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Google's TPU Bet on Intel 18A, TSMC Price Hikes & Taiwan's Export Crackdown
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Intel 18A is at the centre of a reported Google TPU deal, Nvidia wafer tests, and a TSMC pricing squeeze — all on the same day. Taiwan tightens chip export controls as China pledges $295B for domestic AI infrastructure.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Intel's foundry revival may have just gotten its most significant external test yet. A reported order from Google for three million TPUs on Intel's eighteen-A process, potentially running through twenty twenty-eight, would be the largest external foundry win in Intel's history.
The report from The Information was specific enough to move sentiment. Three million units, Intel's leading-edge eighteen-A node, a multi-year timeline.
Nvidia is also in the picture. Early multi-project wafer tests on eighteen-A for the next-generation Feynman GPU architecture are underway.
TSMC's May twenty twenty-six revenue just hit a monthly record: NT$416.98 billion, up thirty percent year-on-year. That number reflects real AI infrastructure demand from hyperscalers pulling hard on advanced nodes.
Taiwan is moving to extend AI chip export controls well beyond its existing blacklist. The current list covers entities like Huawei and SMIC.
China's response to all of this is a two trillion yuan, roughly two hundred ninety-five billion dollar, state-backed AI infrastructure investment plan over five years. The focus is explicitly domestic: Huawei, Cambricon, MetaX.
The through-line across all of this is that Intel's foundry case is strengthening in narrative terms, but not yet in confirmed revenue terms. Nvidia is testing.
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