, which scrapped a meeting with Korea’s science minister and a visit to Rebellions. Korea’s science ministry said it expects contracted GPU deliveries to go ahead as planned. Nvidia reports third-quarter results on November 17.
Source: Nvidia board statement · Huang’s email to employees · Reuters explainer · CNBC · Focus Taiwan · Chosunbiz
Vik: Going to pass on commenting about this as it involves personal lives. We focus on business and tech here at Semi Doped. Nvidia makes some amazing hardware, nothing changed overnight on that front.
Mitsui Chemicals buys JSR for ¥1.84 trillion
Mitsui Chemicals agreed to buy JSR from funds run by JIC Capital, part of the state-backed Japan Investment Corp., for ¥1.84 trillion (about $11.6 billion), a figure that includes ¥447.9 billion of debt. The Development Bank of Japan is putting in ¥200 billion for non-voting preferred shares. Mitsui will fund the rest with a ¥1.64 trillion bridge loan and plans to issue up to ¥150 billion in new shares. Closing is targeted between October 2027 and March 2028, pending antitrust and foreign-investment approvals.
JSR has been private since JIC took it over in 2024, and its semiconductor materials sales reached ¥196.0 billion last fiscal year. Mitsui is paying for JSR’s EUV resist position: by Mitsui’s account, JSR is No. 2 in photoresists worldwide and the only supplier offering both chemically amplified and metal-oxide resists for EUV. Mitsui’s own chip materials business is much smaller. Its EUV pellicles, ICROS wafer tape, and one film product are its only lines with annual sales above ¥10 billion.
Reuters says it is the largest deal ever in Japan’s chemicals sector. Mitsui is targeting ¥40 billion of extra annual profit by fiscal 2035, and it is now considering splitting its petrochemicals and mobility businesses into a separate polymer company.
Source: Mitsui Chemicals disclosure · Mitsui Chemicals investor presentation · Reuters via CNA
TSMC says it is staying a logic foundry after a 3D DRAM report
The Information reported Friday, citing two people, that TSMC has started drafting plans to make 3D DRAM at Nvidia’s request. The options reportedly include building new fabs or buying an existing plant and converting it. The effort is said to be led by Hsu Kuo-chin, the vice president over advanced packaging and a former head of Micron’s Taiwan operations. No timeline or capacity was reported.
TSMC’s answer: “TSMC focuses on our core business at all times, which is dedicated IC foundry. Our mission is to be the trusted technology and capacity provider of the global logic IC industry for years to come.” It did not directly address whether Nvidia asked. Winbond chairman Chiao Yu-Cheng said process and patent barriers would make it hard for TSMC to enter DRAM directly.
Even if the report is right, 3D DRAM is still years from volume at Samsung, SK hynix and Micron, so it would not ease today’s shortage. What the report does show is how hard Nvidia is pushing for more memory supply. A DRAM business would also complicate TSMC’s role making HBM base dies for SK hynix.
Source: Tom’s Hardware (TSMC statement) · Reuters (The Information report) · Taipei Times · BusinessKorea
Vik: Unsure if these reports are true. But I am a big fan of 3D dram. It has the opportunity to unlock new levels of performance. This is why we interviewed d-Matrix CTO Sudeep Bhoja on Semi Doped. Watch it here.
Austin: That d-Matrix episode was one of my favorite yet. Really insightful.
Terafab tells toolmakers it wants a million wafers a month
Nikkei reports that Elon Musk’s Terafab told Japanese equipment makers this autumn it is targeting about 1 million wafers a month from 2032. About 700,000 would be memory and more than 300,000 logic. A Terafab procurement team visited Japan earlier this month and asked some suppliers to deliver within months, aiming for mass production in the second half of 2028. Some suppliers were confused by demands that cut against standard practice.
The total would be about 40 times the planned capacity of Rapidus’ Hokkaido fab. By one estimate, the memory share alone roughly matches Samsung’s entire DRAM capacity today. Jiji Press has reported that Intel is coordinating technical support for logic on its 2nm- and 1.4nm-class processes, and that Terafab is weighing a Taiwanese partner for memory. No partner has been confirmed.
Terafab has a capacity target and a supplier list, but it has not said where its DRAM process technology will come from. Advanced fabs usually take more than three years to go from planning to volume production. For Japanese toolmakers, the near-term question is whether the rush requests turn into firm orders.
