Zero One Daily Intelligence Brief — July 7, 2026

A circuit-board scare rattles Taiwan's AI suppliers as Broadcom locks Apple in to 2031

Top Market Signals

NVIDIA rack scare sinks Taiwan's board makers

Taiwan's printed-circuit-board and IC-substrate stocks were the worst corner of the market on 6 July after research firm SemiAnalysis blamed a board-design problem for a possible one-year slip in NVIDIA's (NVDA US) next AI rack, only for NVIDIA to deny any delay hours later.

SemiAnalysis, cited by CNBC, said the Kyber NVL144 rack, the 144-GPU system meant to launch in 2027 alongside the Vera Rubin Ultra platform, faces manufacturing trouble in its PCB midplane, the multi-layer board that carries signals between compute modules, and could slip to 2028. The firm added that the larger NVL576 system, which links eight racks with co-packaged optics, may also be delayed or built only in small volume. Our 6 July Blade flagged the same reported slip; the new development is that SemiAnalysis named the circuit board as the cause, which is what triggered the sector selloff.

The reaction was heavy. Taiwan CCL leader Elite Material (2383 TT) closed limit-down, shedding NT$216.7bn in market value in a day, while Nan Ya PCB (8046 TT), Kinsus (3189 TT), Unimicron (3037 TT) and Zhen Ding (4958 TT) all fell more than 5%. Japan's Ibiden dropped 8.3% and Hong Kong-listed CCL maker Kingboard fell 9.5%.

NVIDIA's spokesperson said its product roadmap is unchanged and denied the report, and the stock closed up 0.37% at US$195.55. Taiwan PCB makers pushed back too, telling reporters the rumor had circulated three months ago and been worked through, and that the gating issue is not on the PCB side. Industry contacts noted the current Oberon rack design can carry over, leaving Foxconn, Quanta and Wistron 2H26 Vera Rubin shipments intact. The layer count keeps climbing regardless: Vera Rubin midplanes run 44 layers and Kyber-era boards 78, with AI server PCBs moving from 34-42 layers toward 50-plus and materials upgrading to M8 and M9 grade.

Linked stocks: 2383 TT, 8046 TT, 3189 TT, NVDA US

Sources: 輝達新一代AI機櫃傳遇生產瓶頸　擬延至2028年上市, 輝達新機櫃傳卡關 SemiAnalysis 點名 PCB 設計不佳 波及台鏈, 載板鏈 輝黃時刻失色, Kyber機櫃延後上市？輝達出聲否認

Broadcom locks in Apple to 2031

Broadcom (AVGO US) will develop and supply a series of custom AI chips for multiple generations of Apple (AAPL US) products through 2031, per an 8-K filing on 6 July, easing worries that Apple was trying to reduce its reliance on Broadcom. The shares rose about 4% pre-market.

Apple is one of Broadcom's largest customers, accounting for roughly 20% of annual revenue, and has long depended on Broadcom for radio-frequency, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless parts even as it designs more of its own silicon, including the recently launched C1 modem. The extension fits Apple's pattern of signing long-term supply agreements with key chip vendors to harden its supply chain.

The read-across runs to the foundry. Whichever heavyweight designs Apple works with, the manufacturing orders route to TSMC (2330 TT), which local analysts flagged as the ultimate winner of a deepening Apple-Broadcom custom-chip relationship.

Linked stocks: AVGO US, AAPL US, 2330 TT

Sources: 博通與蘋果延長合作至2031年　持續研發客製化晶片, 蘋果牽緊博通 衝 ASIC 合作

TeraWulf signs a US$19bn Anthropic lease

TeraWulf (WULF US), a bitcoin miner that has pivoted into AI and high-performance-computing hosting, has signed Anthropic as a 20-year tenant at its Justified Data campus in Hawesville, Kentucky, a lease it expects to bring in about US$19bn over the initial term.

The campus is being built in phases toward 401 MW of critical IT load, with early operations starting in 2H27 and full capacity in early 2028. Anthropic has committed to renting more than 10 GW of compute across cloud providers and has prior deals with Akamai, AWS, CoreWeave and Google; it recently leased xAI's Colossus 1 cluster for more than 300 MW to expand capacity for Claude Max and Claude Pro users. TeraWulf separately said it will sell its 50.1% stake in the Abernathy joint venture to a Fluidstack-led investor group.

The deal is another data point on how far AI landlords are extending their contract tenor. A 20-year lease from a frontier lab gives a former crypto miner a two-decade revenue line, and underlines that power and ready sites, as much as chips, now gate the pace of the AI buildout.

Linked stocks: WULF US, CRWV US, AMZN US

Sources: TechNews

Samsung seeks another 20% memory price rise

Samsung Electronics (005930 KS) is negotiating 3Q26 standard DRAM contract prices up by as much as 20% QoQ, extending a pricing run that has already lifted standard DRAM about 90% in 1Q26 and a further 50-60% in 2Q26, according to Korean media relayed by DigiTimes.

The pricing power is showing up in profit. Bloomberg reported Samsung's preliminary 2Q26 operating profit surged roughly 19-fold YoY, beating already-elevated expectations; market consensus had put the quarter near KRW 84.6tn (US$55.1bn), which would edge past NVIDIA's US$53.5bn 1Q operating profit. Samsung's DS chief Kim Yong-kwan told staff on 3 July that the company's 2026 profit will exceed the cumulative total it has earned across roughly 40 years in the chip business, with analysts pencilling full-year operating profit near KRW 300tn (US$200bn).

