Foundry & Advanced Packaging

Onto Innovation reported second-quarter revenue of $343.1 million, a 35.3% year-over-year increase, sending shares up 14% the following day as analysts raised estimates and price targets. The full-year EPS consensus jumped 13% from $7.11 to $8.04, representing 63% annual growth versus 2025, while next year's consensus vaulted 17% from $10 to $11.72 for a potential advance of 46%. Non-GAAP gross margins expanded to 57.0% from 54.5% a year earlier, non-GAAP operating margins reached 30.0%, and non-GAAP diluted EPS came in at $1.93, with the company holding $1.88 billion in cash and short-term investments. On August 17, Goldman Sachs analyst James E Schneider initiated coverage with a Strong Buy rating and a $400 price target, matching the Street high set by Jefferies' Blayne Peter Curtis, while Needham's Charles Shi raised his target to $360 from $330 and Evercore ISI's Mark Lipacis lifted his to $390 from $350. In August 2026, Onto completed a $710 million strategic investment for a 27% equity stake in Rigaku, targeting the estimated $1 billion hybrid metrology market, and the company said demand for its Dragonfly G5 packaging inspection platform is projected to grow over 50% through 2026.

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.

Applied Materials expanded its partnership with BE Semiconductor Industries, also known as Besi, to develop advanced packaging technologies for artificial intelligence infrastructure, sending its shares up 2.5% in the afternoon session. Under the agreement, Besi joined the company's EPIC Center as an Innovation Partner, with the collaboration focused on next-generation 3D integrated circuit scaling, logic and memory integration, photonics, and interconnect architectures. The expanded partnership builds beyond hybrid bonding to develop new interconnect architectures that support artificial intelligence scaling requirements. After the initial pop, the shares cooled down to $522.95, up 2.3% from the previous close. Applied Materials is up 94.5% since the beginning of the year, but at $522.95 per share it is still trading 27.7% below its 52-week high of $723 from June 2026.

The United States is pouring billions into domestic semiconductor manufacturing to reduce its reliance on Taiwan for advanced AI chips, with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.'s U.S. investment commitment reaching $265 billion. The planned expansion includes six logic fabs, two advanced packaging facilities and a research and development center in Arizona, and TSMC has indicated that roughly 30% of its 2-nanometer and more advanced manufacturing capacity could eventually be located in the state. Shay Boloor, chief market strategist at Futurum Equities, cautioned that expanding domestic production does not mean the U.S. can fully replace Taiwan, saying he views the U.S. buildout as a strategic hedge rather than a true replacement, and noting that even chips manufactured in Arizona could continue depending on Asian facilities for parts of the final packaging process. Boloor said Washington is prioritizing capabilities where disruptions could have the greatest consequences, including advanced logic, packaging and domestic capacity to support critical AI infrastructure, while Taiwan is expected to remain central to leading-edge research and manufacturing. In February 2026, Taiwan rejected a U.S. proposal to shift 40% of its semiconductor supply chain to America, with Taipei's top tariff negotiator calling the plan impossible.

Applied Materials has entered a major R&D partnership with KIOXIA focused on next generation memory for AI workloads, based at Applied Materials' new US$5b EPIC Center. The collaboration targets memory cell structures, multi chip stacking and advanced packaging, with both companies working to improve manufacturability and density of future memory technologies tailored for AI focused chip architectures. The EPIC Center alliance with KIOXIA is only one piece of what is changing around Applied Materials' AI memory ambitions. Applied Materials builds the tools, software, and services that chipmakers use to manufacture semiconductors at scale, and the KIOXIA partnership plugs directly into its role supplying core production gear for memory and AI focused devices across the US, Asia, and Europe. A key data point to monitor is how quickly EPIC Center projects with KIOXIA convert into production tools and service contracts once the facility becomes operational this year.

