Memory — DRAM, NAND & HBM

UBS now expects artificial intelligence capital expenditure to reach nearly $1 trillion in 2026 before climbing to around $1.4 trillion in 2027, with surging memory costs accounting for most of the increase. The bank's updated estimates put total AI capex at $998 billion this year, almost double the $506 billion recorded in 2025, and forecast spending of $1.447 trillion next year. Memory is emerging as the main source of that growth, with UBS estimating memory spending will climb from $71 billion in 2025 to $367 billion this year and $923 billion in 2027, while other AI-related costs are estimated at $631 billion in 2026 before declining to $525 billion next year. That means higher memory costs will account for about 60% of the increase in AI capex this year and more than the entire net increase in 2027, and across the two years UBS calculates that roughly 90% of the nearly $1 trillion increase in AI capital expenditure between 2025 and 2027 will come from higher memory spending. Memory represented about 14% of total AI capex in 2025, a share the bank estimates will rise to 37% this year and reach 64% in 2027, and UBS said price-driven increases would add relatively little to real U.S. gross domestic product, instead representing a transfer of income and profits toward memory producers in Asia.

Micron Technology and Intel CEOs cautioned that memory chip shortages and higher prices could persist through 2027, with Micron's leadership indicating on a recent call that supply constraints may only start to ease meaningfully from 2028 onward. Intel's CEO echoed the outlook for extended tightness in DRAM and NAND availability, pointing to heavy AI and data center demand. Micron Technology designs and produces memory and storage hardware used in everything from smartphones and PCs to data centers, so long running tightness in DRAM and NAND supply directly touches the products it sells into these markets. As one of the larger US based chip manufacturers by scale, with a reported market value of about $1.1 trillion, its comments on supply conditions can influence how investors think about capacity planning across the wider semiconductor sector. The clearest test of this read will be how Micron's long term customer agreements and utilization plans look through 2027, especially whether the company keeps reporting high take or pay coverage across its AI oriented memory output as new fabs and its 512GB DDR5 modules move toward volume production in the second half of 2027.

S&P 500 earnings are expected to increase by +24% from the same period last year in the third quarter, the 8th straight quarter of double-digit earnings growth for the index, according to Zacks Investment Research. Earnings are expected to be above the year-earlier level for 14 of the 16 Zacks sectors, with 5 sectors expected to enjoy double-digit growth: Aerospace up +159.3%, Energy up +111.9%, Tech up +41.9%, Basic Materials up +31.2%, and Transportation up +15.1%. The Conglomerates sector is the only one expected to have lower earnings in Q3 relative to the same period last year, down 35.4%, while Consumer Staples earnings are expected to be flat. Excluding the Energy sector, Q3 earnings growth for the S&P 500 drops to +20% from +24%, and excluding the Tech sector, growth for the rest of the index drops to +14.4%. Nvidia's Q3 earnings are expected to increase +90% year-over-year on +91.2% higher revenues, while Micron's year-over-year earnings and revenue growth rates are expected to be +938% and +348.6%, respectively, and Tech sector earnings growth gets cut by slightly more than half once contributions from Nvidia and Micron are excluded. The Q3 earnings season will get the spotlight when the big banks report on October 13th, but the reporting cycle actually got underway with the September 10th quarterly releases from Oracle and Adobe, followed by homebuilder Lennar as the third S&P 500 member to report such Q3 results, with an additional six index members on deck this week including Costco, AutoZone and Darden. Total Q3 earnings for the three S&P 500 members that have reported results already are up +22.6% from the same period last year on +14.9% higher revenues, with 33.3% beating EPS estimates and 66.7% besting revenue estimates.

