Zero One Investment Research Daily Intelligence Brief, September 11, 2026

Murata cuts commodity capacitors to feed AI; Taiwan's August revenue tops NT$6tn

Top Market Signals

Murata stops taking general purpose capacitor orders

Murata Manufacturing (6981 JT), the largest passive component maker, has told customers it will stop accepting new orders for the general purpose parts used in ordinary IT equipment, and has issued end of life notices on its oldest part numbers. Taiwanese suppliers are the direct beneficiaries.

Free China Times reported that the letters went out in early September and cover both general purpose parts and specific numbers within Murata's automotive grade series. Deliveries on orders already booked have been pushed out to January. Lead times on Murata's high value parts have stretched from 8 to 10 weeks to more than 20 to 26 weeks, so the company is routing limited output to AI server and high end automotive products where the margin is better.

That leaves a supply gap in a category nobody was expecting to be short. Local coverage names Yageo (2327 TT), Walsin Technology (2492 TT) and Holy Stone Enterprise (3026 TT) as the most likely recipients of the transferred orders. Both of the larger two have been running tight for a while.

Yageo's president said at the late July earnings call that the book to bill ratio reached 2.2 at the end of June and that utilization on standard and high end niche lines would rise from 80 to 85% in 2Q26 to above 90% in 3Q26. Walsin Technology's president said in early August that its own book to bill had gone from 1.4 to 1.8, and that the company is spending NT$3bn to NT$4bn to add about 10% of capacity in each of this year and next.

The AI buildout has now reached the cheapest layer of the bill of materials. A capacitor that sells for fractions of a cent is not a component anyone models, but a device cannot ship without it, and the industry's largest supplier has just decided it would rather not make the low end version.

Linked stocks: 2327 TT, 2492 TT, 3026 TT, 6981 JT

TSMC's third quarter is set before September

TSMC (2330 TT) reported August revenue of NT$514.81bn, up 10.1% MoM and 53.3% YoY, the first month above NT$500bn and the fourth consecutive monthly record. The number that matters more is the cumulative one: July and August together came to NT$982.39bn, which already covers more than 67% of the company's 3Q26 dollar revenue guidance.

TSMC guided 3Q26 revenue to US$44.6bn to US$45.8bn at an assumed NT$32 to the dollar, with gross margin of 65 to 67% and operating margin of 56 to 58%. On that basis September only needs to land between roughly NT$444.8bn and NT$483.2bn to reach the top of the range, which would be a decline of 6.1% to 13.6% from August and still the strongest September the company has recorded. The quarter is effectively decided.

The eight month total of NT$3,386.87bn is up 39.3% YoY and equal to about 89% of last year's full year revenue of NT$3.8tn. Demand is coming from two directions at once. Apple's iPhone 18 Pro line and its first foldable, the iPhone Duo, all carry the A20 Pro built on TSMC's 2nm process, making them the first 2nm phones to ship; separately, AI accelerator output for NVIDIA and Google is running hard.

Chief financial officer Wendell Huang told the Goldman Sachs technology conference that 3nm and advanced packaging capacity both remain very tight, and that agent based AI workloads are starting to extend compute demand back toward CPUs.

TSMC has raised its 2026 outlook twice, most recently to dollar revenue growth slightly above 40%, and lifted 2026 capital spending by about 10.7% at the midpoint at its July call.

Linked stocks: 2330 TT, AAPL US, NVDA US

Taiwan's record month runs widest outside chips

Taiwan's listed companies reported combined August revenue of NT$6.07tn, the first month above NT$6tn. Counting estimates for 16 insurers and financial holding companies that had not yet filed, Commercial Times puts the total at NT$6.21tn, up 4.45% MoM and 49.44% YoY. The eight month figure is NT$41.9tn on the reported sample, up 36.4% YoY.

