Zero One Investment Research Daily Intelligence Brief, November 13, 2026

NVIDIA hands Huang's job to the CFO who resisted his financing deals

Top Market Signals

NVIDIA's new CEO opposed its customer financing

Jensen Huang resigned as president, chief executive and director of NVIDIA (NVDA US) on 12 Nov, effective immediately, and chief financial officer Colette Kress became interim CEO while keeping the CFO job. Our 12 Nov Blade reported the board meeting on his removal without a decision. His exit followed the allegations around Huang, the backdrop to that board review and a cause the financing dispute does not explain. The board also named Harvey C. Jones, a former Synopsys chief executive, as NVIDIA's first board chair, and started a search that covers internal and external candidates.

Kress's record matters most for NVIDIA's role as a lender and guarantor to its own customers. Reuters, as carried by TechNews, reported from two sources that Kress repeatedly opposed Huang's large and often risky investments, and that her team clashed with Huang and the sales team over big financing deals. A plan to back OpenAI's Ohio data center was cut from US$250bn to US$120bn.

Those commitments are large. Columbia Business School professor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh puts NVIDIA's total financial commitments to the AI industry, through cloud purchases, data center guarantees and credit support, at about US$400bn, Commercial Times reported. The items include up to US$36bn of cloud services NVIDIA agreed in July to buy from "neocloud" providers (smaller AI cloud firms such as CoreWeave), a guarantee of up to US$105bn for OpenAI's Ohio data center, and up to US$125bn of credit support for a US$500bn AI computing finance platform run with Wall Street banks.

NVIDIA reports results on 17 Nov, Kress's first appearance as interim CEO and CFO. Its board said operations, customer commitments and the product roadmap should continue without interruption. Whether those commitments are renewed, cut or left to run off is the question for the neocloud firms and the server makers that ship to them.

Linked stocks: NVDA US, CRWV US, 2330 TT

Gigabyte, most tied to NVIDIA, guides 2027 higher

Gigabyte (2376 TT) expects 2027 to set another earnings record, with order visibility to the end of 2027, it said at its 13 Nov investor conference, hours after Huang's resignation. A brokerage report cited by Economic Daily News ranks Gigabyte as the technology company most dependent on NVIDIA, at 55-65% of revenue, ahead of Quanta (2382 TT).

The results show why the exposure is so high. 3Q net profit rose 29.7% QoQ and 180.5% YoY to a record, and server revenue passed NT$310bn in the first nine months, up more than 100% YoY. AI servers reached 78% of revenue over the same period.

Co-president Lee Yi-tai said the relationship runs from senior management to engineering and marketing and will not change with one personnel move. Gigabyte plans 2027 capex of NT$4bn, up from NT$2.8-3.0bn this year, for Taiwan, North American assembly and Malaysia. It also sells AMD and Intel rack systems, and expects customers to widen from the largest cloud firms to neoclouds, telecom operators and enterprises.

Our 12 Nov Blade reported Foxconn's custom-chip server shipments rising 150% YoY in 3Q against about 70% for GPU servers. Gigabyte sits at the other end of that mix, so its 2027 orders depend more directly on how NVIDIA's ramp holds up under new leadership.

Linked stocks: 2376 TT, 2382 TT, NVDA US

US$3.2bn of China projects need restricted NVIDIA chips

Chinese AI data center projects worth more than RMB23bn (about US$3.2bn) are built around NVIDIA (NVDA US) processors that US export rules restrict, Reuters found after reviewing more than 150 Chinese government procurement notices, investment plans, construction contracts and company filings. The projects use H100, H200 and H800 chips and run from coastal tech hubs to western provinces, including local-government ventures, universities and regional computing centers.

The total covers planned investment, signed contracts and finished installations, including buildings and power systems, so not all of it is chip spending. One facility in Gansu expected to install thousands of NVIDIA chips by year end; Reuters could not confirm the chips had arrived. It found no link between these projects and Megaspeed or the allegations around Huang. NVIDIA already excludes China data center revenue from its forecasts.

Commercial Times now names the seven countries covered by the Commerce Department rule our 12 Nov Blade reported, which would require licenses for Blackwell-class or better chips: Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Brazil, Norway and South Africa, with buyers reporting recipients and intended use. DigiTimes reports Taiwan board makers and the server chain now face checks that trace the end user, alongside full prepayment and longer lead times.

