AI Compute & Accelerator Silicon

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company shares touched intraday all-time highs on Monday after Elon Musk confirmed early-stage talks with the chipmaker about a potential collaboration on his Terafab semiconductor initiative. Musk responded on X over the weekend to a newsletter from tech journalist Tim Culpan, who wrote that TSMC is exploring ways to work with Terafab to help the startup chipmaker run its new semiconductor factories in Texas, saying, "Just discussions, but something may come of it." Terafab is Musk's plan to build a giant semiconductor factory to serve Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI. US chip maker Intel, which joined Terafab back in April, was down roughly 2%. TSMC is the world's largest foundry, and its business has boomed on demand for semiconductors used in artificial intelligence, with the stock up about 60% year to date as the company expands in the US to manufacture chips for clients including Apple, Nvidia, and AMD.

Morgan Stanley said on the 5th that semiconductor giants Nvidia and Broadcom are relatively unlikely to be affected by the worsening data center power shortage in the United States. The firm estimated last month that even if U.S. data center developers adopt measures such as "behind-the-meter" power generation, which integrates power plants with data centers, and fuel cells, they will face a net power shortfall of 34 percent by 2028, equivalent to a shortfall of 32 gigawatts. Morgan Stanley noted that because Nvidia and Broadcom have clear visibility on chip deployment, geographic expansion, and coordination among data centers, semiconductor suppliers, and power supply networks, these bottlenecks will not threaten the two companies' 2027 outlook. On the other hand, if semiconductor production capacity cannot be expanded, customers may delay delivery schedules or cancel orders, and memory, optical components, power management, and analog components are most vulnerable to inventory-related disruptions. Goldman Sachs has also pointed to growing constraints on U.S. data center construction, seeing the short-term impact of political backlash as limited, while Morgan Stanley cites labor, power, and politics as the three challenges.

Amazon Web Services Chief AI and Technology Officer Matt Wood said the cost of delivering a given level of AI intelligence is falling by one or two orders of magnitude every three to six months outside the most advanced frontier models, a decline he attributed to improving efficiency as companies learn to operationalize frontier models at lower cost. Speaking to CNBC on Thursday, Wood rejected the idea that more capable AI agents must become less safe, saying developers can surround models with controls, guardrails, security and privacy protections while still improving the underlying technology, and pushed back on the notion that companies must choose between development speed and safety. Wood also defended AWS's $220 billion infrastructure investment, pointing to customer demand and internal business metrics, and said he expects additional computing capacity and greater operating efficiency to bring AI to more businesses and users. Accelerating AWS growth helped push Amazon above $3 trillion in market value for the first time in August 2026, after second-quarter results showed AWS revenue growing at its fastest pace since 2021; the stock surged more than 15% in one session, adding nearly $400 billion in market value, before gaining as much as another 5.3% as it crossed the threshold. TD Cowen analyst John Blackledge said AWS's AI business exited a quarter at roughly a $25 billion annual run rate, its fifth consecutive quarter of accelerating revenue growth, and pointed to CEO Andy Jassy's view that AWS could eventually generate $1 trillion in revenue, compared with the $600 billion long-term opportunity Jassy discussed in his April shareholder letter. Amazon expects AWS to remain capacity constrained through 2026 and 2027 because of AI demand, even as it plans to double AWS capacity by the end of 2027.

BNP Paribas raised its price target on AMD by 60% to $960, citing remarkable strength in CPUs driven by artificial intelligence, while keeping a Neutral rating on the Dr. Lisa Su-led company. Analyst Karl Ackerman wrote that AMD is increasingly becoming a leading provider of AI infrastructure, successfully pivoting from a silicon pure-play to a full-stack systems platform, and said the firm's new agentic CPU model supports above-consensus estimates driven by AMD's leadership and roadmap to capture a growing share of a roughly $245B agentic CPU total addressable market by 2030. Ackerman noted that AMD's Helios AI accelerators have become a credible second source to Nvidia, backed by 14 gigawatts of commitments, and that the success of Helios, improvements in ROCm integration, and the recent acquisition of World Labs bolster AMD's opportunity to address frontier AI deployments, with OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic having announced multi-gigawatt agreements and AMD potentially capturing at least 8% of the more than $1T 2030 GPU market. The analyst added that AMD expects ASICs and XPUs to serve roughly 25% of the accelerator market over time, with the Cerebras partnership pairing Helios for high-throughput inference with Cerebras' Wafer-Scale Engine for ultra-low-latency token generation, and the Taalas acquisition adding IP and engineering talent for AMD's own low-latency silicon. AMD shares were modestly lower in Monday trading.