The three fastest growing sectors in August were computers and peripherals at 90.59% YoY, electronics distribution at 88.92% and general electronics at 65.71%. Semiconductors did not make that list. Assembly and distribution are growing faster than chipmaking.

Breadth improved too. 162 companies set record August revenue, against 80 in August 2025. The five largest by monthly revenue were Foxconn at NT$921.76bn, TSMC at NT$514.81bn, Wistron at NT$460.06bn, Quanta at NT$423.97bn and WT Microelectronics at NT$198.38bn. Three of those five are server assemblers and one is a distributor.

Note the scope: this is Taiwan listed companies only, not a global aggregate.

Linked stocks: 2317 TT, 3231 TT, 2382 TT, 3036 TT

Alchip's 3nm ramp cuts its gross margin

Alchip Technologies (3661 TT) reported August revenue of NT$8.78bn, up 18% MoM and 273% YoY, a second consecutive monthly record. The same ramp that produced the record is compressing the margin, and management has guided to how far.

Gross margin was around 50% in 1Q26 and fell to the low 30s in 2Q26. The company expects the low to mid 20s in both 3Q26 and 4Q26, and a full year figure of 21 to 26%. The cause is mix rather than pricing. Alchip's 3nm AI accelerator program for a North American cloud provider entered mass production recently and ramps through this quarter, so production revenue, which carries the wafer cost, is displacing the design service work that carried the high margin.

This is the normal shape of a custom chip business as a program moves from tape out to volume, and it is worth holding in mind for any design services name approaching the same transition.

Chairman and chief executive Shen Xianglin said demand on that program is running better than expected. The company is not changing this year's contribution forecast but may raise next year's shipment and revenue estimates. Two integrated CPU programs are already in production with demand up notably in recent months, and advanced driver assistance chips for a Chinese automaker are now the second largest revenue line, with orders secured for the following two generations. Shen expects a tape out before year end and says the associated momentum should run at least three to four years.

Linked stocks: 3661 TT, 2330 TT, 2454 TT

Google claims one year payback on its chips

Thomas Kurian, who runs Google Cloud, told a Goldman Sachs conference on 8 September that Alphabet's (GOOGL US) accelerator business is more than twice the size of the second largest hyperscaler's. He also put numbers on the returns: payback on Google AI servers overall runs under two years, and on servers using Google's own tensor processing units, the custom accelerators it designs in house, it is roughly half that, so under one year.

Kurian described three ways Google monetizes the chips. Customers can rent capacity through Google Cloud; they can buy the systems outright and deploy them in their own data centers, with Anthropic named as one such customer; or they can buy through the cloud computing joint venture with Blackstone. Selling the hardware to customers pushes the power and floor space spending onto the buyer's balance sheet rather than Google's, which supports free cash flow while the compute still runs on Google silicon. The infrastructure business is built largely on five year commitment contracts.

On performance, Kurian claimed roughly 2.7 times the price to performance of competing parts in training, 80% better in inference and 30% better on CPU workloads. These are the vendor's own figures and no independent benchmark was cited.

Marvell Technology (MRVL US), which is developing custom chips with Google and has taken a Google investment, rose 4.26% to US$235.01 on 9 September, the best performance among the 30 members of the Philadelphia semiconductor index that session.

Linked stocks: GOOGL US, MRVL US, NVDA US

Huawei raises Ascend prices as memory stays scarce

Huawei has raised the quoted price of its Ascend 950DT accelerator to more than RMB250,000, about US$37,255, an increase of 20 to 50% over two months depending on contract terms, according to a Reuters report citing unnamed sources. The 950DT is due to launch in 4Q26. Older parts moved too: the Ascend 950PR has gone from about RMB60,000 early this year to more than RMB80,000, and the 910C from about RMB90,000 to more than RMB110,000.

