TSMC approved a capital expenditure allocation of approximately $40.9 billion, accelerating moves to stabilize supply through long-term contracts. Google expanded its eighth-generation TPU into 4 application-specific lines in pursuit of optimized AI processing.
Competition in AI semiconductors is shifting from securing manufacturing capacity to locking in supply through long-term contracts and optimizing systems for specific applications. Recent developments point to a stronger push to secure supply capacity for advanced logic, packaging and HBM through long-term contracts with customers.
First, TSMC approved a capital expenditure allocation of approximately $40.9 billion and indicated plans to invest up to $500 million each in Anthropic and OpenAI. This is intended to secure semiconductor supply capacity while supporting the growth of AI models. Second, SK hynix announced that it had secured more than 50% of its 2027–28 production capacity through long-term contracts. Third, Google expanded its eighth-generation TPU into 4 product lines, including 8tx and 8i Max, and is advancing application-specific optimization for uses such as confidential inference and large-context processing.
AMD's data center revenue increased 97% year on year, while deployment of Instinct MI450 and Helios rack-scale systems progressed. This points to signs that configurations combining GPUs and CPUs from vendors other than NVIDIA are moving into actual operations. Fourth, NVIDIA announced plans to work with Rebellions and SK Telecom to connect their proprietary NPU to NVLink Fusion, with the aim of preparing for deployment in 2028.
Among Japanese companies, Ibiden approved an additional investment of approximately ¥151 billion in high-performance substrates for AI servers. Mass production is scheduled to begin gradually from fiscal 2029. Advantest reported higher demand for testing, with first-half sales of ¥845.2 billion and operating profit of ¥456.8 billion. Tokyo Electron forecast first-half sales of ¥1.6674 trillion and full-year sales of more than ¥3 trillion. Kioxia reported first-half sales of ¥4.2471 trillion and explained that demand for NAND and storage was expanding.