Zero One Investment Research Weekly Intelligence Brief, Week ending November 14, 2026

Top Market Signals

NVIDIA's interim CEO inherits about US$400bn of AI industry commitments

Jensen Huang resigned as president, chief executive and director of NVIDIA (NVDA US) on 12 Nov, four days after he admitted an affair with an executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore data center company. Chief financial officer Colette Kress became interim CEO and keeps the CFO job. Harvey C. Jones, a former Synopsys chief executive, became NVIDIA's first board chair.

The affair became a company matter within days. Bloomberg reported that NVIDIA's general counsel intervened in a Commerce Department probe of suspected chip smuggling by Megaspeed, and The New York Times said the probe was then halted. The board went from backing Huang on 8 Nov to meeting on his removal on 11 Nov, after the Times reported a second relationship, with a vice president.

Kress's record matters because NVIDIA now lends to and guarantees its own customers. Reuters sources said she repeatedly opposed Huang's large and often risky investments, and a plan to back OpenAI's Ohio data center was cut from US$250bn to US$120bn. A Columbia Business School professor puts NVIDIA's commitments to the AI industry, through cloud purchases, data center guarantees and credit support, at about US$400bn.

NVIDIA reports on 17 Nov, Kress's first results as interim CEO. The board said customer commitments and the product roadmap continue. Whether those commitments are renewed, cut or left to run off matters most to neoclouds, smaller AI cloud firms such as CoreWeave (CRWV US), and to the server makers that ship to them.

Linked stocks: NVDA US, CRWV US, 2330 TT

Quanta's largest cloud customers reserve its capacity up to 24 months ahead

Quanta (2382 TT) said its five largest cloud customers have committed to capacity reservations covering the next 12 to 24 months, and it uses them to justify NT$40-45bn of 2027 capex. Its October revenue rose 104% YoY even as notebook shipments fell 35.7% from September. Quanta expects servers to be 85-90% of 2027 revenue.

No Taiwan assembler reported an order change during NVIDIA's leadership crisis. Inventec (2356 TT) said no customer has changed orders since the US midterm results, and Foxconn (2317 TT) saw no clear change in AI demand. Gigabyte (2376 TT) guided to another record year in 2027, with order visibility to the end of that year. A brokerage report ranks it as the technology company most dependent on NVIDIA, at 55-65% of revenue.

The growth costs the assemblers working capital. Quanta's 3Q gross margin fell to 4.75%, a 17-quarter low, because it buys the GPUs and memory that go into NVIDIA's VR200 racks; it asked investors to track operating profit growth instead. ASUS (2357 TT) guided 4Q server revenue up 280% YoY, but warned that tighter funding may push weaker neoclouds to merge or exit.

Linked stocks: 2382 TT, 2356 TT, 2376 TT, 2357 TT

Foxconn's custom-chip server shipments grew 150%, twice its GPU server pace

Foxconn said shipments of AI servers built on custom chips (ASICs, chips designed for one cloud customer) rose 150% YoY in 3Q, against about 70% for GPU servers. Chairman Young Liu expects ASIC servers to grow faster again in 2027. Many run on consignment, where the customer supplies the chips, so they count for less in revenue than in shipments but tie up less cash.

The custom-chip designers reported the same shift. Alchip (3661 TT) signed a US AI customer project worth about US$1bn that starts volume revenue in 2Q27, and its October revenue passed NT$10bn for the first time. MediaTek (2454 TT) expects its first AI accelerator to add US$2.5bn of revenue in 4Q. Google (GOOGL US) launched two more eighth-generation TPU systems, its own AI chips, one of them hosted on AMD (AMD US) processors.

GPU servers still grew about 70% at Foxconn, so this is a change in mix inside rising totals. Gigabyte, with most of its revenue tied to NVIDIA, sits at the other end of that mix.

Linked stocks: 2317 TT, 3661 TT, 2454 TT, GOOGL US

Wafer and substrate shortages cost Alchip about US$100m of 3Q revenue

Alchip said shortages of wafers, substrates and packaging capacity cost it about US$100m of 3Q revenue. Qisda (2352 TT) chairman Peter Chen said the limit on Taiwan's AI suppliers is parts, not orders. Foxconn's Young Liu expects 2027 demand to exceed supply even as new capacity opens.

The shortage list grew longer last week. Holy Stone (3026 TT), a passive component maker, said demand for high-end MLCCs (multilayer ceramic capacitors, small parts that steady a board's power supply) is far above its supply, even with capacity up 30% this year and 40% in 2027. TSMC (2330 TT) senior vice president Kevin Zhang said power supply and substrates now limit AI data centers alongside logic chips. Samsung reportedly faces a 2027 shortfall of EUV mask blanks, the plates that chip patterns are written onto.

Short supply is showing up in prices. Powerchip (6770 TT), a memory and mature logic foundry, plans another 10-20% price rise next year. Server board maker Gold Circuit (2368 TT) lifted its 3Q gross margin to 38.7%, its highest since 2016, after customers accepted price increases. At the consumer end, notebook battery maker Simplo (6121 TT) does not expect raw material costs to ease until 2H27.

Linked stocks: 3661 TT, 3026 TT, 6770 TT, 2368 TT

Xintec funds a TSMC packaging line through 2033 as ASE commits NT$100bn

Xintec (3374 TT), a Taiwanese packaging and testing company, signed a capacity outsourcing deal with TSMC that runs to 31 Dec 2033. Xintec will build and run a line inside TSMC's Taichung site for the step where packaged chips are mounted on a substrate, with volume production from 2029. It pays for the tools with NT$15bn of convertible bonds, so TSMC adds capacity without buying them.

ASE Technology (3711 TT) opened the first phase of its Luzhu plant in the Southern Taiwan Science Park and broke ground on the second, for about NT$100bn of total investment. Both companies are saving time by reusing space. ASE paid NT$6.5bn for buildings already in the park, and a Taiwanese fab contractor (6903 TT) said converted buildings can be ready for tools in three months, against 2-3 years for a new fab.

The toolmakers are shipping into this. Applied Materials (AMAT US) grew fiscal 4Q26 revenue 53% YoY, against 21% for the full year, and guided to another record quarter. TSMC's Y.P. Hou said Taiwanese makers now supply more than 20% of TSMC's advanced packaging equipment.

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

US rule would require licenses for top NVIDIA chips in seven more countries

The US Commerce Department is finalizing a rule that would require licenses for Blackwell-class or better chips in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Brazil, Norway and South Africa, The Information and Commercial Times reported. The aim is to stop Chinese AI companies using NVIDIA chips through data centers abroad. It could be published as early as November, though Axios reported Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had held back earlier crackdowns.

Chinese demand explains the push. A B300 rack selling for about US$600,000 internationally reportedly fetched US$2.8m in China in October, the Financial Times reported. Chinese buyers are now pre-booking overseas capacity before the rule lands. Reuters found more than RMB23bn (about US$3.2bn) of Chinese data center projects built around restricted NVIDIA processors, though not all of that is chip spending.

For Taiwan's server makers the exposure runs through neocloud customers in Asia. ASUS said 40-50% of its neocloud customers by region are in Asia Pacific. DigiTimes reported the server chain already faces end-user checks, full prepayment and longer lead times.

Linked stocks: NVDA US, 2357 TT, 2376 TT

TSMC commits up to US$1bn to Anthropic and OpenAI shares

TSMC's board approved up to US$500m each for Anthropic common shares, priced at its IPO, and OpenAI preferred shares, the foundry's first investment in AI model developers. The total is less than 2% of one year's capex, and October revenue set a record, up 59.7% YoY.

Linked stocks: 2330 TT, TSM US