Zero One Investment Research Daily Intelligence Brief, September 23, 2026

Microsoft lifts Azure prices at renewal; power chip makers raise theirs in October

Top Market Signals

Microsoft lifts Azure prices at contract renewal

Microsoft (MSFT US) told BNP Paribas that Azure prices are rising [increase size not disclosed], in a note written after a meeting with company executives and carried by MoneyDJ. Existing contracts are not being reopened; the new prices apply when customers renew.

Microsoft told BNP that Azure's recent strength did not come from pricing, and that the main drivers remain better efficiency across its compute fleet and continued capacity additions. BNP's research puts Azure growth at 40% to 45% before the price increases have had any material effect. Microsoft also said it is still looking for more compute, is still catching up with demand, and finds near-term infrastructure built to its specifications hard to secure right away.

Our 21 Sep 2026 Blade carried Microsoft Taiwan general manager Bian Zhixiang saying AI compute demand will exceed supply for the next two to three years, with electricity and physical space as limits alongside chips. A cloud provider raising prices while it is still short of capacity is that shortage reaching the end customer.

The power side is getting harder in the US too. On 21 Sep Texas governor Greg Abbott ordered a pause on environmental permits for data centers until ERCOT, the Texas grid operator, completes an audit. As of August more than 474GW of capacity was waiting to connect to the ERCOT grid, over five times the state's historical peak demand, and about 90% of it came from data center projects.

Because the increases apply only at renewal, they reach Azure revenue as contracts roll over, building across several quarters rather than showing up in one.

Linked stocks: MSFT US, AMZN US, GOOGL US

Power chip price increases spread to onsemi

onsemi (ON US) has told customers it will raise prices on some products from 10 October, following earlier reported increases at Texas Instruments (TXN US) and Renesas (6723 JT), according to Commercial Times. Taiwan power component makers including PANJIT (2481 TT) and Taiwan Semiconductor (5425 TT) were earlier reported to be planning increases of about 10% to 15% on some non-contract products from October.

Two causes are cited. Eight-inch wafer capacity is being reallocated, and AI servers are lifting demand for power management chips, MOSFETs (the transistors that switch power on a board) and protection components, which tightens supply on mature processes. As AI rack power climbs from around 100 kilowatts toward several hundred kilowatts and even megawatt class and power delivery moves from 48V to 800V high-voltage DC, the high-voltage end needs silicon carbide parts while the conversion stages use more gallium nitride and high-efficiency MOSFETs.

PANJIT put AI at about 11% of revenue in 1H26 and rising, with power MOSFETs, small-signal parts and surge-protection diodes ramping in 2H26 and a new customer project joining in 4Q26. Power MOSFETs carry the higher selling prices, so they are its main source of AI revenue.

The companies say actual increases vary by product, customer and contract, so contract pricing into 2027 is what would show whether the October lists hold.

Linked stocks: ON US, TXN US, 2481 TT, 5425 TT

Episil can meet under half of photonics demand

Episil-Precision (3016 TT), a Taiwan epitaxial wafer maker, said demand for its germanium-on-silicon epitaxy, used in the photodiodes that receive the light signal in optical links, is visible out to 2028. Capacity is planned to reach 3.5 to 4 times its current level next year and will still meet less than half of what customers want, the company said at its investor conference on 22 September.

Management said the business has no order problem, only a capacity problem. Specialized epitaxy tools are in short supply with long lead times, so expansion cannot catch up, and the company will weigh a new round of investment against customer plans. The product entered mass production in 2Q26, carries a gross margin above ordinary epitaxy products and should reach 3% to 5% of revenue by year end. Price adjustments started in 3Q26, negotiated by product and customer rather than as one uniform increase.

The power side of the business is also full. Six-inch gallium nitride capacity has grown for four straight quarters and is fully loaded, eight-inch silicon epitaxy is full with new capacity arriving next year, and the company expects AI-related revenue to rise from about 17% of sales in 2025 to more than 30% this year and above 40% in 2027.

Our 17 Sep 2026 Blade carried FIT Hon Teng chairman Lu Sung-ching naming material supply as the biggest limit on optical communications, with wafers on his list of short inputs. Episil's numbers put a size on one of those wafer-level inputs: even at four times today's capacity, customers get less than half of what they asked for.

Linked stocks: 3016 TT, 2481 TT, ON US

CPU projects drive Global Unichip's doubling

Global Unichip (3443 TT), a custom chip design services company, reported August revenue of NT$5.84bn, up 111.02% YoY, taking eight-month revenue to NT$36.954bn, up 103.84%. The growth is coming from turnkey work, where the company manages wafer supply and back-end production for a customer's chip, and the largest turnkey additions this year are CPUs and BMCs, the management chips on server motherboards.

At its 8 September investor conference the company guided 3Q26 revenue up high single to low double digits QoQ. July and August together already reached NT$11.609bn, which Uanalyze says is running clearly ahead of that guidance; Uanalyze also expects at least one or two more monthly revenue records between October and December. For 2026 the company expects design fee revenue to grow 15% to 19% and turnkey revenue to more than double.

