Zero One Investment Research Daily Intelligence Brief, October 27, 2026

Broadcom arranges US$63bn for its chips at Anthropic as suppliers buy into Meta

Top Market Signals

Broadcom arranges US$63bn for its chips at Anthropic

Broadcom (AVGO US) has arranged a US$63bn deal with Bank of America, Blackstone, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley to finance the Broadcom chips Anthropic uses, Bloomberg reported. The lenders described it as a financing structure to enable AI compute capacity in partnership with Broadcom.

The deal landed the same day Anthropic filed for its IPO under the ticker ANT. Revenue was US$16.3bn in 1H26, up from US$1.2bn a year earlier, and the operating loss narrowed to US$693m from US$2.1bn, TechCrunch reported. About 250 customers spend more than US$10m a year with Anthropic, and 1,900 spend more than US$1m.

The filing also names the supply risks behind that compute. Anthropic lists disruptions to TSMC (2330 TT) operations as a risk, Bloomberg reported, and says competition for power is intense, with some planned data centers relying on gas turbines on site, The Verge reported. Anthropic also warned it may need to seek more financing sooner than expected, Bloomberg reported.

Our 20 Oct Blade covered Anthropic's talks with Nscale on a second compute contract worth up to US$45bn. Lenders now fund chips against revenue that grew 13.6 times in a year. If that growth slows before the debt is repaid, the warning about needing more financing sooner is what would matter.

Linked stocks: AVGO US, 2330 TT, AMZN US

NVIDIA, AMD and Broadcom buy into Meta's US$95bn raise

Meta Platforms (META US) is seeking up to US$95bn of new equity to pay for AI infrastructure, and NVIDIA (NVDA US), AMD (AMD US) and Broadcom (AVGO US) will together buy up to US$5bn of its common stock, Economic Daily News reported. The three chipmakers are buying shares in one of their largest customers.

Meta will first issue about US$35bn of common and preferred stock, including US$22.5bn of Class A common shares. It then plans to sell up to about US$60bn more through an at-the-market program of new non-voting Class C shares, which start trading in January. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs lead the offering.

Our 23 Oct Blade reported that Meta's free cash flow turned negative US$2.12bn in 3Q26, its first negative quarter since listing, while it kept capex guidance at US$135-145bn. The raise covers that gap with shareholders' money instead of debt. Analysts cited by the paper named server makers Quanta (2382 TT) and Wiwynn (6669 TT) and cooling supplier AVC (3324 TT) as beneficiaries of the spending.

The US$60bn at-the-market program is the real test of how far shareholders will fund capex that Meta's cash flow no longer covers.

Linked stocks: META US, NVDA US, 2382 TT, 6669 TT

TSMC weighs raising CoWoS prices by up to 20%

TSMC (2330 TT) is preparing another price increase for CoWoS, the advanced packaging that places AI chips and high-bandwidth memory side by side, of up to 20%, Commercial Times reported, citing supply chain sources. Foundries and packaging houses are weighing increases of 10-20% as demand spreads from AI GPUs to server CPUs and custom AI chips.

Equipment makers told the paper TSMC did not renegotiate its annual tool prices this year, buying at the same price without asking for added features. A new packaging fab takes about three years from ground-breaking to running its slowest steps at full load.

Analysts estimate TSMC's CoWoS capacity will pass 130,000 wafers a month in 2026, with 200,000 targeted for 2027. Our 21 Oct First Word reported TSMC is handing about a fifth of one CoWoS step to Xintec (3374 TT) because its own lines are full. If the price increase holds while capacity rises by more than half next year, demand is still growing faster than the build.

Linked stocks: 2330 TT, 3711 TT, 3374 TT, NVDA US

NVIDIA moves optics onto the silicon under its chips; UMC doubles output

NVIDIA (NVDA US) is developing optics on interposer (OOI), a design that moves the optical engines onto the interposer, the silicon layer the GPU and its memory already sit on, using a larger interposer in place of today's organic package substrate, Economic Daily News reported. NVIDIA has prototypes and disclosed the design at SEMICON West in San Francisco.

Signals between the chip and the optical engine would no longer travel through the organic substrate. The shorter, finer wiring cuts power and fits more bandwidth into the same area, the same approach GPUs already use to connect to their high-bandwidth memory.

