Zero One Investment Research Daily Intelligence Brief, November 10, 2026

US smuggling probe reportedly stopped after NVIDIA stepped in as suppliers post records

Top Market Signals

NVIDIA stepped in before Megaspeed probe stopped

NVIDIA's (NVDA US) general counsel intervened in a US government probe of suspected AI chip smuggling by Megaspeed International, Bloomberg reported, and The New York Times said the Commerce Department inquiry was halted after that intervention. Alice Huang worked as an executive at Megaspeed, the Singapore data center company. She is at the center of the affair that Jensen Huang acknowledged on 8 Nov.

The report moves the story from the chief executive's conduct to the company's own dealings with regulators. Liberty Times reported that Megaspeed, described as a 10-person company, had bought more than US$4.8bn of NVIDIA chips. Our 9 Nov Blade covered the call by three House committee chairs for Huang to give a closed-door briefing on 18 Nov, the day after NVIDIA reports 3Q results.

Commercial Times reported that some Asian customers' AI server orders must now be re-reviewed, covering cases NVIDIA had already approved and cases still under review. Taiwan suppliers told the paper orders and capacity are unchanged so far, and that the question is whether the reviews delay delivery. H200 systems are a small share of Taiwan assembly shipments, which have moved to B300, GB300 and the Vera Rubin platform now ramping.

Commercial Times also reported unconfirmed supply chain talk that NVIDIA may slow chip orders at its foundry. If capacity is released, AMD (AMD US) and custom chip designers such as MediaTek (2454 TT) and Alchip (3661 TT) could take it; one custom chip supplier said customers will absorb whatever TSMC capacity becomes available. The next check is NVIDIA's own order commentary on 17 Nov.

Linked stocks: NVDA US, 2330 TT, 2454 TT, AMD US

Yageo, ASUS and Delta set October records

Three Taiwan AI hardware suppliers reported record monthly revenue for October, which Yageo noted had fewer working days because of Asian holidays. Yageo (2327 TT), the largest passive component maker, posted NT$17.60bn, up 55% YoY and 3.1% MoM, Liberty Times reported. ASUS (2357 TT) reported NT$107.62bn, up 62.25% YoY, and Delta Electronics (2308 TT) reported NT$74.66bn, up 30% YoY and 14.1% MoM.

The growth comes from different parts of the server. ASUS credited strong server shipments and deferred orders now being delivered and booked, with products on both HGX and GB300 NVL72 rack designs. Yageo pointed to AI demand on top of steady growth in specialty and standard parts, and a Cathay Futures report expects AI data centers to keep lifting demand for high-end capacitors.

Compal (2324 TT) also grew 40.7% YoY, Commercial Times reported. Together with Quanta's 104% in our 9 Nov Blade, the October data shows supplier sales still accelerating.

Linked stocks: 2327 TT, 2357 TT, 2308 TT, 2382 TT

Qisda expects AI server sales to rise fivefold

Qisda (2352 TT) expects AI server revenue in 2027 to be at least five times this year's, the company said at its 9 Nov investor conference, Economic Daily News reported. Chairman Peter Chen said AI servers and 1.6T high-speed switches start small-volume shipments at the end of this year, with a meaningful contribution from 2Q27.

Chen also said that the limit on Taiwan's AI infrastructure suppliers is parts, not orders. Memory and other key components are short and rising in price, so some suppliers with orders cannot deliver, he told Liberty Times. In his view a slower US data center build after the midterms would give the supply chain time to catch up.

Qisda's 3Q net profit fell 7.7% QoQ but rose 118% YoY, and it guided 4Q revenue roughly flat with 3Q. Its computing team has won several new server projects and is now pursuing second- and third-tier cloud customers, so the fivefold target rests on buyers below the largest hyperscalers.

