Zero One Investment Research Daily Intelligence Brief, November 3, 2026

Marvell signs US$115bn for lasers; Samsung sets a 2030 exit from 8-inch chips

Top Market Signals

Marvell signs for Lumentum, closing in 2028

Marvell Technology (MRVL US) has signed an all-stock deal for Lumentum (LITE US), the maker of the lasers and optical transceivers inside AI data center links, at an implied enterprise value of US$115bn. Lumentum holders get 4.5 Marvell shares each, about US$1,132 a share, a 23.9% premium to the 28 Oct close before talks leaked. The deal is expected to close in 1H28.

Our 30 Oct and 31 Oct Blades reported the talks. What is new is the price and the timing. Marvell is paying entirely in its own stock, so current Marvell holders end up with about 67% of the combined company and Lumentum holders 33%. Commercial Times put the equity value at about US$102.5bn.

Marvell said the deal lifts its addressable market to US$550bn. It pairs Marvell's custom chips, switching and signal processing with Lumentum's lasers, transceivers and optical circuit switching, so the two can design together from the start of a project. It follows Marvell's US$3.5bn purchase of Celestial AI, a photonics designer, in February, and an August supply deal with Google worth up to US$120bn through fiscal 2033, in which Google gained the right to buy US$12.2bn of Marvell stock.

The deal puts Marvell in more direct competition with Broadcom (AVGO US), Google's long-time custom chip partner. Commercial Times named Taiwan suppliers of laser and photodetector material that sell into this chain, including LandMark Optoelectronics (3081 TT) and Visual Photonics Epitaxy (2455 TT). What would change the case is the 1H28 close: shareholder and regulatory approvals are still required.

Linked stocks: MRVL US, LITE US, AVGO US, 3081 TT

Samsung sets an end-2030 exit from 8-inch chipmaking

Samsung Electronics (005930 KS) has told its 8-inch foundry customers it will stop all 8-inch production by the end of 2030, Korea's The Elec reported, as carried by TechNews. Samsung had previously said only that it would shrink these lines. This is the first firm end date.

The lines are three 8-inch fabs, S6, S7 and S8, at Giheung in Korea, running older processes from 65nm to 180nm. They make display driver chips, power management chips, microcontrollers and image sensors. Samsung had already planned to close S7 this year and stopped taking new 8-inch products this year.

Korean chip designers that relied on Samsung now have to find another fab. The other Korean 8-inch foundries, DB HiTek (000990 KS) and SK keyfoundry, have most of their capacity committed to existing customers. Moving the products to 12-inch lines would raise costs and require redesign and requalification. One industry source said Korean capacity is full, the work cannot move to China, and fabs in Taiwan and the US have no spare capacity either.

The exit lands on a mature-node market that was already tight. Our 31 Oct Blade reported UMC (2303 TT) running at 92% utilization in 3Q26 and planning about 10% higher prices for 2027, with Powerchip (6770 TT) setting 10-20% increases. Samsung's four-year notice gives customers time to move, but every 8-inch wafer it stops making has to be made somewhere else.

Linked stocks: 005930 KS, 000990 KS, 2303 TT

Elite earns 77% gross margins on legacy DRAM

Elite Semiconductor (3006 TT), a designer of older DRAM types, reported a 3Q26 gross margin of 77.4% and an operating margin of 59.4%, up 8.7 and 7.9 points QoQ. DDR2 and DDR3, memory generations more than a decade old, make up over half its revenue. Some Taiwan peers have stopped or cut DDR2 and DDR3 to make higher-capacity DDR4, and their customers have moved to Elite.

The shortage has spread from DDR5 and DDR4 down to DDR3, DDR2 and flash, Elite said on its 2 Nov call. It expects 4Q26 shipments to match 3Q26 at higher prices, and it does not expect DDR2 or DDR3 supply to rise much in 2027. Its current supply still does not meet customer demand.

Two other Taiwan memory companies gave dates for the shortage on the same day. Team Group (4967 TT), a memory module maker, expects the worst shortage from 4Q26 to the end of 2Q27, with supply and demand balancing in 2H28 at the earliest. CEO Chen Ching-wen said some server memory spot prices are already 30-50% or more above contract prices. Macronix (2337 TT) chairman Miin Wu expects the shortage to last to 2030, and said equipment lead times are the main limit on how fast capacity can grow.

Wu also said Macronix has signed no long-term supply agreement with any customer, although many have asked. Team Group said whether supply improves after 3Q27 depends on new capacity from Samsung, Micron and SK hynix; capacity arriving earlier would shorten the shortage.

Linked stocks: 3006 TT, 4967 TT, 2337 TT

Memory costs cut phone chip shipments 21%

Global smartphone chip (SoC, the main processor) shipments fell 21% YoY in 3Q26, Counterpoint Research estimated, as rising memory costs, longer upgrade cycles and careful inventory management cut orders. Phone brands reduced entry-level models to protect profit, so the low and mid range took the largest hit.

MediaTek (2454 TT) and UNISOC, with more exposure to cheaper phones, faced the most pressure. Apple and Samsung held up better. Qualcomm (QCOM US) was hit by Samsung splitting the Galaxy S26 between Snapdragon and Exynos chips, and by weak Chinese brands.