Schneider Electric agreed to buy PTC for about $22.6 billion in an all-cash deal aimed at tapping into the artificial-intelligence boom, sending PTC shares rallying. Qualcomm shares moved higher after the company agreed to license patents underpinning Huawei Technologies Co.'s novel LogicFolding chipmaking technique. Taiwan Semiconductor shares gained as sentiment was boosted by discussions between the Taiwanese chip giant and Elon Musk's Terafab on potential collaboration.

Goldman Sachs strategist Ben Snider says the AI stock rally hinges on hyperscalers like Oracle and Amazon delivering another quarter of accelerating cloud computing adoption this earnings season. In a new note, Snider said Goldman's equity analysts expect year over year cloud revenue growth to increase from 48% in Q2 to 55% in Q3, after last quarter's accelerating cloud revenue growth and large revenue backlogs signaled monetization of capex investments. Micron offered an early validating sign last week, beating sales and profit forecasts for the quarter on voracious AI-driven demand, with guidance also strong; the memory chipmaker added about $43 billion in sales in the most recent quarter compared to the year-ago quarter, and operating margins exploded in all business segments. Executives told analysts on the earnings call that high chip prices and tight capacity would be the name of the game through 2028. D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria said expectations for tightening supply-demand conditions through both 2027 and 2028 meaningfully extend the industry's runway for strong pricing and earnings growth, addressing a key investor concern that current fundamentals represent a cyclical peak.

GF Securities expects United Microelectronics to post stronger earnings per share over the next two years on a combination of stronger prices and margins, supported by rising orders from key clients that are lifting utilization rates at its foundry. Analyst Jeff Pu said 12-inch utilization should reach about 93% by end-2026 on strong DDIC volumes from Novatek and Samsung LSI at 22/28nm and Apple's Mac at 55/65nm, with upside from Sony's sensors, while 8-inch utilization should reach about 90% by end-2026 and full loading by 2H27 on intact demand for datacenter PMIC, MCU and embedded memory. Pricing momentum extends from 2H26 for selective customers into 1H27 at 10-30% across 12-inch and 8-inch, and into 2H27 where negotiations are ongoing, suggesting visibility extending into 2H27. GF Securities raised its EPS forecasts for the entirety of 2026 and 2027 by 2% and 8% respectively and maintained its Buy rating, with UMC expected to begin another growth phase in 2028 when it transitions to asset-light FinFET and optical full solutions, driven by Intel 2nm as a major inflection. Interposer and advanced packaging are expected to begin contributing during the second half of 2027, supported by silicon capacitor, DTC, hybrid bonding and controller-to-bonding integration. UMC shares were down 8% in pre-market trading on Monday, but the stock has surged 32% over the past month and more than 230% year-to-date.