Intel and SK Hynix are exploring partnership opportunities to manufacture memory chips in the United States, reportedly centered on Intel's long-delayed Ohio manufacturing complex, with possibilities ranging from SK Hynix leasing capacity to a broader joint venture involving cloud companies. No formal partnership has been announced, and SK Hynix stressed that no specific plans or arrangements have been finalized. Since reports of the potential partnership surfaced Wednesday, Intel shares have surged roughly 10%, while SK Hynix has climbed about 5%; SK Hynix stock has risen 20% since its U.S. Nasdaq debut in July, while Intel is up about 4% over the same period. Intel's turnaround is gaining traction independently, with Q2 revenue jumping 25% year over year to $16.1 billion, Data Center and AI revenue surging 59% to $6.3 billion, Intel Foundry revenue up 31%, and management guiding Q3 sales to $15.8-$16.8 billion, while the Zacks Consensus calls for fiscal 2026 revenue to rise nearly 18% and FY26 EPS to soar to $1.50 from $0.42 per share last year. SK Hynix reported record Q2 performance amid robust AI demand, began mass shipments of HBM4 with production expected to ramp through the second half of the year, and shipped samples of HBM4E, while the Zacks Consensus Estimate calls for FY26 revenue to soar over 250% to $240.09 billion and EPS to jump more than 500% to $25.69. Despite its AI-memory leadership, SK Hynix trades at a forward P/E multiple of 7X, while Intel trades at more than 100X forward earnings; SK Hynix carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), while Intel holds a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

KLA Corporation is benefiting from accelerating artificial intelligence infrastructure spending, which is driving higher investments in leading-edge foundry and logic technologies and boosting demand for its process-control solutions. In fiscal 2026, the Semiconductor Process Control segment's revenues increased 12% year over year, and overall fiscal 2026 revenues rose 12% year over year to $13.58 billion. During the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, management raised its calendar 2026 wafer-fabrication equipment market estimate, including advanced packaging, to the low-$150 billion range, up from its previous $140 billion-plus view and approximately $120 billion in calendar 2025. KLAC expects second-half 2026 revenues to be approximately 20% higher than the first half, aided by high-performance computing, high-bandwidth memory, increasing extreme ultraviolet adoption in DRAM and advanced packaging technologies such as hybrid bonding, and said backlog was expected to reach about $12.5 billion. The company faces intensifying competition from Applied Materials, which expects its process diagnostics and control business to grow more than 50% in calendar 2026, and from ASML, which expects advanced foundry and logic revenues to rise about 25% in 2026 and extreme ultraviolet revenues to increase roughly 45%.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is sitting on a record pile of AI networking orders it cannot yet ship, and the gap between bookings and revenue is now the central question for the stock. Orders for the Networks for AI portfolio reached $700 million in fiscal Q3 2026, a new high, after the company blew past its cumulative fiscal 2026 target of at least $2 billion and raised that target to $2.5 billion to $3 billion. The hardware behind those orders includes routers and switches HPE is supplying to Oracle for one of the largest AI cloud infrastructure build-outs, work that extends more than a decade of engineering between Oracle and Juniper Networks, the business HPE acquired last year. Networking revenue rose 10% in fiscal Q3 2026 against a prior-year base that includes Juniper Networks, while networking orders rose 36%, and the segment brought in $2.9 billion of the $12.2 billion in total revenue HPE reported for the quarter. Management attributes the gap to supply, citing memory and wafer capacity that have gated supply since the start of fiscal 2026, and HPE has more than doubled its networking purchase commitments quarter over quarter while signing multiyear supply agreements to lock capacity. Networking revenue growth is guided to 11% to 13% in fiscal Q4 2026 and 14% to 17% in fiscal 2027, with the next scheduled look at the business coming at the Networking Investor Day on September 30, 2026.

Micron demonstrated a 512GB server memory module that holds as much memory as four 128GB modules, with AMD and Intel having validated it for future platforms, but volume production is not expected until the second half of 2027. The company said HBM4 has already crossed $1 billion in revenue, with the 12-high ramp running twice as fast as HBM3E, and CEO Sanjay Mehrotra told investors that DRAM and NAND industry demand continues to significantly exceed industry supply, a tightness he expects to persist beyond calendar 2027. Micron has signed 16 Strategic Customer Agreements covering roughly 25% of revenue over their term, with cumulative minimum-price RPO of approximately $100 billion. The stock trades at a trailing PE of 21x and a forward PE of 6x, with the average analyst target at $1,513.11, against consensus fiscal 2027 EPS of $156.0661 on revenue of $244.46 billion, up from a fiscal 2026 EPS estimate of $73.4388. Micron is now the only US maker in both DRAM and NAND after the SanDisk spinoff left Western Digital out of NAND, though the 2027 pricing backdrop the new module lands into cannot be forecast from here.

