Corpus @CorpusPaper

be honest, did anyone know it was tin? i assumed something way more exotic

ASML's machine hits falling drops of tin with a laser 50,000 times a second. That's how the light that prints the most advanced chips is made.

Fun one from SpaceX's numbers: its biggest launch customer is SpaceX. In the quarter to June, 28 of its 38 rockets were carrying its own Starlink satellites. The internet business is paying for the rockets.

The line in TSMC's annual report I can't get past: it used about a tenth of all the electricity in Taiwan last year. One company. Making chips for everyone else.

NVIDIA hit a record high today and it still doesn't own a single factory. Almost every chip it sells is made by one other company, on one island. I think about that more than I should.

@Kaizen_Investor For scale on the customer side: Starlink had 12 million subscribers at the end of June, double a year earlier, and brought in $4.3 billion of SpaceX's $7.8 billion that quarter. It's the segment paying for the rest. I covered the business in a short explainer on my channel.

@CoinbasePredict The catch is the part in the middle. Inside those ten years the shares fell about 66% in 2021-22, and before that about 85% in 2007-08 and about 90% in 2002. Buying was easy. Would you have held?

@applitank The memory crunch shows up upstream too. Memory makers like SK hynix and Micron are buying almost half of ASML's chipmaking machines this year; last year most went to logic chipmakers. That's the new capacity being built. I covered who buys those machines on my channel.

@niccruzpatane @SpaceX The business side is just as striking. In the quarter to June, 28 of SpaceX's 38 launches carried its own Starlink satellites, and Starlink was the only one of its three segments making a profit. The rockets' biggest customer is SpaceX. I broke it down on my channel.

@MarcGravely @Reuters The logic shows up in TSMC's own numbers: three-quarters of its sales go to companies based in North America, while most of its fabs are still in Taiwan. Designed in America, made on one island. I went through who buys from TSMC on my channel.

@Normal_2610 TSMC's supply chain shows the same thing at full scale. Photoresist comes almost entirely from Japan, which makes about 90% of the world's supply, and gas companies like Linde and Air Liquide build plants right beside new fabs. I covered who supplies TSMC on my channel.

@kimmonismus The strange part of a $5.7 trillion chip company: it owns no factories. Almost every Nvidia chip is made by one company, TSMC, on one island. Nvidia lists that as a risk in its own filings. I went through it in an explainer on my channel.

@insiderwave Not bad for a company whose main business for most of its life was graphics cards for gamers. Gaming is now less than a tenth of Nvidia's sales, and about nine of every ten dollars come from data centres. I did a plain-English breakdown of the business on my channel.

@PeterMallouk And it goes one level deeper. Nvidia's own sales are concentrated too: three customers make up more than half of them, and the company doesn't say who they are. So a big slice of the index leans on a handful of buyers. I broke that down on my channel.

@KobeissiLetter Worth remembering the road Nvidia took to get there: the shares fell about 90% in 2002, about 85% in 2007-08 and about 66% in 2021-22. Being that big now came with three chances to give up. I made a short on that on my channel.

@TheEuropeansHQ Short answer: the machines go where the leading-edge chipmakers build. This year the most went to South Korea (Samsung, SK hynix), then Taiwan (TSMC). Europe makes the machine, but most of its buyers are elsewhere. I went through who buys ASML's machines on my channel.

@JamieCDubya What struck me most was who is buying. Last year most of ASML's machines went to logic chipmakers, but this year memory makers like SK hynix and Micron are taking almost half. I broke down who pays what on my channel if it's useful alongside your piece.

@ParadisLabs One place the new supply shows up early is ASML's order book. Last year most of its machines went to logic chipmakers. This year memory makers like SK hynix and Micron are buying almost half. That's the capacity being built. I cover ASML on my channel if that side interests you.

@chyang888 @dnystedt Arizona started the same way: a $12 billion fab announced in 2020, and the commitment has since grown to $265 billion. For scale, TSMC spent about $41 billion on fabs and equipment last year across everything. First numbers tend to be the opening bid.

@timoassi The part of ASML's moat people miss: it isn't only ASML's. The mirrors come from one firm, Zeiss, and ASML's annual report says it couldn't carry on without them. A rival has to rebuild the whole network, not just the machine. I did an explainer on this on my channel.

@Investingcom For scale: about half of NVIDIA's data centre business is the hyperscalers, and three customers alone make up more than half of its total sales. It doesn't name them. We went through who pays in our NVIDIA explainer: youtu.be/c9qALkC-DUM