Onto Innovation has emerged as a key beneficiary of the AI semiconductor investment cycle, with its stock jumping 125.6% in a year, roughly matching the Zacks Nanotechnology industry's 125.7% gain and outpacing the Zacks Computer and Technology sector and the S&P 500 composite, which rose 26% and 15.5%, respectively. The company reported record second-quarter revenue of $343.1 million, up 35.3% year over year and nearly 18% sequentially, with non-GAAP earnings per share of $1.93 versus $1.25 a year earlier, while backlog exceeded $1 billion for the first time. Management raised its second-half 2026 revenue, margin and EPS outlook, guiding third-quarter revenue of $380 to $400 million and expecting gross margin to expand by another 50 basis points in each of the third and fourth quarters, with operating margin improving 200 basis points to 31.5-32.5% in the third quarter and exceeding 33% by year-end. The company also raised its 2026 advanced-packaging growth outlook to at least 80% from more than 50% previously and now expects advanced-nodes revenue to grow more than 35% in 2026, up from about 25%, helped by its Dragonfly G5 platform and more than $200 million in Dragonfly orders from a single OSAT, mostly for 2027 delivery. In April 2026, Onto Innovation agreed to acquire a 27% stake in Rigaku Holdings for about $710 million, and it ended the second quarter with $1.88 billion in cash and short-term investments, though risks include customer concentration, with four customers accounting for 57.3% of first-half 2026 revenue, and a forward price/earnings multiple of 30.23X versus the industry's 5.83X.

DBS Group Chief Investment Officer Hou Wey Fook said Nvidia's valuation and projected earnings growth show that artificial intelligence-driven technology stocks remain far from bubble territory. The chipmaker trades at 17 times its 12-month forward earnings, according to Bloomberg-compiled data, while its earnings are projected to grow 70% next year. Hou contrasted that with Cisco Systems Inc., which traded at about 100 times earnings before the dot-com crash, saying, "If I describe the poster child of AI trading at mid-teens, how can it be a bubble?" He added that there are still "tailwinds to this play on the semiconductor, this play on AI." Hou nonetheless advocates a "barbell" approach to control overall portfolio volatility, pairing technology stocks on the growth side with investment-grade fixed income for income stability, and sees hedge funds and gold as risk diversifiers in the middle.

Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., the Nvidia server assembly partner also known as Foxconn, reported better-than-expected quarterly revenue, signaling sustained and elevated spending on global AI infrastructure. Sales for the three months ended in September totaled NT$3.03 trillion, or $95.4 billion, up 47%, topping the NT$2.83 trillion analysts had expected on average. The strong growth followed a bullish forecast from Micron Technology Inc. last week, adding to evidence that AI spending continues to climb even as executives such as OpenAI's Sam Altman and Anthropic PBC's Dario Amodei call for slowing development of the technology. Hon Hai's sales are seen as a check-in for the AI sector as investor concerns grow about overcapacity, rising debt levels and regulatory setbacks, and its share price is up about 10% since the start of the year. The Taipei-based company still derives a significant chunk of revenue from its lower-margin Apple Inc. business as the primary iPhone manufacturer, though Apple is diversifying suppliers with the likes of Luxshare Precision Industry Co.

Rapidus, which aims to mass-produce advanced semiconductors, announced on the 5th that it will partner with 17 semiconductor design-related companies in Japan and abroad, including Toshiba. The partners include Toshiba Information Systems, a Toshiba subsidiary, as well as Dai Nippon Printing, TOPPAN, and major U.S. semiconductor design firms Synopsys and Cadence Design Systems. The aim is to strengthen its support system spanning everything from the design to the manufacturing of advanced semiconductors in line with customer needs, thereby winning more orders. Going forward, it plans to work with its partners to support customers' semiconductor design and increase the volume of production contracted to Rapidus.

Micron reported fiscal Q4 revenue of $54.23 billion, up from $11.32 billion a year earlier, with non-GAAP earnings of $33.42 a share and non-GAAP gross margin of 87.0% versus 45.7% a year earlier. The company's Core Data Center unit generated $18.00 billion of revenue at a 90% gross margin, compared with $1.58 billion a year ago, and Micron is the only U.S.-based maker of high-bandwidth memory, working with Nvidia on the first custom HBM design. Micron has signed Strategic Customer Agreements, and noncurrent customer contract liabilities rose to $12.9 billion from $568 million a quarter earlier, while customer deposits brought in $12.75 billion during fiscal 2026. Fiscal 2026 operating cash flow was $89.68 billion and adjusted free cash flow was $62.31 billion, with fiscal Q1 2027 guidance calling for $61.5 billion of revenue plus or minus $1.5 billion and $38.15 of non-GAAP EPS plus or minus $1. Micron spent $27.37 billion net on capital projects in fiscal 2026, up from $13.80 billion in fiscal 2025, and at about 6 times expected earnings the stock trades far below its five-year average P/E of 74.27, with 184 hedge funds holding the stock in the most recent quarter, up from 154.