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan warned this week that memory prices have jumped 5x to 7x and now account for roughly 75% of the cost of some lower-end phones and laptops, cautioning the shortage could deepen in 2027. Tan told investors the industry faces one of the most severe supply constraints in its history across leading-edge logic, silicon wafers, memory, and subscripts, and said these shortages will persist for the foreseeable future. Intel is pivoting production toward data-center CPUs and now guides 2026 capital expenditure above $20 billion, with 2027 spending set to run significantly higher. Micron Technology echoed the outlook, saying it sees tightness continuing beyond 2027, aligned with SK hynix flagging 2027 as potentially the industry's worst supply year. Micron's $100 billion in take-or-pay remaining performance obligations and $22 billion in customer deposits and letters of credit lock in floor pricing above prior peak margins, while its fiscal third-quarter gross margin hit 84.9% on DRAM pricing gains in the low 60s percentage range and NAND pricing in the mid-80s percentage range.

Apple's iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max went on sale Friday, the company's first new iPhone launch under CEO John Ternus and its first to hit the market amid the AI-driven global memory and storage shortage. The memory crunch pushed the base iPhone 18 Pro to $1,199 and the base iPhone 18 Pro Max to $1,299, a $100 increase over the iPhone 17 Pros. The foldable iPhone Duo is not due out until Oct. 23 and will cost $1,999. Demand for the Pro models is running hot, with orders placed today facing a three-week wait for delivery. Deepwater Asset Management managing partner Gene Munster wrote Friday that Pro model pre-order lead times are about 15% longer than a year ago on launch day, and that the dual-cycle launch, which splits the base iPhone 18, iPhone 18e and iPhone Air 2 into early next year, appears to be helping early sales. The new phones ship with the improved Apple Intelligence platform and AI-powered Siri AI, which remains in beta.

Apple is trading below what a full Siri AI cycle could justify, according to a 24/7 Wall St. analysis, even after posting $109.42 billion in fiscal Q3 revenue, its ninth consecutive EPS beat, and a 22% iPhone growth rate cited by CEO Tim Cook. Shares are up 23.19% year to date and sit near the top of a $235.78 to $344.27 52-week range, but the Street consensus target of $325.66 is essentially flat with the current $334.31 price, while the firm's own model projects a base case of $378.88 and a bull case of $431.31. Reaching $450 by 2027 would require a 34.6% gain and a forward P/E of 46x, roughly 7 turns of multiple expansion above the base case, and depends on three catalysts: a clean Siri AI launch with subscription revenue, memory cost normalization by mid-2027, and iPhone 18 sustaining 22% growth. Cook warned of a 100-year flood in memory pricing and said supply constraints will increase significantly in the September quarter across iPhone, Mac, and iPad, while Q3 gross margin got a roughly 2-percentage-point benefit from one-time tariff refunds. The primary risk is a China revenue reversal that would undercut the growth story entirely.