China's first 3D advanced packaging mass-production line, the second-phase project of the Xingchen Technology advanced packaging pilot platform, officially went live on September 30, with the first batch of wafers successfully coming off the line. Xingchen Technology is headquartered in Wuhan and was incubated by the Hubei Jiangcheng Laboratory. It focuses on integrated circuit 3D advanced packaging technology and is one of the few domestic companies with full capabilities in 3D heterogeneous integration, precise chiplet stacking, and multi-dimensional chip packaging process development and mass production. Its advanced packaging integrated experimental platform began construction in 2024, with total investment in phases one and two exceeding 7 billion yuan. Phase one has already gone live and has helped nearly 30 high-performance chips complete pilot tape-outs, while providing verification services for 35 domestic packaging equipment items and 11 types of specialized materials. The second-phase project that went live this time started construction in October 2025, further adding 2.5D capabilities on top of the existing 3D advanced packaging process platform. According to the plan, it will reach full production in the first quarter of 2027, forming a capacity of 20,000 wafers per month, and will be able to simultaneously support pilot production and risk mass production for 40 to 50 chip models, as well as application verification for 30 to 40 sets of domestic semiconductor equipment and materials. In May this year, Xingchen Technology completed a Series A financing round of nearly 5 billion yuan, of which newly introduced shareholder investment reached 4.5 billion yuan, setting a new record for the largest single financing in China's integrated circuit advanced packaging sector in 2026. Investors include Hillhouse Ventures, Sequoia China, Legend Capital, CICC Capital, CMB International Capital, and Shenzhen Capital Group. Jingce Electronic is the second-largest shareholder of Xingchen Technology, with a latest stake of approximately 16.9842 percent. By holding equity in Xingchen Technology, the company is actively expanding into the semiconductor advanced packaging sector and extending from front-end metrology equipment into the semiconductor manufacturing and packaging industry chain.

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.

In its September monthly economic report, the government maintained its baseline assessment that the economy is "recovering moderately." It also kept the wording from the previous month that "it is necessary to pay close attention to the impact of the situation in the Middle East and natural disasters," and said it will continue to watch risks that soaring crude oil prices and import prices could accelerate the outflow of income, as well as the impact of natural disasters on automobile supply chains and other areas. Among individual components, production was upgraded from "flat" in the previous month to "generally speaking, a pickup is being seen," reflecting strong growth in production machinery such as semiconductor manufacturing equipment amid the global AI boom. Meanwhile, the trade and services balance was changed from "broadly balanced" to "in deficit," mainly due to higher import costs caused by rising crude oil procurement prices. Public works was downgraded from "firm" to "solid," with the government explaining that the effects of the fiscal 2025 supplementary budget are tapering off. Private consumption and capital investment, the pillars of domestic demand, kept their assessments of "a pickup is being seen" and "recovering," respectively, and the wording that improvements in the employment and income environment and the effects of various policies will support a moderate recovery was left unchanged for the outlook, while the government said it is necessary to be mindful of the situation in the Middle East, the impact of natural disasters, and fluctuations in financial and capital markets.

Kiatnakin Phatra Securities Public Company Limited, or KKPS, issued a research note dated 29 September 2026 recommending a "Buy" on KCE Electronics Public Company Limited, or KCE, with a target price of 104 baht, and maintaining a "Buy" on Hana Microelectronics Public Company Limited, or HANA, while raising its target price to 61 baht from 42 baht. It views both companies as entering a new growth cycle driven by a recovery in their core businesses and opportunities from artificial intelligence, or AI, related operations. For KCE, the research team sees it entering an upcycle in the printed circuit board, or PCB, business, expecting normal earnings per share to grow by about 95% in 2026 and 110% in 2027, which is about 69% above the market average. It expects net profit attributable to the company after excluding special items of about 1.529 billion baht in 2026, rising to 3.212 billion baht in 2027 and 4.174 billion baht in 2028. The communications business, especially PCBs for low Earth orbit, or LEO, satellites, is expected to increase its share to about 16% of PCB revenue in 2027 and 30% in 2028. As for HANA, KKPS raised its 2026 and 2027 earnings forecasts by 8% and 31% respectively, expecting profit growth of about 20% in 2026 and 53% in 2027, supported by a rise in capacity utilisation in its OSAT business in Ayutthaya province to 62% from 55%. It expects net profit attributable to the company after excluding special items of about 999 million baht in 2026, rising to 1.533 billion baht in 2027 and 1.78 billion baht in 2028. Meanwhile, two of HANA's three AI projects, Phononic TEC and High-density PCBA, have begun ramping up production and are expected to generate combined revenue of about 2.5 to 3.5 billion baht in 2027.

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.

