Justin Halford
Founder of Voyadoc
NVIDIA, AMD, Broadcom, Marvell, MediaTek and Cadence could not look more bearish, because hyperscalers don't want to work with them and are incentivized to cut them out. NVIDIA in particular is being disintermediated by Google's TPU program while priced like a monopoly; a post the author replies to notes it is now worth more than the GDP of every country except the US and China. x.com
Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom, Marvell and MediaTek face long-term pressure because cloud providers will eventually design their own hardware end to end. Fabs are hard to disintermediate since their value is not blueprint-based, which favors TSMC and Intel, along with Google and Amazon. Providers will consolidate: Google will have the cheapest compute and squeeze inefficiency out of the stack, and splitting TPU v8 between MediaTek and Broadcom already weakens each one's future pricing power. x.com x.com
Semiconductors could stay undersupplied for a long time as more capable AI per dollar creates more uses and drives compute demand. Micron and NVIDIA trade at low forward P/Es because investors fear peak cyclical earnings, yet current earnings show no slowdown. Shortages may worsen as AI adoption spreads, though the industry could remain cyclical; a reversal of the forced rollover trade is hoped for, not assured. x.com x.com x.com
Semiconductors may face deflationary telco-equipment economics as chip throughput improves and compute deployment eases. Nvidia's tokens per chip rise dramatically each year; three or four deflationary forces could converge. LLMs sell tokens as carriers sold minutes, leaving consumers the main beneficiaries after penetration. If that analogy holds, few bulls would like either business. App developers may benefit after the customer ramp, though LLM providers could build their own. x.com x.com … Show more
AI infrastructure bottlenecks could give eight stocks as much as 18x upside. Nvidia supplies frontier-model GPUs; Broadcom and Marvell supply custom silicon and networking; TSMC makes advanced chips; Micron supplies sold-out HBM; Vertiv provides power and cooling; Palantir monetizes enterprise AI; Alphabet spans TPUs, research, cloud and apps. The list tracks where AI infrastructure spending is flowing. x.com x.com
Financing risk makes AI-linked growth stocks unattractive to add here. Much of the money reaching suppliers such as Nvidia and Micron is financed, so harder funding would limit spending on chips, compute and memory. The buildout is not over, but stock prices could remain suppressed until it slows. A significant drawdown would make adding appealing; for many high-beta names with weak fundamentals and balance sheets, the highs look to be in. x.com
Nvidia faces risk from its biggest customers' spending pullback, even though it should win as long as chip-cycle demand stays intact. Magnificent Seven free cash flow could turn negative, and Meta and Microsoft are cutting Anthropic spending by more than half. Anthropic is one of the largest consumers of chips, and if it is being cut, OpenAI likely is too, especially on the enterprise side. x.com x.com x.com
Broadcom's integrated optics, electronics and packaging could lower custom-chip system costs because separate suppliers defend their margins. At similar valuations, it is preferred to Nvidia and has more room to beat expectations. Google TPU v8 shipments are estimated at 4.0M in 2026 and 9.1M in 2027, assuming Broadcom supplies the remainder after MediaTek's allocation. Anthropic financing adds value only if chip profit exceeds likely support payments and capacity costs. x.com x.com
Vendor-agnostic AI suppliers benefit from Microsoft's chip news because Microsoft still needs their products and overall compute demand remains intact. Vicor, Lumentum, Micron and Viavi are bullish plays despite concerns about losing Nvidia or AMD platform pricing power. Hock Tan and Lip-Bu Tan's comments on debt and speculation are more concerning for the market than Microsoft's news. x.com x.com x.com
Nvidia faces growing doubt over how much it must finance its own customers to sustain AI demand. It fell 5.1%, erasing about $256 billion, on reports it could backstop up to $250B for an OpenAI data-center project, effectively funding OpenAI to buy its products. CXMT's surging debut added worry about Chinese chip competition. Apple overtook Nvidia as the most valuable company as markets separate AI beneficiaries from firms taking aggressive financial risks to keep the cycle going. x.com
A rising value of compute per watt should benefit AI cloud, chip, connectivity and power suppliers. Elon Musk says that value will rise over time. Nebius has Microsoft and Meta deals; Marvell benefits from custom silicon demand; Credo connects GPUs; Vistra has long-term nuclear supply deals with Amazon and Meta; Nokia's Nvidia partnership could help it capture data-center networking growth. x.com x.com
Broadcom's top growth driver, Google TPUs, can be captured elsewhere, such as through Vicor, while its OpenAI exposure through the Jalapeño chip is unwanted in light of today's news, even if that proves a nothingburger. Broadcom should still do great and may be worth re-entering later, but the capital can find better ways to outperform it. x.com x.com