Micron Technology is trading at roughly 6x forward earnings against a consensus analyst price target of $1,513.11, implying about 59% upside from its current $953.49 share price. The Boise-based memory maker, the only U.S.-headquartered producer of DRAM and NAND at scale, has signed 16 multi-year take-or-pay contracts covering roughly 25% of revenue, backed by $22 billion in cash deposits and letters of credit, with remaining performance obligations near $100 billion. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said AI has elevated the value of memory, and management expects high-bandwidth memory supply tightness to persist beyond calendar 2027, with data-center DRAM and NAND bit shipments projected to more than double from two years ago. Micron has already shipped over $1 billion in HBM4 revenue, with the 12-high volume ramp tracking twice as fast as HBM3E 12-high, and fiscal fourth-quarter guidance calls for record revenue of $50 billion plus or minus $1 billion and non-GAAP earnings per share of $31 plus or minus $1 at a gross margin near 86%. The stock is up 234.28% year-to-date and 501.33% over the past year, and beginning December 9, 2026, Micron plans to increase capital returns and eventually return 100% of excess cash to shareholders.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the company expects to sell roughly twice as many chips next year as it does this year, calling it one of his strongest signals yet that AI demand remains far from exhausted. Speaking to reporters Thursday at a summit in Scotland with King Charles III, Huang said the reason is AI's contribution to different industries and economies, and that people in almost every country Nvidia operates in want to invest in AI. The forecast adds to Nvidia's increasingly aggressive outlook: the company recently said it expects roughly 70% growth in the fiscal year ending January 2028, which would put annual revenue around $673 billion. Nvidia does not disclose total chip unit shipments, making Huang's volume forecast difficult to translate directly into revenue, though its most important products include data-center GPUs, particularly Blackwell and next-generation Rubin systems; Huang said last fall that Nvidia had shipped about 6 million Blackwell GPUs over four quarters. The comments come as investors debate whether hyperscaler spending and model-training demand can keep growing at the breakneck pace seen during the first phase of the AI buildout, with the key question being not simply whether Nvidia can double chip volumes but what that mix looks like, since higher shipments of premium Blackwell and Rubin systems could support enormous revenue growth while greater unit volume at lower average selling prices would produce a different margin outcome.

Bank of America forecasts the global semiconductor market will nearly double to $3.2 trillion by 2030 from $1.7 trillion in 2026, citing continued strength in AI infrastructure, memory and data-center demand. Within that total, BofA expects memory sales to climb from $937 billion in 2026 to $1.8 trillion by 2030, core semiconductor sales to rise from $739 billion to $1.35 trillion, and server-related sales to increase from $359 billion to $848 billion. The bank also projects wafer-fabrication equipment spending will more than double to $359.8 billion by 2030 from $155.9 billion in 2026, with 2027 largely fully booked and contracted across compute, networking and memory vendors and supply expected to stay tight in 2028. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index gained around 3.14% on Thursday after five negative sessions, though it remains up about 91.19% over the past year and 59.14% year to date. BofA flagged a potential slowdown in hyperscalers' AI spending as the biggest risk to its outlook, even as recent calls for a more measured pace of AI development from figures including Dario Amodei, Sam Altman and Elon Musk have weighed on the broader AI trade.

Micron Technology is drawing heavy investor attention, with its shares returning +0.3% over the past month against a -1.3% decline for the Zacks S&P 500 composite, while the Zacks Computer - Integrated Systems industry lost 0.4% over the same period. The chipmaker is expected to post earnings of $31.45 per share for the current quarter, a year-over-year change of +938%, and the Zacks Consensus Estimate has remained unchanged over the last 30 days. For the current fiscal year, the consensus earnings estimate of $73.9 implies a year-over-year change of +791.4%, and for the next fiscal year the consensus estimate of $157.84 indicates a change of +113.6%, both unchanged over the past month. The consensus sales estimate of $50.76 billion for the current quarter points to a year-over-year change of +348.6%, while the $129.63 billion and $248.23 billion estimates for the current and next fiscal years indicate changes of +246.8% and +91.5%, respectively. In the last reported quarter, Micron posted revenues of $41.46 billion, up +345.7% year over year, and EPS of $25.11 versus $1.91 a year ago, beating the Zacks Consensus revenue estimate of $36.72 billion by +12.91% and delivering an EPS surprise of +17.39%. The stock carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) and a Zacks Value Style Score of C, indicating it is trading at par with its peers.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Thursday he expects the company to sell twice as many chips in the next year as it did this year, a signal to investors that demand has not yet peaked. Huang attributed the outlook to AI investment spreading across industries, economies and countries. Management said consumer expectations point to another doubling of growth next year, and Nvidia projected around 70% revenue growth for the fiscal year ending January 2028, bringing revenue to almost $673 billion. Management classified the outlook as supply tight, implying Nvidia's capacity to ship chips could remain one of the largest impediments to growth. Last year, Huang said the company shipped around 6 million Blackwell GPUs in four quarters, and Rubin is now coming up as the next big part of the product cycle.