Wuxi Industry Development Group recently issued the country's first key core technology breakthrough sci-tech innovation bond, 26 Xi Chan K2, on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, with a total size of 600 million yuan, a term of three years, and a coupon rate of 1.58 percent. Proceeds from this bond will be invested specifically in the construction of the Hua Hong FAB9B project, which will build a 12-inch specialty process wafer production line with a planned monthly capacity of 55,000 wafers. It represents scarce domestic capacity for automotive-grade and high-end industrial-grade chips, focusing on niche segments such as non-volatile memory, power devices, and analog chips, while carrying out core technology breakthroughs in key areas including Bluetooth radio frequency chip processes, next-generation high-voltage driver processes, and embedded flash memory processes. Once completed, the project will help close the domestic supply gap in high-end specialty process chips and effectively raise the level of self-reliance and controllability of critical chips. In recent years, Wuxi Industry Group has launched a number of first-of-their-kind projects, including bonds dedicated to the aerospace sector and a computing-in-memory sci-tech innovation bond. To date, its cumulative issuance of sci-tech innovation corporate bonds has reached 8 billion yuan, ranking first in Wuxi and second in Jiangsu, and it has successfully invested in high-precision and cutting-edge projects such as SJ Semiconductor, Zhipu AI, Geekplus, and Dobot. Wuxi Industry Group said that going forward it will seize capital market opportunities, continue to leverage the leading role of patient capital, long-term capital, and strategic capital, and deepen its presence in key areas such as integrated circuits, artificial intelligence, and commercial aerospace, injecting new momentum into Wuxi's efforts to build itself into an industrial sci-tech innovation hub.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing expanded its chip design partnership with Synopsys, strengthening the tools customers can use to design chips for TSMC's upcoming A14 process. The September 23 announcement covers AI-assisted design, automated chiplet layouts, power analysis for advanced packaging and verification for co-packaged optics, and Synopsys also reported progress on interfaces for HBM4, PCIe 7.0 and Ethernet. TSMC has scheduled A14 volume production for 2028. The U.S.-listed shares fell about 0.9% to $446.57 at 11.48am ET on September 28, a level 22.79% above the $363.69 GF Value. Better design tools could help customers get chips ready sooner, but they do not guarantee orders, and investors still need to see customer designs reach production, strong yields and fabs running at capacity.

Piper Sandler analyst Thomas Champion is projecting that Google's newly disclosed external chip business will generate $104 billion in TPU hardware revenue by 2028, a forecast the firm says the broader Street has yet to price in. Champion published the note after Google disclosed external hardware sales for the first time in its second-quarter 2026 earnings report, a milestone that triggered a formal reassessment of the revenue opportunity. The firm's model has TPU sales climbing from approximately $8 billion in 2026, or roughly 240,000 chips, to $51 billion in 2027, or approximately 2.4 million chips, and then to $104 billion in 2028, anchored to a facilities and power-capacity build-out of 3 gigawatts of run-rate capacity by the end of 2027 and 6GW by the end of 2028. Piper Sandler raised its price target on Alphabet to $400 from $395 and reiterated its Overweight rating, with its 2027 and 2028 Cloud revenue estimates now 15% and 17% above consensus and its Cloud EBIT estimates 18-19% above consensus. Champion also flagged that even these estimates may prove conservative, noting that Broadcom management recently spoke to 5GW of Anthropic demand in 2027 and 10GW in 2028, which Piper Sandler estimates as $105 billion and $210 billion in revenue if that capacity is achieved.

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.

JPMorgan analysts said on the 28th that the recent correction in global AI-related trading has improved investors' positioning and made valuations more attractive, which could encourage investors to re-enter the market, particularly in semiconductor stocks. In a report, they noted that tech may not return to past peak levels, but the underlying scenario remains positive and there are many investment opportunities within the AI-related sector. They said investor positioning in the AI space has been cleaned up and valuations have fallen sharply across most areas, while capital expenditure is likely to remain solid despite recent slowdown concerns. On semiconductor stocks, they maintained a bullish outlook citing strong fundamentals, price increases through 2027, and supply-demand tightness expected to persist until 2028, while keeping a cautious stance on software stocks, assessing that AI growth continues to leave the sector's long-term outlook uncertain.

The Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) said on September 28 that Singapore's manufacturing output in August surged 15.4% year on year, driven by broad-based growth across most industry clusters. On a seasonally adjusted basis, manufacturing output in August fell 0.5% month on month. The report said output rose year on year in nearly every sector except chemicals. The precision engineering cluster soared 33.9%, led mainly by the production of semiconductor machinery and equipment. The electronics cluster rose 28.5% on the strength of server and related products, semiconductors, and data storage equipment, amid strong demand related to artificial intelligence. The transport engineering cluster expanded 9.5%, led by land vehicles and aircraft. The general manufacturing industries cluster grew 1.5%, and biomedical manufacturing edged up 0.4%. Chemicals was the only cluster to decline, with output falling 12.7%, weighed down by the petroleum and petrochemical segments.

