Hello world, it’s Thursday, October 15th.
TSMC posted a 69% jump in net income to $23.6 billion in Q3, its sixth straight record quarter, raised its 2026 revenue growth forecast to 44%, and said any Terafab role has to be run by TSMC. Elsewhere, ASML confirmed its first-ever EUV price increases and is holding back 2029-2030 order slots, Anthropic’s $16.8 billion pre-IPO quarter landed as NTT eyes a ¥1 trillion Osaka data center for it, and CoreWeave’s bonds crossed into distressed territory above 15% yield.
Let’s get into it. — Austin & Vik
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TSMC Posts Record Profit, Raises Outlook, Confirms Terafab Talks
Net income climbed 69% to NT$763.1 billion ($23.6 billion) in the third quarter, with revenue up 51% to NT$1.49 trillion (about $46.7 billion), marking TSMC’s sixth consecutive record quarter. CEO C.C. Wei said he sees no sign of a slowdown in demand. The company raised its 2026 revenue growth forecast to 44%, leaving capital expenditure guidance unchanged. Wei confirmed TSMC is in active discussions about Elon Musk’s proposed Terafab facility in Texas, with teams already on the ground assessing expansion opportunities, though he drew a firm line: any partnership “has got to be run by TSMC.” The Information also reported plans for a new 3nm fab as AI orders continue to accumulate.
Austin: Musk said last week there’s ZERO doubt his companies will build and run Terafab. Now Wei says the fab has to be run by TSMC. Both can’t be true… hmmm…. does Musk’s own idea of TSMC subleasing part of Terafab end up as the middle ground?
ASML Withholds 2029-2030 Slots, Confirms Price Rises, Eyes Terafab
ASML reported record Q3 2026 sales of €11.7 billion, up 25% quarter-on-quarter, as AI-driven demand for lithography tools stretches the company’s order book to its limits. The Dutch equipment maker is now actively withholding 2029-2030 order slots and has confirmed its first-ever EUV price increases, citing production capacity that can barely keep pace with current demand. A new ‘T’-titled customer has been hinted at for those late-decade slots, with Digitimes Culpium (clarification: Tim Culpan from Culpium was the first to report on TSMC+Terafab) pointing to Elon Musk’s Terafab as the likely candidate. Capacity can’t simply be bought away: Intesa Sanpaolo analyst Antonella Frongillo told Bloomberg the Zeiss optics supply chain is the binding constraint, and ASML is weighing a 2028 facility expansion to address it.
Vik: Demand isn’t the question anymore - it’s whether the whole supply chain scales in sync, which is what’s capping 2027 and 2028. When the monopoly starts raising prices, that’s your signal. Korean makers already swallowed a 10% parts hike from January. Slots now stretching into 2030.
Anthropic Pre-IPO Revenue Reaches $16.8 Billion as NTT Eyes Osaka Center
Anthropic’s quarterly revenue jumped to $16.8 billion in the period before its initial public offering, a figure the company presented to prospective investors at a pre-IPO roadshow that Reuters reported also featured branded “thinking” caps and an explicit dismissal of human-extinction risk. The Claude maker held that investor meeting as NTT confirmed it is in talks to build a ¥1 trillion data center in Osaka specifically to serve Anthropic’s Japan operations. Bloomberg noted that analysts see the revenue results as more helpful to the IPO valuation than to the broader AI trade. The Osaka facility, if completed, would rank among Japan’s largest single infrastructure commitments to a foreign AI company.
Vik: Pre-IPO revenue slides are roadshow theater. The number that actually matters here is 500MW in Osaka with NTT, Anthropic’s second overseas site after Australia. That’s a wall of GPU servers, and the HBM stacked behind them.
Austin: Still worth looking at the revenue though. $16.8B is up from the $11.5B Bloomberg reported for Q2, roughly 46% QoQ. If that’s real growth… pretty good! How subsidized is it?
ByteDance Nears MediaTek Supply Deal for AI Data-Center Chips
ByteDance is close to finalizing a chip supply agreement with MediaTek to power its AI data centers, according to Bloomberg News. The deal would mark a meaningful design win for MediaTek as it pushes further into compute silicon, and it gives ByteDance a procurement path that avoids the U.S. export restrictions that have cut off Chinese firms from Nvidia’s most advanced accelerators. MediaTek, best known for mobile processors, has been building out its data-center AI chip ambitions, and landing ByteDance, one of China’s largest and most compute-hungry operators, would substantially validate that effort. Terms of the agreement, including chip specifications and volume commitments, have not been disclosed.