KKP Research, part of the Kiatnakin Phatra Financial Group, has raised its forecast for Thailand's economic growth in 2026 to 2.5% from 2.1%, and for 2027 to 2.7% from 2.2%, driven by the tourism sector, private investment, and exports linked to the global artificial intelligence investment cycle, or AI capex cycle. It noted, however, that the Thai economy is now fully entering a K-shaped recovery, in which some industries are soaring while the grassroots economy and traditional industries remain sluggish. The main driver comes from the electronics supply chain, particularly the data storage industry and components related to AI infrastructure, in contrast to the country's four core industries, which face continued pressure: the automotive sector, hit by the transition to electric vehicles; petrochemicals, facing regional oversupply; and SMEs and electrical appliances, which must contend with competition from imported goods. KKP Research noted that although the IMF ranks Thailand among the world's four largest exporters of AI-related goods, the country remains constrained by its position at the assembly and contract-manufacturing stage and its heavy reliance on imported raw materials, meaning the domestic economic benefit is smaller than the rise in export value. It proposed that the government link BOI incentives to domestic value creation and set conditions on clean energy and closed-loop water systems. On monetary policy, KKP Research lowered its 2026 inflation forecast to 1.8% and expects the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of Thailand to hold the policy rate through the end of 2027, since inflationary pressure stems from cost factors that are temporary.

SK Hynix is in preliminary talks with Intel to find ways to produce memory chips in the United States, according to an in-depth report by Reuters. The first option is that SK Hynix could seek to lease part of Intel's large chip manufacturing plant in Ohio. Another possible option is the creation of a joint venture between Intel, SK Hynix and a group of major cloud service providers. The move comes amid a severe shortage of memory chips, driven by soaring demand from artificial intelligence and data center technologies worldwide, and it also marks a political victory for the US government under the leadership of Donald Trump, which has pressured chipmakers to move production to the United States. However, the biggest obstacle may come from the South Korean government, since SK Hynix's core products, including DRAM chips, NAND Flash and advanced memory chips such as High-Bandwidth Memory, are all classified as national core technologies. South Korea's Ministry of Trade therefore states that any transfer of technology or establishment of production bases abroad must undergo strict review under the Industrial Technology Protection Act. Meanwhile, insider sources say that building and operating a semiconductor plant in the United States costs far more than in South Korea, including construction costs, labor costs and transportation costs. SK Hynix said it is considering various measures, including building additional production bases, but stressed that everything is still at an early stage and no final decision has been made. Intel declined to comment, saying it was only speculation, while confirming that it will continue to invest in Ohio according to its existing plans.

The global memory shortage is far from over and may drive further upside for Micron Technology and Sandisk Corporation, according to a Zacks Investment Research analysis. TrendForce data cited in the report show regular DRAM contract prices jumped about 90%–95% in the first quarter of 2026, another 58%–63% in the second quarter, and are on track for a further 13%–18% increase in the third quarter, lifting a $1 DRAM chip to roughly $3.50, while NAND flash is up about 3x over the same stretch. IDC expects 2026 supply growth of only about 16% for DRAM and 17% for NAND, well below what AI demand requires, and new fabs from SK Hynix, Micron and Samsung are not expected to meaningfully add output until mid-to-late 2027 or later. Micron's fiscal Q3 revenue reached $41.5 billion, up from $9.3 billion a year ago, with gross margin of roughly 85% and adjusted EPS of $25.11, and management guided fiscal Q4 to roughly $50 billion in revenue, an 86% gross margin and approximately $31 in EPS ahead of its September 30 report. Sandisk's fiscal fourth-quarter revenue reached $8.97 billion, up 51% sequentially, with adjusted EPS of $39.25, and it guided fiscal Q1 to $10.3 billion to $10.8 billion in revenue and adjusted EPS between $44 and $46, with management saying the total NAND market could exceed $300 billion in 2026.