UMC (2303 TT) is doubling interposer capacity to 6,000 wafers a month from 3,000, and delivered its first 12-inch photonic chips with SILITH in July. Powerchip (6770 TT) plans to add interposer output at its P3 fab. TSMC (2330 TT) recently signed a US$2bn agreement with GlobalFoundries (GFS US) for silicon interposer supply.

Our 26 Oct Blade covered a socket standard that puts the optical module on the package substrate, and our 22 Oct Blade covered NVIDIA's 15x optical engine target at SPIL. OOI moves the engine off the substrate entirely. A product date from NVIDIA would show which of the two designs optical suppliers should build for.

Linked stocks: NVDA US, 2303 TT, 6770 TT, GFS US

Microsoft offers buyouts to a quarter of its staff

Microsoft (MSFT US) is offering voluntary buyouts to about 60,000 employees in the US, UK, Canada and India, out of roughly 223,000, The Verge reported. Staff up to vice president level are eligible, must decide by December, and would leave on 31 Dec, Central News Agency reported.

The offer is far wider than the voluntary retirement plan Microsoft opened in April, which about 9,000 long-serving US employees could take. Teams including Copilot, CoreAI, Windows and Devices, Xbox, finance and HR are eligible, while marketing, commercial sales and security are not. Microsoft laid off 4,800 people a few months ago.

Microsoft is cutting costs while its data center spending rises. Alphabet (GOOGL US) and Amazon (AMZN US) both reported negative free cash flow in 2Q, while Microsoft stayed positive, CNA reported. Meta is raising equity for the same reason. Microsoft's results on 28 Oct will show whether capex guidance rises alongside the buyouts.

Linked stocks: MSFT US, GOOGL US, AMZN US

Applied Materials lifts its BESI stake to about 20%

Applied Materials (AMAT US) raised its stake in BE Semiconductor Industries (BESI NA), the Dutch maker of hybrid bonding tools, to about 20% and pledged to step up their work together, Bloomberg reported. Hybrid bonding joins stacked chips copper to copper without solder bumps, which allows denser memory and logic stacks.

Applied first bought 9% of BESI in April 2025, becoming its largest shareholder, and said at the time it had no plans to buy more shares or seek a board seat, Reuters reported then. The two companies have worked together on die-level hybrid bonding tools since 2020.

Chipmakers are moving toward the technique. Micron (MU US) plans to use wafer bonding for future DRAM, Tom's Hardware reported, and UMC (2303 TT) has expanded a long-term hybrid bonding partnership with Adeia this year. Applied ruled out board representation at 9%; a bid for one now would mark how far it means to take the tie-up.

Linked stocks: AMAT US, BESI NA, MU US, 2303 TT

先聲 First Word: Exclusives from Chinese-Language Sources

Memory costs push the next PlayStation and Xbox past US$1,000

Memory and SSD alone now cost more than US$680 per PlayStation 6, industry estimates cited by Economic Daily News show, so the console could top US$1,000 and may slip from late 2027 to 2028. Microsoft's next Xbox could cost US$1,200-1,800. Assemblers Foxconn (2317 TT) and Pegatron (4938 TT) face weaker console demand, offset by AI servers. (27 Oct 2026) Source: Sony、微軟新遊戲機傳漲價 逆風吹到這幾檔

Micron Taiwan raises line worker pay nearly 2.7 times

More than 80% of Micron's (MU US) Taiwan staff get raises of nearly 2.7 times under a deal with its Taichung union, Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs said, lifting line worker pay to over NT$2m a year from NT$630,000 and junior engineers to NT$4m from NT$1.45m. Memory makers now pay up to keep fab staff. (26 Oct 2026) Source: 美光作業員年薪上看200萬！網羨慕喊加入美光、人生發光

Taiwan network makers line up behind Accton on 1.6T switches

Accton (2345 TT) has started shipping 1.6T Ethernet switches for AI data centers, Economic Daily News reported, and its monthly revenue has stayed above NT$40bn for two months. WNC (6285 TT) expects volume shipments in 2027, Alpha Networks (3380 TT) has shipped small volumes of liquid-cooled units, and CyberTAN (3062 TT) is in customer qualification. (26 Oct 2026) Source: 網通廠搶 AIDC 升級潮 啟碁、明泰、建漢年底搭上商機