Source: Nikkei · TrendForce · Financial News
Vik: That number seems far too high to me. 2032 is 5 years away and Elon wants to launch from the ground up to match Samsung’s entire DRAM capacity today? I’m staying skeptical.
Microsoft hands Oracle back its older GPUs
Bloomberg reported Friday that Microsoft is winding down a 2023 deal to rent AI computing from Oracle after deciding not to renew it, and has been switching off the capacity in recent months. The servers ran older Nvidia GPUs and were originally used for Bing’s AI features. According to Bloomberg, they no longer fit Microsoft’s specifications. The deal’s size was never disclosed.
Oracle said demand for its AI infrastructure “remains strong, including for earlier-generation GPUs.” Microsoft declined to comment. Bloomberg says the move is part of a review of more than $80 billion Microsoft has committed to outside capacity from CoreWeave, Nscale, Nebius and others. In the same week, IREN said it had delayed some deliveries after Microsoft asked for network design changes.
When an older-GPU lease expires, one of the biggest renters of AI capacity is choosing to walk away rather than renew. Rented GPU capacity is usually financed on the assumption that the chips keep earning for years. Nebius reports on November 12 and CoreWeave also reports this week.
Vik: Who walks away from compute? Older Nvidia GPUs can still run inference of some kind. Maybe Microsoft has no need for that inference?
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Industry Chatter
These are just unconfirmed industry whispers.
Neocloud orders — An expert at a global AI server OEM says only 30–40% of first-phase MOUs from newer GPU-rental customers turn into binding purchase orders, and follow-on orders from many of them remain tentative through the first half of 2027. Hyperscalers, which pay from their own cash, convert at very high rates. The same expert says Vera Rubin’s volume ramp has moved from December to the first quarter of 2027, with this OEM expecting 5,000–6,000 Rubin racks next year at about $8 million each (WK channel check).
Samsung HBM mix — Industry participants expect Samsung to start moving some wafer capacity from HBM back to conventional DRAM in the fourth quarter, because DRAM margins have nearly caught up with HBM. In that scenario, memory prices level off in the first quarter of 2027 and ease in the second (WK channel check).
Sector Watch
Compute
Rebellions / SK Telecom — Rebellions will connect its next-generation R200 NPUs to Nvidia’s platform through NVLink Fusion and MGX racks, and SK Telecom plans to deploy the systems with Nvidia GPUs running prefill and Rebellions NPUs running decode. The R200 systems are expected to be ready in 2028 (Source: Nvidia).
Groq — Groq is pitching investors on a Series B at an $8 billion pre-money valuation, about 2.5 times its August mark, to fund inference capacity sold on short- and medium-term contracts, Bloomberg reports (Source: Bloomberg via Investing.com).
Servers
Quanta — October revenue doubled from a year earlier to NT$353.25 billion, a record for the month, as AI servers more than offset falling notebook shipments (Source: Quanta filing via Yahoo Taiwan).
Wiwynn — The Wistron server unit posted record third-quarter revenue of NT$434.6 billion, up 62.9%, with after-tax profit up 51.6% (Source: Wiwynn).
Equipment
Kokusai Electric — The Japanese deposition-tool maker’s fiscal second-quarter adjusted operating profit rose 56% on AI-driven demand, and it kept full-year guidance of ¥340 billion in revenue and ¥86 billion in adjusted operating profit (Source: Kokusai Electric results slides · TradingView summary).
SMEE — At the China International Import Expo, China’s main lithography maker showed KrF and i-line scanners it says use more than 90% domestic key parts and have processed over 10 million wafers. These are mature-node tools, not EUV (Source: TrendForce).
Foundry
Samsung Taylor — Samsung’s Texas fab could start trial runs in mid-to-late December ahead of 2027 mass production, which includes Tesla’s AI6 chip. Samsung hasn’t confirmed a date (Source: The Korea Herald).
TSMC Tainan — Taiwan plans to spend about NT$30 billion on 50 hectares in Tainan to bring TSMC’s 3nm fab under construction there into the Southern Taiwan Science Park (Source: UDN).
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Also worth a read:
Austin’s latest on Chipstrat, AMD Q3 FY26, Annotated
Vik’s latest on Vik’s Newsletter, Intel: Why Didn’t We See This Coming?