Zero One Daily Intelligence Brief — June 18, 2026

TSMC's first 10-year supplier pact builds a US packaging chain as AI memory tightens

Top Market Signals

TSMC breaks cover with a 10-year Amkor packaging deal

TSMC (2330 TT) and Amkor (AMKR US), the largest US and second-largest global outsourced packaging and test house, signed a 10-year cooperation agreement announced on 16 June US time. This is the first time TSMC has publicly disclosed a 10-year long-term contract with a partner, and industry watchers read it as a push to extend TSMC's "made in America" capacity from wafers into back-end packaging and test.

Under the agreement, TSMC will procure advanced packaging and test services from Amkor, with the two jointly deciding which technologies to deploy, including TSMC's InFO and CoWoS, to meet shared customers' capacity needs. Amkor is building a new plant in Peoria, Arizona, having acquired about 27 hectares of land next to an existing 42-hectare site, with production planned to start in 2028.

The strategic logic is co-location. Amkor's back-end site sits close to TSMC's front-end wafer fabs in Phoenix, which shortens the overall production cycle and removes the need to ship advanced chips back to Asia for packaging. According to Economic Daily News, the supply chain reads this as CoWoS work being routed to Amkor while TSMC's own Arizona packaging fab, AP1, focuses on SoIC.

The read-through runs down Taiwan's packaging suppliers. Substrate maker Unimicron (3037 TT) and equipment names Scientech (3583 TT) and Wanrun are expected to pick up overflow business, and facilities contractor Hantang already booked roughly 56% of 1Q26 revenue in the US. Amkor had earlier flagged its Arizona site would serve NVIDIA, Apple and AMD, and TSMC first announced a deepening of the Amkor relationship in October 2024.

Linked stocks: 2330 TT, AMKR US, 3037 TT, 3583 TT

Sources: 台積電擴大美國封測結盟 破天荒揭露與業界二哥艾克爾簽十年協議, 艾克爾台積電簽10年合作協議　強化美半導體先進封裝, 攜手Amkor 台積打造美封測生態系

Winbond's NOR Flash cracks NVIDIA's Vera Rubin platform

Winbond (2344 TT) is set to enter NVIDIA's (NVDA US) supply chain in the second half of 2026 for the first time, qualifying NOR Flash for the Vera Rubin platform, according to a DigiTimes exclusive. NOR Flash is a low-density memory that handles boot-up, system initialization and firmware storage, and Winbond is targeting a majority share of NVIDIA's NOR sockets by 2027.

The driver is a step-change in how much NOR Flash an AI server needs. A single Vera Rubin rack, built from roughly 1.3 million components including 72 Rubin GPUs and 36 Vera CPUs, requires more than 600 NOR Flash chips, well above prior platforms. Server-related memory bit demand is modeled to grow at a 40% compound annual rate across 2026 and 2027, with switches and network interface cards in the new racks multiplying NOR usage.

NVIDIA's AI platforms previously relied mainly on Micron (MU US) for NOR Flash. Winbond began sampling in the GB200 cycle but saw little customer interest until supply tightened at GB300, and Micron has since shifted its focus toward HBM and high-end DDR5, leaving room on NOR. Cloud customers prioritize supply stability for these parts, which doubles their value content per rack even though unit prices are low.

Pricing is moving sharply. Winbond indicated NOR Flash contract prices rose 100% to 120% in 1H26 on extended lead times and allocation, with a further 60% or more increase guided for the second half. NOR remains one of Winbond's lower-margin product lines, so the AI-server mix shift matters more for volume and pricing visibility than for near-term margin. Winbond declined to comment on individual customers.

Linked stocks: 2344 TT, NVDA US, MU US, 2337 TT

Sources: （獨家）華邦電NOR Flash首度打入NVIDIA供應鏈　挑戰奪5成市佔

Packaging-tool makers are booked through 2030

Advanced-packaging equipment makers Grand Process Technology (3131 TT) and Scientech (3583 TT) said customer orders now run well beyond their capacity, with visibility stretching to 2029 and 2030. Grand Process said its current capacity covers only one-third, and at times one-quarter, of total global orders, and that bookings in the first five months already roughly matched last year's full-year revenue of NT$6.5bn.

Chairman Chang Tai-shan said AI-driven orders are arriving "fast and urgent," that some customers keep adding to orders, and that a fresh order placed now would take about a year to deliver a machine. The company expects to ship more than 200 systems this year, with panel-level packaging and 3D hybrid bonding products starting to ship, and is leaning on outsourcing, hiring and possible acquisitions to add capacity against a shortfall of around 200 staff.

Scientech president Li Hung-yi said its advanced-packaging and wafer-reclaim lines are fully booked through next year, with order visibility to 2028 and 2029. The company is expanding, with a second Hukou plant due to open by year-end and a Tainan site targeted for 2028. Both firms are setting up in Arizona to serve large customers locally, with Grand Process placing pilot machines there in the second half and volume tools expected in 2027 and 2028.