Linked stocks: 2352 TT, 2382 TT, 2357 TT

China pays nearly five times for NVIDIA racks

A B300 rack that sells for about US$600,000 internationally reportedly fetched US$2.8m in China last month, Tom's Hardware reported citing the Financial Times. Chinese companies have also bought more than 1 million NVIDIA gaming and workstation cards this year to cover the shortfall.

Demand for the export-compliant parts runs well ahead of supply. Chinese customers have ordered more than 6 million RTX Pro 5500 cards, at least twice the 3 million NVIDIA could reportedly make in 2027. Model developer Moonshot has discussed renting clusters of 8,000 or more Blackwell GPUs from cloud providers in Europe.

Our 4 Nov Blade reported NVIDIA's rule that at least 51% of a cloud partner's new services must go to non-Chinese companies. One Singapore operator told the FT it is difficult to find enough non-Chinese clients outside the US, so Southeast Asian data centers that leased to Chinese labs may have to pull back supply. That pressure lands on the region's newest AI capacity just as Washington scrutinizes NVIDIA's China sales.

Linked stocks: NVDA US, 2382 TT, 2317 TT

Enterprise AI spending jumps more than fivefold

Enterprise spending on AI has reached US$177bn, up from US$33bn in 2025, according to Menlo Ventures' latest State of Enterprise AI report, as carried by Bloomberg. Menlo also found that AI agents, software that carries out tasks rather than answering questions, now drive 80% of enterprise AI usage.

The figure is the demand side of the infrastructure bill that investors questioned after the US midterms. Agent workloads run many model calls per task, so a shift toward agents raises the compute each business user consumes, which supports inference demand for the GPU and custom chip suppliers in today's other signals.

Linked stocks: MSFT US, GOOGL US, NVDA US

Simplo sees cost relief only in 2H27

Simplo Technology (6121 TT), the largest maker of notebook battery packs, said raw material price increases should not ease until 2H27, Economic Daily News reported from its 9 Nov investor conference. 3Q net profit fell 27.6% QoQ and 16.7% YoY because notebook and phone business came in below plan.

Gross margin fell 2 percentage points QoQ to 16.3% and operating margin fell 2.2 points to 9.7%. Simplo called 4Q a seasonal low and expects 2027 to be flat or up.

This is the consumer side of the component squeeze. Our 7 Nov Blade reported AMD planning for "a down year for 2027" in PCs because higher component prices have slowed sales, and Simplo's guide puts a date on when its own costs stop rising.

Linked stocks: 6121 TT, AMD US, 2357 TT

先聲 First Word: Exclusives from Chinese-Language Sources

NVIDIA and SPIL target co-packaged optics volume in 2027

NVIDIA and SPIL, the packaging unit of ASE Technology (3711 TT), are pushing co-packaged optics (CPO, optics built into the chip package) toward volume production in 2027, with data center scale-out networks adopting first as NVIDIA starts mass production of Vera Rubin. That puts a year on when optics move inside the package, which changes what Taiwan packaging and optical suppliers sell. (10 Nov 2026) Source: 資料中心Scale-Out需求先行　NVIDIA、矽品2027拚CPO放量

GIS starts laser packaging for optical links this quarter

General Interface Solution (6456 TT), a touch panel maker turning into a semiconductor optics company, said its laser packaging line starts small-volume production in 4Q26 and reaches full capacity in 2Q-3Q27, chairman Chou Hsien-ying said. A display supplier entering high-speed optical communications adds another Taiwan source for AI data center laser parts. (10 Nov 2026) Source: 鎖定高速光通訊　業成雷射封裝4Q26量產、3Q27前產能到位

SK hynix and Samsung put engineers in charge of US sales

SK hynix (000660 KS) has reportedly moved development head Ahn Hyun to run a new Americas business, after Samsung Electronics (005930 KS) also put an executive with a research background in charge of US chip sales. Custom HBM (high-bandwidth memory) is designed with each customer, so the Korean makers now treat selling to US chip designers as engineering work. (10 Nov 2026) Source: 客製化HBM改變人事布局思維　三星、SK技術主管掌舵美洲業務