Calling Nvidia niche feels a bit wild given their status-quo right now, but from a foundry perspective, it seems true. Apple is the anchor tenant that keeps the lights on across 12 different mature and leading-edge fabs.
Nvidia is the high-frequency trader hammering the newest node until the arb closes. Stability usually trades at a discount during a boom, but Wei knows the smartphone replacement cycle is the only predictable cash flow. Apple is smart. If the AI capex cycle flattens in late '27 as models hit diminishing returns, does Apple regain pricing power simply by being the only customer that can guarantee wafer commits five years out?
Explains why Apple is looking to diversify their fabs with Intel. If Intel can stay on their current trajectory and become a legitimate alternative they will do very well as a fab with additional available capacity.
That's great! Apple has the resources to incentivize and invest in alternate production capacity(Intel, Samsung, or others). Sure, it will take years, but a thousand mile journey begins with one step...
I dislike this dramatization in reporting of mundane facts.
So report the facts but sentences like "What Wei probably didn’t tell Cook is that Apple may no longer be his largest client" make it personal, they make you take sides, feel sorry for somebody, feel schadenfreude... (as you can observe in the comments)
There may be an arrogance that we're not vulnerable to these tactics because the topics of conversation are science and tech focused, rather than celebrity culture.
However this post and the comments really debunk that - here we have a clear example of the author turning these people into characters, archetypes of reality tv, and inviting the reader to have an emotional response to what is potentially interesting, but actually just the mundane business matter of dealing with demand spikes.
A normal conversation might take a step back, above the emotional baiting, and instead lament on how TSMC weren't able to develop sufficient supply capacity in time to maximise yield across not just these clients, but many others whom are looking to get involved in the AI hype train. Instead we're seeing something quite different, and quite uninformed. It's reading like a gossip post from an instagram thread.
I notice that HN is actually more vulnerable to these types of conversations. Maybe it's because HN likely weights towards an ASD audience, which has less experience in handling socially driven narratives. I do definitely see here more of the "one-sided" conversation that is typical of ASD.
Tim Cook failing on the Cook doctrine ("We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products that we make") is ironic.
It seems a bit odd that data center operators aren’t willing to put their money where their mouth is.
Data center operators say: expand more quickly.
TSMC says: we need long term demand to justify that.
And all the data center guys say is: don’t worry that won’t be an issue, trust us.
I would think that if they were serious they would commit to cofinancing new foundries or signing long term minimum purchasing agreements.
I find that my cell phone which is 4 generations old and my desktop computer which is 2 generations old are totally adequate for everything I need to do, and I do not need faster processing
I'm surprised that Apple is not considering opening up its own fabs. Tim Cook is all about vertical-integration and they have a mountain of cash that they could use to fund the initial startup capex.
> Apple-TSMC: The Partnership That Built Modern Semiconductors
In 2013, TSMC made a $10 billion bet on a single customer. Morris Chang committed to building 20nm capacity with uncertain economics on the promise that Apple would fill those fabs. “I bet the company, but I didn’t think I would lose,” Chang later said. He was right. Apple’s A8 chip launched in 2014, and TSMC never looked back.
This article repeatedly cites revenue growth numbers as an indicator of Nvidia and Apple’s relative health, which is a very particular way of looking at things. By way of another one, Apple had $416Bn in revenue, which was a 6% increase from the prior year, or about $25Bn, or about all of Nvidia’s revenue in 2023. Apple’s had slow growth in the last 4 years following a big bump during the early pandemic; their 5 year revenue growth, though, is still $140Bn, or about $10Bn more than Nvidia’s 2025 revenues. Nvidia has indeed grown like a monster in the last couple years - 35Bn increase from 23-24 and 70Bn increase from 24-25. Those numbers would be 8% and 16% increases for Apple respectively, which I’m sure would make the company a deeply uninteresting slow-growth story compared to new upstarts.
I get why the numbers are presented the way they are, but it always gets weird when talking about companies of Apple’s size - percent increases that underwhelm Wall Street correspond to raw numbers that most companies would sacrifice their CEO to a volcano to attain, and sales flops in Apple’s portfolio mean they only sold enough product to supply double-digit percentages of the US population.
> Nvidia has indeed grown like a monster in the last couple years - 35Bn increase from 23-24 and 70Bn increase from 24-25.
Worringly for Nvidia, Apple is producing products people want and are provenly useful, thus a vast majority of its value is solid, so revenue streams for fabs Apple uses is solid.