Camtek, the dominant player in advanced packaging inspection and metrology with about 60% market share, is positioning itself for strong growth as AI chip demand expands. In its most recent quarter, roughly 80% of orders were for advanced packaging inspection, driven by memory chip manufacturers transitioning to HBM4 chips and expanding production amid the memory shortage. Camtek's Q2 revenue rose 8% year over year to a record $133 million, and third-quarter revenue is expected to rise about 20% sequentially to around $159 million, with second-half revenue projected to grow 25% over the first half. CEO Rafi Amit said on the Q2 earnings call that the company's leading position in advanced packaging is expected to drive approximately 45% growth in that business in the second half of 2026 compared with the first half. The broader advanced packaging inspection industry is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 11% over the next five years to $6.2 billion, up from $3.7 billion in 2026, and most orders coming in now will be executed in 2027. Camtek stock is up 25% year to date and 52% over the past 12 months, though it has fallen about 35% from its May peak, leaving its trailing P/E around 184 and its forward P/E at 27, with analysts holding a median price target of $190 per share.

Micron Technology is expanding its global manufacturing footprint with a new $2.75 billion semiconductor assembly and test facility in Gujarat, India, as demand for memory and storage accelerates alongside artificial intelligence. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said Micron plans to scale production at the Sanand facility next year, giving the company additional capacity as AI workloads drive heavier demand for DRAM and NAND products. The facility represents a combined investment of roughly $2.75 billion from Micron and its government partners, and Micron has already begun commercial production at Sanand, with finished DRAM and NAND products now being shipped to customers globally. Speaking at SEMICON India 2026, Mehrotra said the Sanand site is the first semiconductor assembly and test facility in India and the first project under the India semiconductor mission, and that its production capacity already exceeds the amount of memory required for India's entire laptop market. The India expansion focuses on conventional assembly and testing while complementing Micron's planned investments in more advanced manufacturing and packaging capacity in the United States.

Arm CEO Rene Haas said demand is running at record strength across edge, automotive, robotics and data center, and that near-term revenue growth is capped by a multi-stage manufacturing bottleneck spanning wafers, substrates, testers and memory rather than by any softening in orders. Data-center royalty revenue more than doubled year over year last quarter, and the most recent 500 million Neoverse cores shipped in nine months after the first billion took six years, while IDC reported spending on Arm-based accelerated server platforms nearly doubled over the past two quarters and surpassed x86. Haas said his confidence in hitting the $2 billion AGI CPU target rose from May to July and again from July to September, after he earlier cut that target to $1 billion on foundry capacity worries, and Arm has secured the manufacturing capacity needed to support the $1 billion opportunity for the AGI CPU. The AGI CPU, Arm's first in-house data center chip, carries first-generation gross margin guidance in the high 30% range to low 40s with a path to 50% over the next couple of years, below core royalty margins, so silicon revenue will initially dilute reported profitability. Arm shares trade at $243.98, down 10.11% over the past month and 7.66% in the last week but up 123.2% year to date, at a trailing P/E near 247x, after Q1 FY2027 EPS of $0.25 missed the $0.40 estimate and operating margin compressed to 7% from 11%; analysts carry an average target of $288.70.

Barclays strategist Venu Krishna warned Thursday that the Federal Reserve's first rate hike since 2023 will not tame the explosive memory chip price inflation driven by the AI boom, calling it a key earnings risk to watch in 2027. Krishna said rapidly expanding compute requirements for training and inference are straining an already limited supply of memory chips. He pointed to recent commentary from major memory buyers, noting that Apple attributed all of its recent gross margin compression to higher memory costs expected to persist near term, while HP Inc. expects memory and storage costs to rise further as a percentage of bill of materials. Samsung, both a memory manufacturer and customer, said pre-booked demand implies a wider memory supply-demand gap in 2027 than in 2026, reinforcing expectations for sustained pricing strength. The market has tightened as demand for high-bandwidth memory and advanced dynamic random-access memory used in AI servers outpaces supply, with SK Hynix, Samsung Electronics, and Micron largely sold out of premium AI memory capacity through much of 2026 as customers including Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta race to build AI infrastructure. Experts expect supply to remain constrained into 2027, a favorable backdrop for producers such as Micron and Sandisk but likely higher-than-expected costs for companies that run their businesses on these chips.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi pitched India as a new global hub for semiconductor production on Thursday, urging technology firms to invest in what he called a reliable location. Speaking at a semiconductor conference in New Delhi, Modi said chips from Indian plants are reaching customers in India and across the world, and he remotely opened commercial production for two sites, taking the number of semiconductor projects in commercial production in India to five. Representatives of Tata Electronics and CG Power, as well as Advantest, Applied Materials, ASML, Foxconn, Intel and Micron, were among those attending, and Modi met senior executives from Indian and global technology companies on Wednesday ahead of the conference. India in July approved a new semiconductor programme, offering more than $13 billion in financial assistance to expand domestic chip production and build a wider semiconductor ecosystem, building on a programme launched in 2021. Modi reiterated plans to train 100,000 engineers for semiconductor projects and 10 million people in artificial intelligence, and India's semiconductor market has expanded from $38 billion in 2023 to an estimated $45-$50 billion in 2024-25, with government targets of $100-$110 billion by 2030.