Kasikorn Research Center is maintaining its overall forecast for Thai exports in 2026 at 14%, saying export momentum is expected to slow over the remainder of the year and that growth remains uneven in a K-shaped pattern. It expects electronics to remain a key driver, supported by global demand for AI- and data center-related products and by US trade measures that are expected to continue excluding key export items such as electronic components. However, growth in electronics exports over the rest of the year is expected to slow from 55.5% year-on-year in the first eight months, after shipments were front-loaded earlier. Thai exports in August 2026 accelerated to 24.3% year-on-year, the fastest in 56 months, with electronics exports still expanding 54.2% year-on-year and contributing 11.5% to export growth. Electronics exports to the United States, which account for 46% of all electronics exports, grew 64.6% year-on-year. Exports of unwrought gold returned to growth at 112.5% year-on-year, contributing 4.5% to export growth, after two consecutive months of declines. Excluding gold, Thai exports would have grown 20.6% year-on-year. Kasikorn Research Center warned that US trade measures remain highly uncertain, including tariffs under Section 301 and structural overcapacity issues, and that Thailand could face higher tariffs than the current 12.5%. It also flagged concerns about transshipment, with the impact expected to become clearer in 2027.

SK Hynix is evaluating an initial public offering for its U.S. NAND flash subsidiary Solidigm, targeting a 2027 U.S. listing that could value the business at $150 billion and raise up to $15 billion, according to Reuters. Solidigm held initial pitch meetings with investment banks this week. The potential IPO would represent a massive monetization event for SK Hynix, which acquired Intel's NAND memory and storage business for $9 billion in a transaction completed in 2021. SK Hynix reported record Q2 2026 financial results, generating consolidated revenue of KRW 79.32 trillion and an operating profit of KRW 60.54 trillion, a 76% operating margin, driven by surging AI server demand for High Bandwidth Memory (HBM4) and enterprise SSDs. The prospective $15 billion in IPO proceeds would give SK Hynix substantial financial flexibility to support its multi-year capital deployment, including its M15X facility and Yongin semiconductor cluster expansion, while augmenting its gross cash position of KRW 88 trillion. The primary risk lies in valuation sustainability and industry cyclicality leading up to 2027, since Solidigm's enterprise SSD growth is tightly linked to hyperscale AI infrastructure spending and a softening semiconductor cycle could contract the realized IPO valuation.

Microsoft plans to expand its global data center capacity to more than 38 gigawatts by 2032, more than tripling its current roughly 12-gigawatt footprint, according to Bloomberg News reporting cited by Reuters and attributed to people familiar with the plans. Only about 2 gigawatts of Microsoft's current capacity is dedicated to AI-specific chips, a share the company expects to grow to roughly one-third of the much larger 38-gigawatt total by 2032, though Microsoft has not confirmed the target in any public filing or statement. The reported roadmap rests on strong cloud demand: Azure and other cloud services revenue rose 43% year over year in fiscal Q4, Microsoft Cloud revenue reached $59.3 billion for the quarter and $214.4 billion for fiscal 2026, and commercial remaining performance obligations climbed 84% year over year to $678 billion, with roughly 30% expected to be recognized as revenue over the next 12 months. Funding the buildout will be costly, with Microsoft expecting more than $50 billion of capital expenditures in fiscal Q1 2027 and about $175 billion during calendar 2026 under its broader capex definition, after roughly $145 billion in fiscal 2026. Power and political hurdles could slow the plan, as Texas temporarily halted approvals for new data center grid connections and New York imposed a moratorium on large new data centers, even as Microsoft signed a 20-year agreement with Constellation Energy tied to the restart of the 835-megawatt Three Mile Island Unit 1.

Elmos Semiconductor has locked in extended access to wafer capacity at its Dortmund fab until at least 2028, a move aimed at meeting rising demand in autos and AI infrastructure. The extension comes after a sharp pullback over the past quarter, with the 90 day share price return down 17.51%, while the year to date share price return sits at 46.88% and the 1 year total shareholder return reaches 81.50%. Against a last close of €146.00, the most followed narrative pegs Elmos Semiconductor's fair value at €191, framing recent share price swings as a potential valuation gap rather than just noise. That narrative cites continued strong momentum in China, driven by rising local demand for advanced driver-assist features and local OEM initiatives, as positioning Elmos for double-digit booking growth and new long-term customer wins, and points to the ramp-up of design wins in automotive sensor applications, including multiple ultrasonic sensors across models at BYD, as validating its innovation pipeline. The story can still break if China demand cools or key auto customers shift volumes to rival chip suppliers, which would pressure both revenue and margins.