Investment in artificial intelligence is reaching unprecedented levels. According to data from the World Intellectual Property Organization, or WIPO, in its Global Innovation Index 2026 report, global venture capital investment rose 27.9% in 2025 to $510 billion, the strongest annual expansion since the peak in 2021. The number of deals, however, fell 1.4% to about 43,500, a fourth consecutive year of decline. AI accounted for 53% of global VC investment value in 2025, up from about 27% in late 2022, and in the first half of 2026 that share surged to 77%. North America attracted about $213 billion in AI investment, out of roughly $270 billion in AI-related VC worldwide in 2025, accounting for 86% of global AI VC value in early 2026. PwC estimates that global data center investment alone could total more than $30 trillion cumulatively by 2050, with a base-case estimate of $31.6 trillion produced jointly with Oxford Economics, within a projection range of roughly $22 trillion to $50 trillion. Annual data center spending could rise from about $800 billion in 2026 to roughly $1.8 trillion a year by 2050. But Bain & Company estimates that by 2030 the AI industry will need to generate about $6 trillion in annual revenue to support the computing power and infrastructure now being built, while existing AI services for consumers and businesses may generate only about $1.2 trillion to $1.8 trillion. That means the industry still faces a revenue gap of about $4.2 trillion that must be created from new markets. David Crawford, Bain's global head of technology, said AI infrastructure is being built far ahead of the demand curve, and making that investment sustainable may require raising global GDP growth by about 1 percentage point a year. Goldman Sachs estimates that major hyperscalers will need to generate about $300 billion in AI revenue within a few years just to earn back the money being poured into data centers, chips and networking systems. Under an assumption of a 15% annual return on investment, the six largest U.S. hyperscalers would need to generate combined revenue of about $1.42 trillion in 2028-2030 to support the investment being made in 2026-2027. Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, an economist at Columbia Business School, estimates that AI investment in the United States could total about $9 trillion in 2025-2032, and the U.S. AI industry may need to generate about $3.55 trillion in annual revenue by 2032 to deliver a return on investment of about 10%. Diane Coyle, an economist at the University of Cambridge, notes, however, that major technologies of the past have typically taken about 10 to 50 years for their effects to be fully reflected in productivity figures. Meanwhile, HSBC's Global Entrepreneurial Wealth Report 2026 found that wealthy entrepreneurs worldwide plan to spend a combined total of about $367 billion on AI over the next 12 months, with four in five planning to increase spending on the technology. WIPO said R&D investment by the world's leading companies reached a record high of about $1.5 trillion in 2025, with software- and AI-related companies increasing investment fastest.

Micron Technology reported fiscal fourth-quarter non-GAAP earnings of $33.42 per share on September 30, with quarterly revenue of $54.23 billion and operating cash flow of $43.97 billion, ending the year with $73.48 billion in cash and investments. Data center core revenue climbed to $18.00 billion from $11.52 billion in the prior quarter as AI buildouts widened, and management said agentic AI is pushing server unit growth into the high teens. The company has signed 26 strategic customer agreements covering roughly 35% of its production through 2030, with more than 75% of fiscal 2027 shipments already committed, and it raised HBM prices significantly for calendar 2027 while guiding next quarter's gross margin to about 86.3%. Capital spending reached $27.37 billion this fiscal year, most of the increase going into clean rooms in Idaho and Singapore that will not produce bits until late 2028, and about three-quarters of agreement revenue carries a defined pricing framework with floors and ceilings. Bit shipments in mobile and client fell for a second straight quarter, research spending is set to rise by more than $1 billion in fiscal 2027, and the stock trades at a forward P/E of 7.02 as of October 2, with 184 hedge funds holding it in the most recent quarter, up from 154, and short interest at just 2.45% of float.