Vik: Custom silicon demand is booming as buyers look past Nvidia, and a big compute-hungry Chinese buyer is exactly who wants a non-Nvidia part. Big design win for MediaTek if it lands.
Austin: Avoids the export rules how, though? MediaTek’s leading-edge chips come out of TSMC, and TSMC reportedly stopped shipping 7nm-and-below AI chips to Chinese customers in Nov 2024. So I’d guess older-node parts, or chips that live in ByteDance data centers outside China?
CXMT Sets Year-End 4F² DRAM Reveal as Samsung Confirms Own Development
China’s CXMT plans to unveil its 4F² DRAM before the end of this year, with mass production not expected until after 2027, according to Seoul Economic Daily. Samsung has separately confirmed it completed development of its own 4F² architecture, per SammyGuru, meaning both companies have now publicly staked positions on a cell-layout approach that eliminates the need for EUV lithography. The convergence rattled Korean equity markets: Samsung and SK Hynix shares dropped on the combined announcements, though at least one analyst quoted by Chosun Ilbo called the reaction broadly expected. CXMT also secured a pledge of official government support as part of China’s broader chip-industry push, the South China Morning Post reported.
Vik: Word on the street says tihs 4F² cell area at roughly Korea’s current 6F², so not the density leap you might assume.
CoreWeave Bonds Turn Distressed as CEO Calls Market Irrational
CoreWeave’s bonds are yielding above 15%, firmly in distressed territory, after shares fell roughly 15% and drew a one-word “Yikes” from Elon Musk. CEO Mike Intrator fired off an internal memo calling the selloff irrational and pointing to the company’s order backlog as evidence the business remains sound. DA Davidson’s Gil Luria isn’t persuaded: he told Bloomberg CoreWeave is “destroying value at every turn” if it borrows at 9% and earns only a 5% return, regardless of scale. Co-founder stock sales have added to investor unease, per The Information. Gartner warns more than $3.5 trillion in AI infrastructure spending faces write-down risk by 2030, a figure that puts the CoreWeave stress in a much larger frame.
Austin: Borrowing at 9% to earn a 5% return? Uhh, the company gets worse the faster it grows… hope that was an exaggeration
Sector Watch
Data Centers & Power
AEP and Bloom Energy sign a 20-year, 702MW fuel-cell PPA with Google for a Wyoming data center, with AEP committing $4 billion in project investment — the largest single fuel-cell power deal on record. (Reuters)
Delta Electronics forecasts rising solid-state transformer shipments for data centers as its 13.8 kV SST gains traction with a U.S. cloud giant testing AI data-center microgrids. (digitimes)
Flex completes acquisition of EPC Power, expanding its power-conversion capabilities for AI data centers and grid applications. (PR Newswire)
Foundry & Packaging
IBM and Siemens announce joint research on nanostack 3D transistor architecture, combining IBM’s device roadmap with Siemens’ EDA tools to accelerate post-FinFET manufacturing design. (IBM)
UMC declines an expedited Samsung order for Galaxy Z Fold8 display-driver ICs, with GlobalFoundries emerging as the backup DDI foundry. (digitimes)
Thintronics targets Ajinomoto’s dominant ABF chip-packaging film with a competing material as AI demand widens the addressable market for advanced substrate films. (R&D World)
Memory
SEMI projects global DRAM production capacity will rise 41% by 2030, driven by AI server demand and new fab investments across multiple geographies. (The Elec)
Samsung Electronics unveils its next-generation memory strategy at OCP Global Summit, placing speed, scalability, and persistence at the center of its AI-era roadmap. (The Elec)
SK Hynix conditions its planned new U.S. factory on the U.S. government allowing more chip equipment exports to China, according to Reuters sources. (Reuters)
Optics & Networking
Salience Labs secures $125 million in Series B funding to scale photonic networking chips for AI data-center interconnects. (Business Wire)PCB & Components
DigiKey commits $100 million over 18 months to expand global distribution operations in Thief River Falls, Minnesota, targeting component supply-chain resilience. (EE News Europe)
Lite-On signs a $348 million Texas contract for power and liquid-cooling systems targeting 800 VDC AI data-center infrastructure. (Lite-On)
Littelfuse will report Q3 financial results before market open on October 28. (Littelfuse)
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