SCHMID shares surged nearly 20% by Friday afternoon trading after a report revealed that advanced chipmakers were considering the use of glass substrates in processors. The technology could increase the amount of high-bandwidth memory in chips, boosting processing speeds for AI workloads. SCHMID Chief Sales Officer Roland Rettenmaier said on the company's second-quarter 2026 earnings call that many players in the Intel, Nvidia and AMD supply chains are eyeing glass core substrates for their flatness, smoothness, dielectric constants and signal integrity, and that the German-based company is engaged with most major supply chain players to make glass core substrates real. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently met with the chairman of SK Group to discuss using glass substrate technology in next-generation semiconductors, according to Seoul Economic Daily, and has reportedly discussed it with TSMC as well. SCHMID specializes in high-tech manufacturing for electronics, photovoltaics, glass and energy systems, and has been developing glass substrate solutions that offer thinner, smoother packaging material to raise chip speeds and cut power consumption.

Onto Innovation has raised its full-year 2026 advanced packaging growth outlook to at least 80% from more than 50% previously, citing strong demand for its Dragonfly G5 inspection platform. The company generated $343.1 million of quarterly revenue, up 35.3% year over year, while its inspection business, dominated by Dragonfly systems, grew approximately 30% sequentially on demand from 2.5D logic and HBM applications. Onto launched Dragonfly G5 in March 2026 and disclosed in April that the platform had been qualified for 2.5D AI packaging applications, with demand strongest among HBM manufacturers and AI-focused OSATs, including more than $200 million in Dragonfly orders from a single OSAT, most slated for 2027. Management said demand for the Dragonfly platform is expected to grow more than 50% in 2026 from 2025 and expects further growth in 2027 with no signs of customer overcapacity. Competitors are also benefiting from the same AI-driven spending: KLA now expects 2026 wafer fabrication equipment spending in the low-$150 billion range, up from $135-$140 billion, and Applied Materials expects advanced packaging revenue to grow more than 70% in 2026, up from its prior outlook of more than 50%.

Forecasts from 12 private think tanks and other institutions for the Bank of Japan's September National Short-Term Economic Survey of Enterprises, or Tankan, to be released on the 1st of next month, were all in by the 25th. The average forecast for the business conditions diffusion index, which gauges corporate sentiment, stands at plus 26 for large manufacturers, a 4-point improvement from the previous June survey. The dominant view is that demand related to artificial intelligence and semiconductors will lift sentiment, and this would mark the sixth consecutive quarter of improvement for manufacturers. While industries producing equipment and materials related to semiconductor manufacturing, such as electrical machinery and production machinery, are analyzed as performing well, it has been pointed out that automobiles may act as a drag due to sluggish growth in export volumes. The average forecast for large non-manufacturers is 36, down 1 point from the June survey, with many companies expecting flat or slightly worse conditions due to weak inbound demand and rising costs such as fuel and labor expenses. Based on this Tankan, the Bank of Japan plans to analyze risks such as higher crude oil prices and AI-driven upward pressure on prices, and to look for the timing of an additional interest rate hike.

Elon Musk said Colossus 2, the AI computing cluster built by his xAI business, could more than double its current number of Nvidia chips by the end of the year. In a post on X, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO said the Memphis-area cluster now runs 110,000 Nvidia GB200 chips and 440,000 GB300s, with another 220,000 GB300s due to be fully operational next week and a further 220,000 expected in November. An additional 220,000 GB300s may come online in late December if we get lucky, he added, giving the most detailed timetable yet for the expansion. Musk also noted that Colossus 1 comprises 150,000 H100, 50,000 H200 and 30,000 GB200 chips. The SpaceX unit previously said it plans to equip its Memphis facility with 1 million graphics processing units by 2026.

Trio-Tech reported fourth-quarter non-GAAP earnings of $0.02 per share on revenue of $14.9 million, up 39.3% year over year. Total backlog stood at $24.2 million at June 30, 2026, compared with $11.0 million a year earlier, with SBS backlog of approximately $19.8 million and IE backlog of approximately $4.4 million. Net cash provided by operating activities rose to $3.4 million from $0.4 million in fiscal 2025, while cash, cash equivalents, short-term deposits and restricted term deposits totaled approximately $28.5 million, versus approximately $19.5 million at June 30, 2025. The company said it enters fiscal 2027 with continued demand for semiconductor back-end testing services across AI, high-performance computing and automotive applications, including EV and autonomous-vehicle semiconductors. During fiscal 2026, Trio-Tech delivered approximately $6.3 million of the previously announced $14.2 million in burn-in board-related orders, leaving approximately $7.9 million still to be delivered, and in the first quarter of fiscal 2027 it received an additional purchase order of approximately $1.5 million.