Cadence Design Systems introduced a new RTL Generation Agent within its ChipStack AI Super Agent in late September 2026, automating front-end digital design and verification from natural language. The announcement of the RTL Generation Agent came on 22 September 2026, extending ChipStack from verification into spec-to-RTL creation and updates, with early evaluations lined up with customers including Honda. Separately, Cadence tools helped Global Unichip Corp. deliver custom AI accelerators and hyperscale silicon on TSMC's advanced process technologies. Cadence's narrative projects $8.4 billion in revenue and $2.0 billion in earnings by 2029, requiring 12.9% yearly revenue growth and about a $0.6 billion earnings increase from $1.4 billion today, with a $405.47 fair value implying 15% upside to its current price. Some of the lowest ranked analysts were already assuming revenue of about US$8.1 billion and earnings near US$1.7 billion by 2029.

Jim Cramer said on the September 28 episode of Mad Money that Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is developing into a broader technology and infrastructure company, with Starlink, AI computing, and Starship as multiple potential growth engines. Cramer pointed to SpaceX's GPU infrastructure business, saying Elon Musk is renting GPUs bought from NVIDIA to Google at an $11 billion a year run rate and has a similar deal with Anthropic at a $15 billion run rate starting in October, roughly $2.17 billion a month in compute rentals. The company's second-quarter results showed AI revenue of $2.56 billion, up 247% year over year, alongside $14.1 billion in contracted Cloud Services Agreements, though that AI revenue came with a $1.26 billion operating loss. Cramer also highlighted the September 28 Starship flight, which reached orbit and deployed 26 Starlink V3 satellites, but a Raptor Vacuum upper-stage engine shut down prematurely, cutting the planned 10-hour mission to about three hours. SpaceX generated $7.81 billion of second-quarter revenue while spending $18.37 billion on capital expenditures, $15.83 billion of it on AI, and Cramer separately warned that a large amount of restricted stock will become eligible to enter the market over the next year. Insider Monkey reported that 119 hedge fund portfolios held SpaceX at the end of the second quarter of 2026, and the stock trades at a price-to-sales multiple of 85.5x.

Goldman Sachs expects the S&P 500 to deliver another strong earnings season, with artificial intelligence investment driving an increasingly large share of corporate profit growth, according to an Oct. 2 report led by strategist Ben Snider. Consensus forecasts call for S&P 500 earnings per share to rise 27% from a year earlier in the third quarter, a slowdown from the 33% growth recorded in the second quarter after excluding accounting distortions, and Goldman expects most companies to beat consensus estimates again. The headline growth rate masks an unusually concentrated picture: information technology and energy are expected to generate nearly 80% of the index's earnings growth, AI infrastructure companies alone are expected to account for more than half of S&P 500 EPS growth, and the 10 biggest contributors are forecast to generate 68% of that growth, with Micron Technology and Nvidia together accounting for more than one-third. Micron has already reported, posting year-over-year earnings growth of 1,003% and beating consensus estimates. For the median S&P 500 company the outlook is considerably less spectacular, with consensus forecasts calling for EPS growth of 9%, down from 14% in the second quarter, revenue growth slowing to 6% from 7%, and a third-quarter net margin of 14.7% versus 15.1% in the previous quarter. The coming reports could also test whether enormous AI investments are translating into revenue, with consensus forecasts calling for hyperscaler capital spending to jump 116% from a year earlier in the third quarter, accelerating from 87% growth in the second, and Goldman expecting hyperscaler capex to grow more than 50% in 2027 and exceed the roughly $1.1 trillion currently embedded in consensus forecasts. Goldman forecasts S&P 500 EPS of $375 for 2026, up 36% from 2025, followed by $415 in 2027, with a year-end 2026 S&P 500 target of 8,000 and a 12-month target of 8,700.

