Taiwan’s ‘Big 5’ chip packaging and testing firms (OSATs) will spend over NT$460 billion (US$14.4B) this year on capex in a bid to catch up with AI-related demand, media report. Industry giant ASE said its biggest problem now is how to accelerate construction, equipment installation, and capacity rollout at 13 new projects and 8 renovations: ASE: NT$335 billion (US$10.5B) Powertech: NT$50 billion KYEC: NT$50 billion Sigurd Group: NT$20 billion ChipMOS: NT$7.2 billion in the 1st half. More coming $ASML $AMAT $TER $CAMT $NVMI #BESI# #Advantest#

$TSM and $ASX Break Ground on Taiwan’s First Advanced Packaging Cluster TSMC, ASE, Foxconn, and more than 20 semiconductor companies have begun developing Taiwan’s first advanced packaging supply-chain cluster in Kaohsiung. The first phase is already fully allocated ASE expects advanced packaging and testing capacity shortages to persist for another 3–5 years. Most of its planned capacity additions over the next three years are already booked. The company has seven new factories under construction, three undergoing equipment installation, and two additional plants planned TSMC will establish two facilities focused on CoWoS and panel-level packaging (PLP) technology validation, while Foxconn will develop an AI computing and smart manufacturing base Separately, ASE’s $3.4 billion advanced testing park is scheduled to begin operations in April 2027, with annual production value expected to reach $5.6 billion at full capacity

🔥 #CoWoS# expansion is accelerating beyond #TSMC#. #ASE’s# SPIL has broken ground on a nearly TWD 100B plant in Douliu to boost capacity, with first-phase operations set for 2028.💡More: 🔗

🤩#BitMart# will list Asentum (ASE) @Asentum soon! 👀Keep an eye on our socials for further announcements. 👇Share in the comments what you like about this project 🔥Register Now:

A civil airliner carrying nothing but extra wiring and a bigger power supply counts as a munition under American law, and on Friday the US State Department fixed that with 74 characters. The aircraft caught this way are flown by civilian airlines, by heads of state, by humanitarian organisations and by the United Nations. Most have never been American. The control was never following the airframe. It follows the anti-missile kit bolted into it, and it follows that kit worldwide. The Department concedes the position in the rule’s own preamble. “The Department notes that aircraft modified to facilitate incorporation of ASE are currently described in paragraph (a)(8) even when the ASE is not physically present in the aircraft.” ASE is aircraft survivability equipment. Anti-missile kit. The wiring and the power supply are fitted to feed it, and on that reading they put the whole airframe on the United States Munitions List with no kit aboard at all. The fix adds “excluding survivability-enhanced aircraft (see § 121.0 of this subchapter)” to Category VIII(a)(8). That is 74 characters as the Federal Register printed them. Effective 13 October. Comments close 28 September, fifteen days before it takes effect. What has not changed is the reach, and the reach was never in this rule. A US-origin defense article stays under American control after it is built into something that is not controlled, and anyone abroad who takes custody of it is bound by the same rules “regardless of the number of intermediate transfers”. A foreign airline moving its own foreign-registered aircraft between two foreign countries has needed written American approval to do it. Not because the aircraft is American. Because the pod is. Repairing that wiring for a foreign operator stays a defense service too, though wiring and power supplies are ordinary civilian export goods. On why now, the preamble gives one clause, and it arrives as the reason a narrower fix was rejected. The Department had considered limiting the exclusion to kit designed against shoulder-fired missiles. It did not, because its “review of civil aircraft losses concluded that the threat is no longer limited to MANPADS”. It names no incident.

AMD, TSMC and OSAT Channel Check: 1. AMD's AI GPU production (MI455/MI450) is expected to remain 100% at TSMC CoWoS in 2027. Production estimates land at a mid-point of 600k units for both SKUs next year per recent MS forecasts. 2. While ASE and Amkor still lead OSAT capacity, their capacity ramps are rumoured to be progressing slower than expected. This means that TSMC may be required to support CoWoS-L wafers for AMD's Venice CPU prodction which would further constrain internal capacity for MI455/MI450 production. Per MS, this would equate to TSMC supporting ~80k CoWoS-L for Venice production. $AMD $TSM $AMKR $ASX

If you have a Taiwanese CEO, you're going to be a millionaire. 1. $NVDA (NVIDIA) - led by co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang (born in Taipei). 2. $AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) - led by CEO and Chair Dr. Lisa Su (born in Tainan). 3. $SMCI (SuperMicro Computer) - led by co-founder, CEO, and Chair Charles Liang (born in Chiayi). 4. $GRMN (Garmin) - co-founded by Executive Chairman Dr. Min Kao (born in Jhushan). 5. $DIOD (Diodes) - long led by Dr. Keh-Shew Lu, with current CEO Gary Yu continuing its Taiwanese leadership heritage. 6. $AAOI (Applied Optoelectronics) - led by founder and CEO Dr. Chih-Hsiang (Thompson) Lin. 7. $TSM (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing) - founded by Morris Chang and currently led by CEO Dr. C.C. Wei. 8. $ASX (ASE Technology) - world's largest chip packaging firm, founded by brothers Jason and Richard Chang. I hope they make a Taiwanese CEO ETF one day.

View summary- Akamai–Anthropic deal: 💰 $11.6bn 7-year accelerating CPU agreement announced 24 Sep (potential +$9bn expansion). Anthropic to use Akamai’s distributed AI infra & software for growing CPU workloads. 
🤖 Vera CPUs expected: Nvidia previously flagged Akamai’s Vera deployment plans. Vera targets agentic workloads (code, orchestration, data processing) with high-bandwidth LPDDR5X. 
• Positive read-throughs:
– Server CPU & DRAM demand (agentic AI needs more compute + memory)
– eSSD / NAND (context, vector DB, KV-cache growth; better cost/power vs DRAM/HDD)
– ABF substrates
– Lenovo (major server OEM for Akamai)
• Our Server CPU TAM: 2030 server CPU TAM of $215bn 
• Stocks & Positive Implications :
– CPU: NVDA, AMD, INTC
– Memory: SK Hynix, Micron (DRAM/HBM); Samsung, SK Hynix, MU + SanDisk (NAND)
– Advanced packaging: ASE (Buy), TSMC (Hold), Amkor
– OEM: Lenovo (Buy) #anthropic# #NVDA# #CPU# #DRAM#