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.

Broadcom expects AI chip revenue of roughly $115 billion in fiscal 2027 and $230 billion in fiscal 2028, according to Reuters, a target that doubles the delivery test for the custom AI chip and networking supplier. The company reported $16.7 billion in fiscal third-quarter AI semiconductor revenue, about 56% of its $29.59 billion total. Shares fell about 2% to $348.02 at 10.40am ET on Thursday morning as investors weighed the promise against execution risk. At that price, Broadcom trades 15.36% below the $411.18 GF Value cited by GuruFocus. Doubling AI sales in a year demands that chips be made, packaged and delivered on schedule, and any slip in supply or customer deployments would leave the revenue target offering little comfort.

CLSA's Bhavtosh Vajpayee said the AI semiconductor cycle will not peak in 2028, calling that expectation "utterly wrong" and projecting the current chip shortage will persist until roughly 2030. Speaking to CNBC on Wednesday, Vajpayee said demand for GPUs and custom AI chips currently exceeds supply by about 73%, and he expects upstream semiconductor and hardware companies to benefit as the shortage worsens alongside expanding AI infrastructure spending. He also noted that large semiconductor companies trade at lower valuation multiples than many other parts of the AI ecosystem. Vajpayee highlighted Meta's Muse as a notable recent development for making AI agent creation easier through simple language commands, and said similar advances should emerge in China, where companies including Alibaba are developing smaller AI models. He pointed to Apple as particularly important because smartphones already sit at the center of consumers' daily lives and could become the primary gateway for accessing AI services, while CLSA sees clearer opportunities in AI hardware suppliers than among model developers, where he said it remains too early to determine the eventual winners.

NVIDIA ended the second quarter of fiscal 2027 with $279 billion in supply and capacity commitments, up from $119 billion in the first quarter, with most tied to memory and manufacturing facilities for current and future data center products. The company reported $96.22 billion in second-quarter fiscal 2027 revenues, up 106% year over year, while Data Center revenues surged 117% to $89.02 billion, and it guided third-quarter revenues to $108 billion, plus or minus 2%, implying 89.5% year-over-year growth. NVIDIA expects fiscal 2028 revenue growth of about 70%, though supply constraints could limit how quickly it meets demand, and it warns that changing demand could make the commitments difficult to reduce. Rivals are expanding as well: AMD's Data Center revenues rose 107% year over year to $6.7 billion in the second quarter of 2026, with Anthropic planning to deploy up to 2 gigawatts of MI450-series GPUs on the Helios rack-scale platform and Microsoft deploying Helios at scale on Azure, while Intel's second-quarter revenues rose 25% to $16.13 billion and its Data Center and AI revenues surged 59% to $6.26 billion. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for NVIDIA's fiscal 2027 revenues stands at $406.05 billion, an 88% year-over-year increase, and the stock trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 17.11 versus the sector's average of 21.45.

Japanese stocks look set to catch up with a global AI-led rally when trading resumes Thursday, with Nikkei 225 futures in Osaka trading about 1.4% above Friday's settlement of the underlying gauge after the Silver Week holiday. Chip-equipment makers Tokyo Electron and Advantest are expected to be among the biggest winners, according to Hu You, a senior research analyst at iFast Financial in Singapore, who also flagged chip package substrate maker Ibiden and memory maker Kioxia Holdings. The yen traded around 157.28 per dollar in Tokyo after a four-day losing streak, its longest since late August, keeping traders alert to intervention risk following the Bank of Japan's Friday rate hike and its signal that further tightening remains possible. The BOJ move, which disappointed yen traders for its lack of clearer guidance, also leaves bond traders facing a volatile reopen, with iFast's Hu You saying the hike sets a higher floor for short-term rates and is fundamentally negative for front-end JGB prices. The global AI trade has gathered steam on early signs of success for Meta Platforms' new AI agent and Alibaba Group Holding's unveiling of what it calls China's most powerful AI chip, though overnight weakness in US equities and rising oil prices may temper the optimism.