ASUS announced that the ASUS Googlebook 14 (CX9406CAA) is now available for purchase in the United States, priced at $1,299.00, online at the ASUS Store and Best Buy. The 14-inch ultraportable is the first-ever ASUS laptop designed for Gemini Intelligence, built on a shared Android foundation for seamless integration with Android phones. It weighs just 2.18lbs and measures 0.43 inches thin, with a CNC-machined magnesium-aluminum chassis finished in Dusk Ash and protected by Nano Ceramic Technology, tested to US military-grade MIL-STD 810H and ASUS Superior Durability standards. The laptop runs an Intel Core Ultra 5 325 processor with 16GB LPDDR5X memory and up to a 512GB PCIe 4.0 SSD, and features a 14-inch 16:10 3K OLED HDR touchscreen with up to 1000 nits peak HDR brightness and a 120Hz refresh rate, a six-speaker audio system, and a 70Wh battery rated at up to 18 hours of battery life. Every purchase includes up to $500 in additional value through a curated bundle of apps and services, most notably 12 months of Google AI Pro and 5TB of cloud storage, plus three months of YouTube Premium, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Photoshop, and CapCut Pro, along with 12 months of Luminar and GeForce NOW.

Micron beat sales and profit forecasts for its latest quarter, driven by voracious demand from the AI boom, with guidance also strong except for margin comments on the earnings call that may have caused a muted market reaction. The memory chipmaker added about $43 billion in sales during the most recent quarter compared to the year-ago quarter, and more than $13 billion in sales from the quarter reported three months ago. Operating margins exploded in all business segments, exceeding 80% in some segments. Micron executives signaled tight capacity and higher prices for its products until 2028, with D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria saying expectations for tightening supply-demand conditions through both 2027 and 2028 meaningfully extend the industry's runway for strong pricing and earnings growth. The stock trades on a single-digit forward P/E ratio.

Qualcomm Incorporated unveiled new Snapdragon platforms designed to run AI agents directly on consumer devices at its Snapdragon Summit, as the company positions agentic AI as its next growth phase beyond smartphones. CFO Akash Palkhiwala said the two new chips target the high-end smartphone market with best-in-class gaming and productivity performance and set up the platform for agentic AI. The company is expanding across AI-powered devices, automotive systems, data centers, and physical AI applications, and earlier this month announced a multi-generation collaboration with Amazon to develop customised silicon for large-scale AI data centers focused on AI inference. Qualcomm's forward GAAP P/E of 15.59x sits 6.76% below its 5-year average of 16.72x and below the sector's forward GAAP P/E of 29.51. Hedge fund ownership slipped from 78 funds at the end of Q4 2025 to 71 at the end of Q1 2026, and short interest reached 3.53% of the float as of August 31, 2026.

Bank of America reiterated a Buy rating on Advanced Micro Devices and raised its price target to $720 from $620, citing the company's opportunity to capture a larger share of the rapidly expanding server CPU market. The firm expects the server market to grow from approximately $61 billion to $211 billion by 2030, with roughly $180 billion of that total tied to AI workloads, and sees agentic AI boosting demand for CPUs that coordinate workloads and manage data alongside GPUs. AMD's data center revenue rose 107% in the second quarter to $6.72 billion, driven by EPYC server CPUs and Instinct GPUs, while client business revenue climbed 23% year over year to $3.1 billion on Ryzen demand. The stock has gained more than 180% in 2026 and trades at a forward price-to-earnings multiple of 39X, roughly double Nvidia's 19X, though AMD's gross margin of 54% trails Nvidia's roughly 75%. Hedge fund participation increased to 164 funds holding AMD as of the second quarter, up from 134 in the first quarter, while short interest stood at approximately 39.98 million shares as of September 15, about 2.46% of the float.

