Zero One Investment Research Weekly Intelligence Brief, Week ending October 3, 2026

Top Market Signals

Micron's customers post US$32bn of deposits and commit to 75% of fiscal 2027 output

Micron (MU US) reported fiscal 4Q26 revenue of US$54.2bn, up 379% YoY and 31% QoQ, and said customers have made US$32bn of financial commitments to secure memory supply, the vast majority of it cash deposits. More than 75% of fiscal 2027 output is already committed.

The 2027 price is settled too. Micron Taiwan chairman Lu Donghui said on 1 October that long-term contracts cover most of Micron's 2027 HBM (high-bandwidth memory, the stacked DRAM that sits beside AI processors) capacity at prices above 2026's, with some running to 2030 or 2031. Management guided fiscal 1Q27 revenue to US$61.5bn and said supply and demand will be tighter in fiscal 2027 and 2028 than this year, with no line of sight to when they return to balance.

A deposit is a customer paying now for memory it cannot have yet, so the US$32bn measures how far buyers will go to avoid being short next year. The one soft number was gross margin, guided to about 86% from 86.8% on roughly US$1bn of higher costs, which management called the low point for the fiscal year.

The deposits are being spent in Taiwan. Micron's second HBM packaging fab in Taichung opens in mid-October, Powerchip (6770 TT) will run HBM back-end wafer processing for Micron at about 20,000 wafers a month by 4Q27, and Micron's cumulative investment in Taiwan passed NT$1.6tn by June. Capex of about US$25bn in the first half of fiscal 2027 is close to the US$27.4bn Micron spent in all of fiscal 2026.

Linked stocks: MU US, 6770 TT, 2408 TT, 000660 KS

Broadcom lends Anthropic up to US$42bn against US$518bn of compute obligations

Broadcom (AVGO US) has agreed to provide Anthropic with up to US$42bn of financing for AI infrastructure, according to Anthropic's IPO filing as reported by Reuters. The same filing lists US$518bn of cloud, computing and infrastructure obligations over the coming years, against 2025 revenue of about US$4.6bn and an operating loss of more than US$8bn.

Broadcom now supplies Anthropic's chips, leases it equipment and lends it money, and the filing expects Anthropic to be the largest customer of Broadcom's chip design business next year. Up to US$42bn is roughly a third of the US$115bn of AI chip revenue Broadcom expects in fiscal 2027. Anthropic's own filing says a supplier that is also a lender could limit how it sources compute.

NVIDIA (NVDA US) is extending credit by a different route. It put Anthropic's cloud contracts at 2.6GW and more than US$180bn through 2028, mostly with providers that run NVIDIA chips, and it is in early talks with insurers to cover part of the loss if a neocloud (a smaller company that rents out GPU capacity) defaults and its pledged chips resell for less than the loan.

The obligations run for years; much of the revenue does not. Nearly a quarter of Anthropic's 2025 revenue came from two customers, and many of its largest customers have no long-term contracts. Rothschild & Co's Robert Leitao described the arrangement as a concentrated bet that the two companies can generate enough revenue to support the whole financing structure. The listing, which Reuters reports could come after the US midterm elections in November, would make public investors the next funders of these commitments.

Linked stocks: AVGO US, NVDA US, AMZN US

Amazon buys a NT$1.59bn Gold Circuit stake as substrate makers buy plants

Amazon (AMZN US) will buy NT$1.59bn of new shares in Gold Circuit Electronics (2368 TT), a Taiwan maker of circuit boards for AI servers and network switches, at NT$856 a share, 23.6% below the prior close, with a three-year lock-up. DigiTimes called a direct investment by a large cloud provider in a Taiwan board maker rare. Gold Circuit's board approved NT$7.9bn for a new plant the same day.

Customer money is reaching the substrate makers too. Samsung Electro-Mechanics (009150 KS) will spend KRW6.78tn (about US$5bn) in Korea and Vietnam on ABF substrates, the resin-film boards that high-end chip packages sit on, with part of the funding reportedly advance payments from NVIDIA (NVDA US) and other technology companies. Unimicron (3037 TT) paid NT$10.09bn at auction for Bridgestone's tire plant in Hukou to refit for high-end substrates, and Kinsus (3189 TT) raised its capex budget for the second time this year.

A standing plant and a customer's cash both shorten the time to new capacity. JLL's Taiwan head said sites with the right power, zoning and clean soil are scarce, and the Unimicron purchase took Taiwan's 3Q26 commercial property transactions past NT$100bn, a quarterly record. Gold Circuit has not said whether Amazon's stake comes with capacity commitments at the new plant. The board and substrate makers were last week's biggest gainers in our coverage (see Top Movers).