The cost of that mix is margin. Turnkey revenue is large and lower margin, so the company expects 3Q26 gross margin to fall again from 2Q26, with the full year held above 20%; it expects operating expenses to stay roughly flat, keeping full-year operating margin in double digits.

Our 19 Sep 2026 Blade carried Intel chief executive Lip-Bu Tan saying Intel can meet only about 50% of customer CPU demand. CPUs are now also the largest source of new turnkey work at Global Unichip. If gross margin falls faster than turnkey revenue grows, operating profit stops tracking revenue, and the 3Q26 margin print is where that would show.

Linked stocks: 3443 TT, 2330 TT, 5274 TT

Tripod gains the server boards bigger makers left

Tripod Technology (3044 TT), a Taiwan printed circuit board maker, reported August revenue of NT$10.224bn, up 65.48% YoY and its first month above NT$10bn. The orders come largely from general-purpose server boards that bigger board makers left behind when they moved capacity to AI accelerator boards, according to Uanalyze analysis carried by cnYES.

Server and networking reached 42.2% of revenue in 2Q26, while automotive fell to 15.8% from 27% in 2023, when it was the largest application. Tripod is not a main supplier of the high-end GPU and ASIC boards. Its growth comes from general server boards, where 2026 shipments are estimated to rise about 25% as agent-style AI leans more on CPUs, and from memory, where it holds about half the global market for memory module boards. The two together make up 65.3% of revenue.

Gross margin passed 30% for the first time in 2Q26, on full pass-through of laminate costs, better mix and scale, and Tripod has raised prices by 5% to 30% during 2026. Each general server board is also worth more: PCIe is moving from Gen5 to Gen6 and layer counts are rising from an 18 to 22 count to a 20 to 24 count.

The margin depends on materials. Laminate, low-dielectric glass cloth and T-glass are all in tight supply, and if their prices rise faster than Tripod can pass them on, the 30% gross margin gives some back.

Linked stocks: 3044 TT, 2383 TT, 3037 TT

Huawei cannot supply China, so no global rollout

Huawei rotating chairman Eric Xu said the company's AI chip output cannot yet meet China's own demand, so it has no plan for a full international rollout, even as it pulls its next Ascend chips forward by several quarters. Huawei will still supply limited volumes to some overseas regions with strong demand.

The Ascend 960DT for training arrives in 1Q27 and the 960PR for inference in 3Q27, followed by the 970 in 2028 and the 980 in 2029. The 960DT targets 2 PFLOPS of FP8 training performance with 288GB of high bandwidth memory. Huawei is making up for single-chip performance with scale: its Atlas 960E SuperPoD links up to 4,096 chips, and its largest cluster links up to 15,488.

Output is the limit. Industry analysis cited by TechNews points to SMIC's (981 HK) difficulty expanding 7nm and 6nm capacity and to tight high bandwidth memory supply. Alibaba (9988 HK) separately launched its Zhenwu V900 AI chip, three times the performance of the prior M890, built for clusters of up to 500,000 chips, and set a target of more than 20GW of Alibaba Cloud data center capacity by 2032.

Huawei's overseas volumes stay limited until SMIC adds 7nm and 6nm capacity or high bandwidth memory supply loosens.

Linked stocks: 981 HK, 9988 HK, NVDA US

先聲 First Word: Exclusives from Chinese-Language Sources

Inventec adds AI server power and cooling in Thailand

Inventec (2356 TT) will spend THB2.438bn, about NT$2.33bn, on equipment and facility work to add power and liquid cooling at its Thailand plant, with new capacity from the end of 1Q27, while warning that memory, SSD, PCB and MLCC shortages still leave kits incomplete. It expects server revenue to grow 30% this year and pass half of sales, so component supply is now what paces its server growth. (22 Sep 2026) Source: 英業達斥資23.3億元擴大泰國廠投資 新產能明年第一季底啟用

AMD books Powertech's Taiwan panel packaging line

Powertech Technology (6239 TT) expects quarter-on-quarter growth through 2026 to record revenue on higher memory packaging utilization and increased selling prices, with high-end TSV DDR5 volumes rising from 4Q26, and AMD has booked the capacity of its Taiwan fan-out panel level packaging line. Panel level packaging at a Taiwan packaging house now has a named leading chip customer, with revenue contribution starting in 2027. (22 Sep 2026) Source: 力成2026年逐季成長挑戰新高　FOPLP新品動能再挹注2027年

Shunsin's co-packaged optics are still in small volume

Shunsin Technology (6451 TT) has shipped 51.2T co-packaged optics in small volume to North American and Chinese customers since November 2025 and began small-volume 102.4T deliveries in July 2026, yet eight-month revenue of NT$5.037bn is up only 1.77% YoY. Yield and customer qualification, not capacity, are holding back volume, and the company plans NT$4bn to NT$5bn of capex over 2026 and 2027 on automated optics lines. (22 Sep 2026) Source: 訊芯-KY(6451)量產即放量？51.2T CPO 點火卻未爆發的背後真相！