Amazon has established an $8 billion special purpose vehicle to buy and lease back Nvidia Grace Blackwell chips to AWS clients, an off balance sheet financing tool for AI hardware as cloud capital demands rise. Morgan Stanley has reinstated Nvidia as a Top Pick, citing its view on AI data center demand and capacity expansion. The Amazon vehicle and the Morgan Stanley call both sit inside a wider Nvidia AI infrastructure story, alongside Nvidia's own US$500 billion ecosystem financing plans. The structure lets AWS keep building AI capacity without stacking all the hardware on its own balance sheet, pointing to new funding structures that can support large orders as AI factories become more capital intensive across cloud and sovereign projects. The clearest early signal on whether the model scales would be other hyperscalers or sovereign AI buyers setting up similar chip vehicles that explicitly name Nvidia hardware, with disclosed sizes and timelines.

Intel's Data Center and AI revenue rose 59% year-over-year to $6.3 billion in the second quarter, outpacing the company's overall topline growth of 25%, as the chipmaker pushes an AI-driven turnaround built on CPUs, ASICs, advanced packaging and its foundry network. CEO Lip-Bu Tan said Intel can currently meet only roughly half of processor demand, a supply constraint the article frames as a potential market-share opportunity rather than a pure setback. Intel holds a 49% stake in chipmaker Altera, which has confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO, and management has issued a mid-20% revenue expansion outlook for 2026. The stock closed at $120.23 on September 30, a 225.83% year-to-date return, giving Intel a market capitalization of $635.55 billion, roughly 11 times trailing revenue of $57.03 billion, with a forward P/E of 63.29x. Hedge fund holdings tracked by Insider Monkey rose to 138 in the second quarter of 2026 from 112 in the first quarter, with BlackRock the largest institutional stakeholder at 426.48 million shares, or 8.46% of outstanding shares, as of June 30.

Nvidia said its board increased its share buyback program by $150 billion, leaving $235 billion in total authorization, the largest buyback program in U.S. history according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Advanced Micro Devices said it would acquire AI model and research lab World Labs in an all-stock transaction valued at nearly $8.2 billion, a deal Citi analyst Atif Malik said gives the company deeper visibility into how AI models are evolving, while RBC analyst Srini Pajjuri said it could help position AMD to offer full-stack solutions for robotics, simulation and physical AI markets. Micron Technology reported fourth-quarter results and an outlook that beat expectations as its strategic customer agreements continued to increase, and Accenture reported fiscal quarterly results that exceeded expectations on both revenue and bookings, sending its shares up nearly 16% on Thursday. HPE closed nearly 4% higher after saying it won a $1.2 billion order of AMD's Helios AI rack from cloud infrastructure company Vultr, and raised its fiscal 2027 networking growth outlook to the high-teens to low-20s on a percentage basis, with data center networking revenue expected to grow at a low-to-high 50s percent compound annual rate through fiscal 2029. Anthropic intends to launch its initial public offering before the Thanksgiving holiday, according to Bloomberg, which also reported that Broadcom's Wall Street syndicate is starting to gather $60 billion of fresh AI chip financing to benefit Anthropic PBC and other companies, while Meta Platforms is adding a new Meta Enterprise Platform for organizations, tapping MongoDB CEO Chirantan Desai to lead it, and introduced Muse for Small Business.

Broadcom is extending a $42 billion convertible note facility to Anthropic, turning the chipmaker into its customer's lender and centralizing control over the AI lab's infrastructure. The facility covers roughly one-third of the $125.2 billion five-year TPU computing lease that sits beneath Anthropic's $518 billion total compute commitment, of which $161.2 billion is owed to Broadcom alone. Under the structure, Broadcom converts its position into equity if Anthropic's eventual IPO succeeds, or retains senior creditor status if the company falters, a dual path Anthropic's prospectus flags as a potential conflict of interest. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has defended the arrangement as a flywheel, while Seaport Research analyst Jay Goldberg said Broadcom is following Nvidia, which has committed up to $100 billion to OpenAI, and AMD, which tied a $5 billion investment in Anthropic to deployment of its MI450 GPUs. Anthropic reported $11.6 billion in Q2 2026 revenue and its first positive adjusted operating profit, but Rothschild & Co managing partner Robert Leitao warned the concentrated bet depends on the two companies generating enough revenue to support the entire financing structure. Broadcom and Anthropic declined to comment on the disclosures.