China has unveiled a new five-year development plan for manufacturing in electronics- and information technology-related industries, setting a target to raise revenue above 30 trillion yuan, or 4.5 trillion dollars, by 2030. The plan was drawn up jointly by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, or MIIT, and the National Development and Reform Commission, or NDRC. It covers the strategic framework from 2026 to 2030 and reflects the Chinese government's push for supply chain self-reliance, aiming for global leadership in strategically important emerging technologies from artificial intelligence to advanced computing, amid ongoing global competition. Beyond the revenue target, China also aims to raise research and development investment in the industry to 3.5% by 2030, setting out 17 missions covering nine key industry groups, from electronic components and materials, specialised manufacturing and measurement equipment, photonics, advanced computing, consumer electronics, power electronics, positioning and timing information technology, chips and AI endpoint devices, through to industrial electronics. The plan also drives technology development in the integrated circuit industry supply chain, while upgrading advanced electronic materials and smart sensors. In computing and memory, China will develop high-bandwidth flash memory alongside new forms of storage products such as Ferroelectric RAM, Resistive RAM and Magnetoresistive RAM, and aims to build very large-scale intelligent computing infrastructure supporting AI clusters equipped with hundreds of thousands of accelerator cards, while accelerating the deployment of space computing technology. The announcement of this sector-specific plan follows China's release on September 7 of its 15th five-year development plan for the information and communications industry, drawn up by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Samsung Electronics agreed a new collaboration with Mistral AI to deploy advanced on-premises AI models in chip manufacturing, and expanded its partnership with ASML to include High NA EUV lithography for future memory and logic production lines. The company plans to use these AI and High NA EUV tools to support precision, security and efficiency in its semiconductor operations. Samsung runs a broad hardware and components portfolio across consumer devices, IT and mobile, and chipmaking, so tighter links with specialist AI model developers and lithography equipment suppliers speak directly to how its device solutions arm positions itself within global semiconductor supply chains. The move strengthens the Samsung Electronics Narrative catalyst around tight memory supply and HBM4E demand, while closer cooperation with ASML on High NA EUV and 12 inch photomasks leans into the heavy R&D and capex risk already flagged, since each new generation of tools can lift capital intensity and execution pressure in fabs. Investors should watch how Samsung describes AI enabled yield, defect detection and High NA EUV deployment progress in its next few quarterly disclosures, especially any 2027 to 2028 updates tied to planned High NA introduction in DRAM high volume manufacturing.

CoreWeave shares rose about 3% Wednesday after the AI cloud provider brought Nvidia's multi-rack Vera Rubin NVL72 system online, connecting hundreds of next-generation Rubin GPUs into a single scale-out cluster. The milestone strengthens CoreWeave's pitch as one of the earliest cloud platforms able to commercialize Nvidia's newest AI hardware, an important differentiator as competition intensifies across AI infrastructure. The announcement builds on CoreWeave's June disclosure that it was the first AI cloud provider to bring a Vera Rubin NVL72 system online. A single NVL72 rack combines 72 Rubin GPUs with 36 Vera CPUs, and CoreWeave's multi-rack configuration links hundreds of accelerators using Nvidia's Spectrum-X Ethernet networking, allowing customers to treat a much larger pool of compute as one cluster. CoreWeave also introduced upgrades to its AI Object Storage platform, including cross-region write acceleration and a new Archive tier, with its Local Object Transport Accelerator able to reduce latency by as much as eight times through managed caching.