Linked stocks: NVDA US, 2376 TT, 2330 TT

ASE bets NT$100bn on a science park plant

ASE Technology (3711 TT) opened phase one of its Luzhu plant in the Kaohsiung section of the Southern Taiwan Science Park on 13 Nov and broke ground on phase two. With both phases full, it expects total investment of about NT$100bn, annual revenue of about NT$80bn and about 5,000 jobs. It is the first time ASE has built a large advanced packaging plant inside a science park.

ASE got there faster by buying an existing plant. It paid NT$6.5bn for buildings and facilities already in the park, then fitted them out and moved in advanced packaging lines, so phase one went from purchase to production without a new building. Phase two separates special gas supply, hazardous materials and wastewater treatment into different buildings and adds vibration control.

Our 11 Nov Blade reported fab contractor 巨漢 (6903 TT) converting existing buildings for chip projects, ready for tools in as little as three months against 2-3 years for a new fab, with advanced packaging customers leading. ASE's NT$6.5bn purchase is the same approach from the largest packaging company, at a scale that targets NT$80bn of yearly sales.

Linked stocks: 3711 TT, 2330 TT, 6903 TT

TSMC hands Xintec seven years of packaging work

Xintec (3374 TT), a Taiwanese chip packaging and testing company, signed a capacity outsourcing agreement with TSMC (2330 TT) that runs from 13 Nov 2026 to 31 Dec 2033, its board approved on 13 Nov. Xintec will build and run a production line inside TSMC's central Taiwan (Taichung) site for back-end steps of advanced packaging, with the first phase in volume production in 2029.

Xintec pays for the line. Its board approved NT$15bn of convertible bonds to fund equipment and automated material handling, and Xintec runs production while meeting TSMC's quality and yield specifications. It describes its role as a new supplier of the oS (on-substrate) module, the step where packaged chips are mounted on a substrate.

TSMC keeps the line on its own site and supplies the packaging technology, while Xintec carries the equipment spending and runs the line on a seven-year term. That gives Xintec order visibility into 2033, and adds TSMC packaging capacity from 2029 without TSMC buying the tools for this line.

Linked stocks: 3374 TT, 2330 TT, 3711 TT

Applied Materials' sales growth accelerates to 53%

Applied Materials (AMAT US) reported record revenue of US$10.41bn for its fiscal 4Q26 to 25 Oct, up 53% YoY, against 21% growth for the full fiscal year at US$34.45bn. The gap means growth sped up through the year, and the company guided the current quarter to another revenue record.

Margins rose with volume. Non-GAAP gross margin reached 50.6%, up 2.5 percentage points YoY, and non-GAAP EPS grew 92%. Chief executive Gary Dickerson said the semiconductor systems business, which sells chipmaking tools, should grow more than 40% in calendar 2026, driven by AI demand.

Our 7 Nov Blade reported TSMC, Micron and Intel discussing equipment orders for 2029 because some tools take more than two years to arrive. Applied's 53% quarter is the supplier side of those lead times: the tool makers are shipping at record rates and still guiding higher.

Linked stocks: AMAT US, 2330 TT, MU US, INTC US

先聲 First Word: Exclusives from Chinese-Language Sources

TSMC's overseas subsidies hit a record NT$167.6bn

TSMC (2330 TT) booked NT$167.6bn of government grants in the first nine months, NT$167.0bn of it in 3Q, up about 133% from NT$71.9bn a year earlier, from the US, Germany, Japan and China. TSMC Arizona earned NT$54.0bn over the same period, more than 10 times a year earlier, so the overseas fabs are now profitable on top of the grants. (13 Nov 2026) Source: 台積電美日廠前三季合賺563.83億 熊本連三季獲利

Gold Circuit's margin is its highest since 2016

Gold Circuit Electronics (2368 TT), a maker of circuit boards for servers, posted a 3Q gross margin of 38.7%, up from 34.7% in 2Q and its highest since 2016, because AI servers passed half of revenue and customers accepted price increases to cover raw materials. A board maker passing on cost inflation shows how short supply is for high-layer server boards. (13 Nov 2026) Source: cnYES 鉅亨網

Sporton makes its largest-ever investment on a US testing rule

Sporton (6146 TT), a Taiwanese product testing and certification lab, will spend about NT$1.5bn, its largest capex ever, on about 50 test sites and 100 engineers, lifting capacity about 20%. A US FCC rule passed 29 Oct bars labs in countries without mutual recognition agreements from US certification testing after 1 Dec 2028, moving work to compliant labs such as Taiwan's. (13 Nov 2026) Source: 史上最大資本支出！耕興砸15億擴廠 增設50座測試場地、招募百名工程師