Linked stocks: 2368 TT, AMZN US, 3037 TT, 009150 KS

HBM takes nearly 30% of 2027 DRAM wafers as Samsung pulls P5 tools forward

Samsung Electronics (005930 KS) expects HBM to take nearly 30% of the memory industry's DRAM wafer capacity in 2027, up from about 20% now, Reuters and DigiTimes reported. Samsung has also asked equipment suppliers to move tools into phase 1 of its P5 fab at Pyeongtaek in May and June 2027, two months earlier than planned, the second time it has brought that site forward.

A ten-point shift toward HBM comes out of the conventional DRAM used in servers, PCs and phones unless new fabs arrive first, and most do not arrive soon. Micron's (MU US) Boise fab produces its first DRAM wafers in mid-2027, Nanya Technology (2408 TT) starts wafer input at Fab 5A in 2H27, and industry executives told Commercial Times that most supply from large new fabs arrives from 2028. In the meantime brokers put Samsung's 3Q26 DRAM operating margin above 80%, with contract prices up 13% to 18% QoQ.

Korea's trade data showed the same tightness at national scale: September chip exports rose 263% YoY to US$60.3bn, half of the country's record US$120.9bn total. The ministry did not split price from volume. Samsung's and SK Hynix's (000660 KS) 3Q26 results will, and Samsung's results call in October is its next chance to confirm the P5 timing.

Linked stocks: 005930 KS, 000660 KS, 2408 TT, MU US

Phone makers cut memory demand 30% to 40% as Samsung raises Galaxy prices 13%

Phison (8299 TT) chief executive Pua Khein-Seng said on 30 September that smartphone customers have already cut their memory demand by 30% to 40% and may cut 2027 further, and that some PC makers expect 2027 shipments to fall 25%. The next day Samsung raised Taiwan prices across its Galaxy S26 range because of memory costs: the top S26 Ultra rose 13% to NT$67,900, and the mid-range Galaxy A57 is up 20% in two months.

Smaller memory orders and higher shelf prices are the two responses to the same cost, and both cut unit volume. DigiTimes expects Samsung's mobile unit to post another operating loss of more than KRW1tn in 3Q26, and reports that the chips in a TV now cost more than its panel for the first time.

Acer's (2353 TT) chief executive argued the previous week that only high-end parts are short and that PC prices fall after 1H27; Pua answered that the whole industry is affected and the imbalance could last years. The two readings would converge if device makers' cuts free enough memory for AI buyers. Samsung Taiwan describes its local phone market as falling volume with rising prices, so fourth-quarter unit sales are the next place the cost shows up.

Linked stocks: 8299 TT, 005930 KS, 2353 TT, MU US

Customers add up to 20% to TSMC's 2nm bookings and fill Vanguard's Singapore fab

Apple, NVIDIA, AMD, Qualcomm and MediaTek (2454 TT) have added 10% to 20% to their bookings of TSMC's (2330 TT) 2nm family capacity, Economic Daily News reported, and industry sources now put year-end 2nm capacity at 120,000 wafers a month, inside the 110,000 to 140,000 range the market had expected for 2027. TSMC does not comment on market reports.

At the other end of the node range, Vanguard International (5347 TT) opened VSMC, its 12 inch joint venture fab with NXP in Singapore, with the planned capacity fully booked before mass production starts in 1Q27, and customers are already asking for a second phase at 22nm or 28nm. Chairman Leuh Fang said Vanguard's 8 inch lines are completely full and expects mature-node supply to stay tight for longer than a normal cycle because AI spending is crowding out capacity for other chips.

Samsung's (005930 KS) 2nm yield is reported near 60%, up from the mid-50s, and it targets four times its 2017 foundry customer count by 2029. TSMC is also reported to be weighing a second US campus of six fabs near Dallas; suppliers said they had heard of it from peers but had not been asked to prepare, and the board has not approved it. TSMC's 3Q26 results on 15 October are the first chance for management to address the report, and a higher capital spending plan there would confirm the faster 2nm build.

Linked stocks: 2330 TT, 5347 TT, 005930 KS, 2454 TT

NVIDIA's first AI factory certification lists no Taiwan cooling maker

NVIDIA (NVDA US) published DSX Ready to Qualified, its first certification for the power and cooling equipment around its AI data centers. LG Electronics, LiquidStack and Vertiv (VRT US) passed for coolant distribution units, which pump liquid coolant to the server racks; Taiwan's two largest thermal makers, AVC (3017 TT) and Auras (3324 TT), are not on the list, and the certified names compete with them directly. Taiwan's exposure runs through storage, where Delta Electronics (2308 TT) and Lite-On supply power equipment for Tesla's certified systems.

Linked stocks: NVDA US, 3017 TT, 3324 TT, 2308 TT