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TSMC Earnings, Meta Iris & the CoWoS Crunch That Defines 2026
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
TSMC posts an all-time revenue record while CoWoS packaging remains the binding constraint on AI accelerator shipments through 2026. Meta's Iris chip accelerates to September production and Alphabet opens TPU access externally, as Nvidia holds 60% of a bottleneck its rivals can't easily break.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
TSMC just announced two new advanced packaging plants in Chiayi, and the CoWoS crunch is still not going away. That's the clearest signal from this week's data.
The capacity allocation story inside that bottleneck is where the competitive dynamics get sharp. Nvidia holds roughly sixty percent of total CoWoS output, around five hundred ninety-five thousand wafers, and has already secured more than fifty percent of the twenty twenty-six and twenty twenty-seven expansion.
TSMC posted an all-time revenue record in Q2, approximately one point two seven trillion New Taiwan dollars, with N3 and CoWoS both sold out through year-end. The signal here isn't just the number.
The more structural pressure on Nvidia is coming from its largest customers. Meta is accelerating its Iris custom chip to production in September, targeting a doubling of compute capacity and reducing dependence on third-party GPUs.
Further out in the supply chain, Intel is committing five billion euros to expand its Leixlip campus in Ireland, focused on Xeon data center processors and foundry customer support. Samsung is running an aggressive hiring push across HBM core die, base die, reliability, and packaging engineering to scale HBM four and five production.
One risk that's harder to hedge landed Monday. US-Iran tensions pushed oil prices higher, and semiconductor and AI stocks sold off sharply.
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