Nvidia on the other hand, is producing tangible things of value, GPUs, but which are now largely used in unproven technologies (when stacked against lofty claims) that barely more than a few seem to want, so Nvidia's revenue stream seems flimsy at best in the AI boom.
The only proven revenue stream Nvidia has (had?) is GPUs for display and visualisation (gaming, graphics, and non-AI non-crypto compute, etc.)
Because shares are no longer about investing in a company that is making healthy margins and has a solid business, that will pay you a decent dividend in return for your investment.
Shares are a short-term speculative gamble; you buy them in the hope that the price will rise and then you can sell them for a profit. Sometimes the gap between these two events is measured in milliseconds.
So the only thing that matters to Wall St is growth. If the company is growing then its price will probably rise. If it's not, it won't. Current size is unimportant. Current earnings are unimportant (unless they are used to fund growth). Nvidia is sexy, Apple is not, despite all the things you say (which are true).
I'm not even sure how to compare revenue, whether relative or absolute, when Nvidia is deeply involved in multiple deals that have all the signs of circular financing scams.
70 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 67.8 ms ] thread(Apple is well known for shoving "lesser vendors" out of the way at TSMC)
Nvidia is the high-frequency trader hammering the newest node until the arb closes. Stability usually trades at a discount during a boom, but Wei knows the smartphone replacement cycle is the only predictable cash flow. Apple is smart. If the AI capex cycle flattens in late '27 as models hit diminishing returns, does Apple regain pricing power simply by being the only customer that can guarantee wafer commits five years out?
So report the facts but sentences like "What Wei probably didn’t tell Cook is that Apple may no longer be his largest client" make it personal, they make you take sides, feel sorry for somebody, feel schadenfreude... (as you can observe in the comments)
However this post and the comments really debunk that - here we have a clear example of the author turning these people into characters, archetypes of reality tv, and inviting the reader to have an emotional response to what is potentially interesting, but actually just the mundane business matter of dealing with demand spikes.
A normal conversation might take a step back, above the emotional baiting, and instead lament on how TSMC weren't able to develop sufficient supply capacity in time to maximise yield across not just these clients, but many others whom are looking to get involved in the AI hype train. Instead we're seeing something quite different, and quite uninformed. It's reading like a gossip post from an instagram thread.
I notice that HN is actually more vulnerable to these types of conversations. Maybe it's because HN likely weights towards an ASD audience, which has less experience in handling socially driven narratives. I do definitely see here more of the "one-sided" conversation that is typical of ASD.
I know about the existence of the initiative but I don't know how it is progressing / what is actually going on on that front.
Also Nvidia's margins are higher which means that they will be willing to pay a higher unit price.
This seems like an open and closed case from TSMC's side.
I don’t know the hedge to position against this but I’m pretty sure China will make good on its promise.
> Apple-TSMC: The Partnership That Built Modern Semiconductors
In 2013, TSMC made a $10 billion bet on a single customer. Morris Chang committed to building 20nm capacity with uncertain economics on the promise that Apple would fill those fabs. “I bet the company, but I didn’t think I would lose,” Chang later said. He was right. Apple’s A8 chip launched in 2014, and TSMC never looked back.
https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/apple-tsmc-the-partner...
I get why the numbers are presented the way they are, but it always gets weird when talking about companies of Apple’s size - percent increases that underwhelm Wall Street correspond to raw numbers that most companies would sacrifice their CEO to a volcano to attain, and sales flops in Apple’s portfolio mean they only sold enough product to supply double-digit percentages of the US population.
Worringly for Nvidia, Apple is producing products people want and are provenly useful, thus a vast majority of its value is solid, so revenue streams for fabs Apple uses is solid.
Nvidia on the other hand, is producing tangible things of value, GPUs, but which are now largely used in unproven technologies (when stacked against lofty claims) that barely more than a few seem to want, so Nvidia's revenue stream seems flimsy at best in the AI boom.
The only proven revenue stream Nvidia has (had?) is GPUs for display and visualisation (gaming, graphics, and non-AI non-crypto compute, etc.)
Shares are a short-term speculative gamble; you buy them in the hope that the price will rise and then you can sell them for a profit. Sometimes the gap between these two events is measured in milliseconds.
So the only thing that matters to Wall St is growth. If the company is growing then its price will probably rise. If it's not, it won't. Current size is unimportant. Current earnings are unimportant (unless they are used to fund growth). Nvidia is sexy, Apple is not, despite all the things you say (which are true).