The driver is high bandwidth memory, or HBM, the stacked memory that sits alongside an AI processor. Washington tightened export controls on advanced HBM to China in December 2024, and Chinese chipmakers have since leaned on gray market supply at prices that are often several times what buyers elsewhere pay. Memory is a large share of the bill of materials for an AI accelerator, so the cost passes straight through to the quoted price. Cambricon's next generation part, provisionally called the 690, is quoted 20 to 30% higher than two months ago, and smaller vendors MetaX and Iluvatar CoreX have raised prices similarly.

Demand is absorbing it. Biren Technology reported first half 2026 revenue of US$183.9m against about US$8.67m a year earlier, a rise of 1,998%, with gross margin of 42.7% and a net loss of US$56.2m as it keeps funding new accelerators, rack scale optical interconnect and software. For context, Biren's full year 2025 revenue was US$154.17m on a share of China's accelerator market below 3%, according to TrendForce, and NVIDIA charged US$12,000 to US$15,000 for an H20 when it was still allowed to sell into the country.

Linked stocks: NVDA US, 000660 KS, MU US

Wiwynn starts US production and lifts capex

Wiwynn (6669 TT) chief financial officer Chen Chang Wei said the company's US plant has entered mass production and should reach about 20% of group capacity next year. Second half capital spending is budgeted at NT$29.7bn, roughly US$942m, against NT$12.1bn in the first half, and management expects to raise it again in 2027.

The site mix is currently Mexico at 70%, Malaysia at 20% and Europe at 10%. Mexico stays the largest plant, with the US site running at about a quarter to a fifth of Mexico's scale next year. The US plant starts with air cooled products and expands into liquid cooled machines, so it is taking new processes, robotic arms and liquid cooling infrastructure first and growing the technology base from a small production footprint rather than replicating an existing line.

The capital spending goes beyond the US. Wiwynn is funding a Taiwan headquarters building, a Tainan plant, a new Malaysian plant, and liquid cooling and power infrastructure across sites. August revenue was NT$144.31bn, up 22.62% MoM and 50.36% YoY and a monthly record, taking the eight month total to NT$816.66bn, up 42.8%.

On the product mix, general purpose strength in the first half keeps AI and custom machines below half of full year shipments. 2Q26 gross margin was 9.26%, helped by engineering revenue, and management expects little margin change from the mix shift itself. Component supply is tight, with CPUs the tightest, but not in genuine shortage.

Linked stocks: 6669 TT, 3231 TT, NVDA US

先聲 First Word: Exclusives from Chinese-Language Sources

ASUS breaks a 20 year fundraising drought to prepay for parts

ASUSTeK Computer (2357 TT) priced a US$1.5bn five year convertible bond at NT$1,384.60, a 40% premium to the 10 September close, at a 0% coupon and a 1.7% yield to maturity. The company had not raised outside capital since 2006, and says it needs the cash because scarce AI server components now have to be paid for when the order is placed. (11 Sep 2026) Source: 華碩宣布20億美元 ECB 完成訂價 轉換價1,384.6元溢價4成

Visual Photonics lifts optical past 46% of revenue

Visual Photonics Epitaxy (2455 TT) reported August revenue of NT$471m, up 11.56% MoM and 71.16% YoY and a second consecutive record, with optoelectronics rising to 46.1% of revenue from 40.1% in July. Indium phosphide epitaxy sits at the front of the 800G and 1.6T optical module chain, and the company added about NT$650m for two more deposition tools beyond its original plan. (10 Sep 2026) Source: 蔡慶龍｜高速光通訊需求升溫 磷化銦磊晶片加速放量

Powerchip's August revenue reaches a 50 month high

Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing (6770 TT) reported August revenue of NT$7.01bn, its strongest August on record and the highest month since June 2022, with the eight month total at NT$44.54bn, up 47.08% YoY. Powerchip has been carrying the heaviest fixed cost load from low utilization among Taiwan's mature node foundries, and its sale of the Tongluo fab to Micron this year is expected to bring in more than NT$50bn. (11 Sep 2026) Source: 力積電8月合併營收攀逾四年高點