EU chip industry squeezed by China, U.S. dependence

Jim Cramer said selling Arm Holdings early was a "big mistake," noting on the September 16 episode of Mad Money that the stock has fallen 46% from its June high of $452 to just under $244. Arm's fiscal first quarter 2027 results showed total revenue of $1.29 billion, up 22% year over year, with royalty revenue up 22% to $715 million and licensing revenue up 23% to $574 million, while data-center royalties more than doubled and the company posted a non-GAAP operating margin of 41% and $665 million in non-GAAP free cash flow. Management expects Q2 FY27 revenue of $1.38 billion with a $50 million margin of error, non-GAAP operating expenses of about $780 million, and non-GAAP fully diluted earnings per share of $0.47 with a $0.04 margin of error, with results due by November 4. The stock trades at around 110x forward earnings, and short interest stood at 11.52% of the public float as of August 31, while 52 hedge fund portfolios held a stake in the second quarter, up from 46 in the prior period. Cramer argued that panicking over steep pullbacks in dominant tech leaders is a losing game, calling short-term drops buying opportunities for patient investors given Arm's royalty growth and tight supply.

Bank of America estimates Meta Platforms could save roughly $8.5 billion in 2027 by running AI workloads on its own custom silicon instead of buying third-party chips, an outside analyst estimate rather than company guidance. The figure rests on a specific roadmap: Meta plans to deploy its third-generation MTIA 450 chip, code-named Arke, in the first half of 2027, followed by the higher-performance MTIA 500, or Astrid, later that year, both co-developed with Broadcom and aimed at AI inference workloads. BofA models Meta deploying 5 to 6 gigawatts of owned capacity in 2027 at a total cost of roughly $200 billion, assumes chips make up 60% of that spend, and pegs Meta's custom silicon as about 40% cheaper than third-party equivalents. Broadcom CEO Hock Tan said custom chips optimized for a customer's own workloads outperform any GPU and can do so at half the cost, and confirmed Broadcom will deliver three generations of MTIA accelerators to Meta between now and the end of 2027. Meta's FY2026 capex guidance sits at $130 billion to $145 billion, narrowed from $125 billion to $145 billion, with total expense guidance raised to $165 billion to $169 billion, while Q2 2026 revenue reached $60.80 billion, up 27.96% year over year, on advertising revenue of $59.36 billion.

Microchip Technology said its Silicon Storage Technology subsidiary has secured AnalogAI as a customer for its memBrain SAGE intellectual property, a design win that expands the company's exposure to edge AI and neuromorphic computing. The technology combines analog compute-in-memory with ultra-low-power operation to support real-time AI inference and learning directly on edge devices, and AnalogAI plans to use it in processors targeting humanoid robots, drones and vehicles. The win builds on Microchip's technology-licensing momentum, with licensing revenues rising to $42.6 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2027 from $33 million a year earlier, and licensee revenues growing to $163.8 million in fiscal 2026 from $131.1 million in fiscal 2025. Microchip faces intensifying competition in edge AI from NXP Semiconductors, which said AI-enabled processors are expected to represent 15% of industrial and IoT processor revenues in 2026, more than doubling from 2025, and from Texas Instruments, which cited strong demand across robotics, industrial automation and energy infrastructure. Microchip shares have risen 9.2% year to date, trailing the broader Zacks Computer and Technology sector's 16.7% gain, and the stock trades at a forward 12-month price/earnings of 17.31X versus the sector's 20.32X. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Microchip's earnings stands at 92 cents per share, up a couple of cents over the past 30 days and implying 162.86% growth.