The forward driver is supply that stays tight. Contract prices for 12GB LPDDR5X have roughly tripled since early 2025 to about US$145 per unit, and the roughly US$800bn of new memory capacity Samsung and SK Hynix are planning is not expected to arrive in volume until around 2033. As long as AI demand for DRAM and NAND holds, high memory prices can persist well into the outer years.

Linked stocks: 005930 KS, 000660 KS, MU US

Sources: 超驚人！三星迎史上最賺一年，2026 年獲利將「超越過去 40 年總和」, AI需求推升記憶體價格 三星Q2獲利估暴增18倍

China's memory makers close the price gap

China's DRAM leader CXMT is now selling at prices close to those of Samsung, SK Hynix (000660 KS) and Micron (MU US), a shift that rewrites the long-held view that Chinese entrants would chase share with steep discounts, according to Korean outlet Chosun Biz relayed by DigiTimes.

The catch-up is starting to move share. Lenovo has confirmed that notebooks it sells outside China now carry SSDs from Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC), the first time the Chinese NAND maker has reached export machines, which threatens the NAND dominance of Samsung, SK Hynix and Kioxia. The move lands just as the three incumbents push contract prices up aggressively, opening room below them for a Chinese alternative that is no longer only a low-price play.

The context also reframes Apple's reported approach to CXMT. Bank of America argued the talks are mainly about improving Apple's DRAM bargaining leverage rather than real sourcing, since CXMT's specifications still trail and its LPDDR capacity is limited. Even as a negotiating lever, the fact that a Chinese supplier can be named at all is a change from a year ago.

Linked stocks: 000660 KS, MU US, AAPL US

Sources: 長鑫存儲不再靠低價搶市　DRAM價逼近三星、SK海力士與美光, 記憶體緊缺推波助瀾　聯想外銷NB首度導入長江存儲SSD

Taiwan's passive-component squeeze keeps widening

The AI-driven run on passive components keeps building. After Taiwan's Yageo (2327 TT) and Walsin (2492 TT) locked limit-up on the theme late last month, fresh TrendForce data shows the multilayer ceramic capacitor (MLCC) market tightening further, with book-to-bill at the three Japanese and Korean leaders at post-pandemic highs and still more spillover orders pointing to the Taiwan makers.

Late-June book-to-bill readings ran 1.30 at Murata, 1.31 at Samsung Electro-Mechanics and 1.25 at Taiyo Yuden, lifting the overall MLCC book-to-bill to 1.04 — up from the 1.24 Murata reading that led the group higher a week ago. Murata's 1Q26 orders-to-backlog ratio of 1.27 has already passed the 1.25 peak that marked the start of the severe 2018 shortage. Demand is splitting: weakness in phones and PCs sits against surging pull from AI servers, where Google TPU, AWS Trainium and Meta MTIA custom accelerators are driving high-capacitance, low-voltage, small-size MLCC.

The squeeze is now reaching autos and consumer parts. Apple's supply chain started stockpiling one to two months earlier than usual, automotive ODMs moved buying from July to May, and China's channel raised mainstream consumer X5R prices 15-25% from June. With Japanese and Korean makers focused on high-end AI orders, TrendForce expects Yageo, Walsin and smaller Chinese suppliers to pick up the spillover consumer X5R business in 3Q26, and sees 4Q26 as the point when the high-end market could tip into outright shortage.

Linked stocks: 2327 TT, 2492 TT, 6981 JT

Sources: AI 高階 MLCC 激勵日韓大廠訂單出貨比創疫情後新高 下半年缺貨風險升, 高階MLCC需求快速升溫 國巨、華新科 有望拿外溢訂單

先聲 First Word — Exclusives from Chinese-Language Sources

GUC's June revenue doubles on full ASIC order book

Global Unichip (3443 TT), TSMC's ASIC design-service affiliate, posted record June revenue of NT$4.93bn, up 103.7% YoY, taking 1H26 revenue to NT$25.3bn, up 93% YoY, with 2Q26 revenue of NT$13.9bn beating estimates. Management expects ASIC shipment growth to outpace GPUs and points to cloud, optical and automotive projects ramping, a direct read on how fast custom silicon is scaling underneath the GPU headlines. (6 Jul 2026) Source: 年增 103.72%！創意 6 月營收 49.29 億元，看好 ASIC 後市

ChipMOS hits a record on silicon-photonics hopes

Back-end test house ChipMOS (8150 TT) closed limit-up at a record NT$115.5 on 6 July, on more than 50,000 lots of volume, as money rotated back into memory test and new silicon-photonics orders drew buyers. The company raised memory and display-driver test prices in 2Q26, and its 1Q26 net profit rose 176.3% YoY to NT$505m, showing how the memory upcycle is flowing into the assembly-and-test layer. (6 Jul 2026) Source: 熱門股》買盤湧入 南茂漲停創新高

Simplo limits up on Samsung SDI battery-cell supply

Battery-pack maker Simplo (6121 TT) closed limit-up at NT$467.5, up 10%, after Korean media reported Samsung SDI is supplying it with hundreds of millions of cells for AI data-center backup battery units (BBUs) that Simplo assembles for Amazon and Meta. It signals how acute the BBU cell shortage has become, and drove the whole Taiwan battery-module group, including AES-KY and Chang Yuan, limit-up alongside it. (6 Jul 2026) Source: 韓媒報導 新普傳下單三星 SDI 電池芯 已採購數億顆電力模組原料