Smartphone memory prices rose 5-10% QoQ in 3Q26 and should rise about another 5% in 4Q26, Counterpoint said. Some entry-level phone makers have started using recycled memory to hold down costs. Counterpoint expects SoC shipments to fall 20% in 2026 and another 3-4% in 2027. Flagship chips on the 2nm process of TSMC (2330 TT), launched in September, should support high-end shipments in 4Q26, though shipments may still trail 4Q25.

This is the same mechanism our 30 Oct Blade reported at Intel, which guided 4Q26 below expectations because memory prices were cutting PC demand. The phone data shows the cost of AI's memory demand landing on consumer devices well beyond PCs.

Linked stocks: 2454 TT, QCOM US, 2330 TT

Anthropic nears IPO with US$895bn compute commitments

Anthropic's amended IPO filing shows 3Q26 revenue of US$17bn, up from US$1.4bn a year earlier, a rise of more than 1,100%. Higher spending on short-term computing capacity pushed it back to an operating loss of US$567m in the quarter, Central News Agency reported, citing AFP.

The quarter's net loss was US$23.3bn, mostly from non-cash accounting charges tied to its rising valuation, the filing said. The filing lists about US$895bn of spending commitments, mainly for compute, much of it over the next five years. The version reported in our 28 Oct Blade put compute commitments at about US$807bn, with about half tied to the TPUs (tensor processing units, Google's in-house AI chips) of Alphabet (GOOGL US).

The listing could come as soon as next week. It is the first chance for public investors to price a standalone frontier AI lab, after last week's results from the largest US tech companies raised questions about returns on AI spending. Anthropic devotes more than 90 pages of its roughly 400-page filing to risks.

Revenue grew 12-fold while the operating result stayed near breakeven and the headline net loss was mostly non-cash. For chip and cloud suppliers, a compute commitment rising to about US$895bn describes a customer still short of capacity.

Linked stocks: GOOGL US, AMZN US, NVDA US, AVGO US

Murata commits JPY1tn as capacitor orders lock in

Murata Manufacturing (6981 JT) will invest JPY1tn (about US$6.4bn) over five years to more than double its sales of MLCCs (multilayer ceramic capacitors, the tiny parts that steady power on every circuit board), DigiTimes reported, citing AI data center demand that already exceeds its capacity. Samsung Electro-Mechanics (009150 KS) signed another AI server MLCC contract worth about KRW879.3bn (US$610m) with a large global company, taking its 2026 long-term contracts past KRW5tn.

Our 30 Oct Blade reported Samsung Electro-Mechanics negotiating long-term contracts with 50 customers. Today's contract is one of those talks turning into a signed order.

TDK (6762 JT) shows what the demand does to earnings. In the July to September quarter, revenue rose 26.6% YoY to JPY819.6bn and operating profit 33.6% to JPY121.8bn, both records. Its passive components operating profit rose 164.7% to JPY22.2bn, with capacitor sales up 29.8%. Its hard disk drive heads and suspensions, which go into the high-capacity drives data centers buy, lifted operating profit 319.7% to JPY23.6bn. Its battery and power business grew revenue 27.4% but operating profit fell 1.9%.

TDK raised its fiscal year (to March 2027) revenue target to JPY3.05tn from JPY2.58tn and its operating profit target to JPY365bn from JPY295bn. The businesses tied to data centers are carrying the increase.

Linked stocks: 6981 JT, 009150 KS, 6762 JT

先聲 First Word: Exclusives from Chinese-Language Sources

TSMC's 2nm family capacity to more than double in 2027

TSMC's (2330 TT) N2 family capacity is expected to more than double in 2027 from this year, and 2nm reached 8% of 3Q26 wafer revenue, up 5 points QoQ. Suppliers are expanding with it: Marketech (6196 TT), which builds fab facilities, sees order visibility to at least 2028, and wafer carrier maker Gudeng Precision (3680 TT) is building a plant in Kurume, Japan. (3 Nov 2026) Source: 迎2奈米大年 台鏈加速擴產

Mitsui Kinzoku pulls its chip-substrate copper foil expansion forward a year

Mitsui Mining & Smelting (5706 JT) will reach 5.2m square meters a month of MicroThin, the ultra-thin copper foil used in chip package substrates, in 2H of fiscal 2026 instead of fiscal 2027, citing a surge in AI data center demand. It also raised its fiscal 2027 and 2028 targets to 5.6m and 6.2m square meters a month, less than three months after setting the original plan on 7 Aug. (2 Nov 2026) Source: 需求激增 三井金屬提前擴產 AI DC 用銅箔

TRI's October sales rise 72%

Test Research (3030 TT), a maker of automated inspection equipment for circuit board production, reported October revenue of NT$926m, up 71.93% YoY and 6.73% MoM. Revenue for January to October reached NT$9.213bn, up 33.04%, and its tools are bought when customers add or upgrade production lines. (2 Nov 2026) Source: 營收速報 - 德律(3030)10月營收9.26億元年增率高達71.93％