Linked stocks: 3131 TT, 3583 TT, 2330 TT

Sources: 弘塑、辛耘接單看到2030年

Acer flags slowing memory hikes and a splitting PC market

Acer (2353 TT) chairman Jason Chen told a business forum that memory and CPU price increases have begun to slow, though no price cuts have appeared yet. He expects second-half PC demand to split three ways: buyers with rigid demand who purchase regardless of price, a near-half who downgrade specifications, and a group that delays buying.

The downgrade behavior is concrete. Chen described customers cutting from 16GB to 8GB of memory, or from 1TB down to 512GB, in response to higher component costs. He expects total second-half PC shipments to decline, but average selling prices to rise enough that overall revenue holds at a reasonable level.

Acer's inventory has climbed toward a record, from about NT$70bn at the end of 1Q26 to more than NT$80bn now. Chen said the bulk is memory and other key components bought before the price increases at lower cost, while finished-goods inventory sits at a normal six to eight weeks. ASMedia president separately put the 2026 PC market down 10% to 15%, with a clearer recovery not expected until the second half of 2027.

Linked stocks: 2353 TT, 5269 TT, 2408 TT

Sources: 陳俊聖:記憶體漲價趨緩 PC消費者3大分流, 祥碩啟動五年轉型計畫 營收拚挑戰10億美元

China's SMIC narrows the gap to Intel on metal pitch

A SemiAnalysis reverse-engineering report found that Huawei's latest Mate 80 phone carries a HiSilicon Kirin 9030 processor built on SMIC's (981 HK) third-generation 7nm process, known as N+3. On the smallest local metal pitch, the SMIC node slightly beats Intel's (INTC US) 18A process, though overall transistor density still trails 18A by 38%.

The finding matters because it puts a concrete number on how far China's leading foundry has advanced under US export controls. A narrower pitch with a wide density gap suggests SMIC has closed part of the distance on specific design rules while remaining well behind on the broader efficiency that determines cost per transistor and power. The result was reported via Tom's Hardware coverage of the SemiAnalysis analysis.

Linked stocks: 981 HK, INTC US, 2330 TT

Sources: 中芯7奈米間距險勝英特爾18A　電晶體密度仍落後38%

US holds off blacklisting DeepSeek and memory maker CXMT

The US has delayed adding AI startup DeepSeek, memory maker CXMT and more than 100 other Chinese companies deemed national-security risks to the Commerce Department entity list, according to Reuters, in an effort to avoid escalating tensions. An interagency committee approved the listings last year, but Commerce has not published them.

There have been no new entity-list additions since last October, the longest gap in more than a decade, according to a CSIS supply-chain researcher cited in the report. At least 75 entities tied to advanced semiconductor manufacturing, equipment production and AI model development were reviewed for listing but remain unpublished, with a Commerce undersecretary said to be holding back since late last year over escalation concerns.

The commercial backdrop runs the same direction. Bloomberg reported that Microsoft (MSFT US) has built a sizable business selling AI models, including OpenAI's, to Chinese companies despite the US-China rivalry. CXMT is the relevant name for memory investors: it competes directly with Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix and Nanya, and a deferral of controls leaves its mature-node DRAM expansion unconstrained for now. In February, Anthropic accused DeepSeek and two other Chinese labs of using distillation to extract Claude's capabilities, and OpenAI raised similar warnings with Congress.

Linked stocks: MU US, 2408 TT, NVDA US, MSFT US

Sources: DeepSeek等百家中企 美緩列貿易黑名單

先聲 First Word — Exclusives from Chinese-Language Sources

Elite Material posts record May profit on high-end CCL

Elite Material (2383 TT), a copper-clad laminate maker, disclosed May pretax profit of NT$4.21bn, up more than 200% YoY, with net profit attributable to the parent of NT$3.25bn, up 199.3%, and monthly EPS of NT$9.07. The company is a core supplier of high-end M8 and M9 CCL materials for AI servers and 800G switches, and its results show how fast profit is now growing for the materials layer of the AI server build. (18 Jun 2026) Source: 台光電5月每股賺9.07元

ASMedia sets a five-year US$1bn revenue target

ASMedia (5269 TT) launched a new five-year plan targeting US$1bn in revenue, expanding from PCs and motherboards into servers, automotive, robotics, China domestic CPUs and custom ASIC design services. The plan signals an IO-interface specialist pivoting toward higher-value compute sockets even as it guides the 2026 PC market down 10% to 15%, and it expects to remain AMD's largest supplier through 2027. (17 Jun 2026) Source: 祥碩啟動五年轉型計畫 營收拚挑戰10億美元

Nanya Technology prints a record May on DRAM pricing

Nanya Technology (2408 TT) reported May revenue of NT$27.67bn, up 8.6% MoM and 730.1% YoY, a record high, taking five-month revenue to NT$102.24bn, up 649.6% YoY. The scale of the YoY jump shows how far DDR4 and DDR5 contract prices have run, with management guiding June revenue to hold near May's level and 2Q26 revenue to challenge NT$80bn on a double-digit sequential rise in average selling price. (18 Jun 2026) Source: 南亞科 兩檔衝鋒