Want to know where the money is flowing in the artificial-intelligence boom? Just check out Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing and SoftBank's reports on Tuesday.
Taiwan Semiconductor, or TSMC, is making a habit of reporting record monthly revenue. And while it doesn't release commentary or a detailed breakdown of its revenue alongside monthly figures, that growth is being driven by the need for AI chips.
October was no different as TSMC reported monthly revenue of 586.89 billion New Taiwan dollars ($17.84 billion), an increase of 60% from the same period a year before and up 15% from the preceding month.
The Taiwanese chip manufacturer has forecast 2026 revenue to grow by more than 40%. It remains well on track, with its revenue for the period from January to the end of October rising 43% from the same period in 2025.
TSMC apparently has some cash to spare-it was revealed on Tuesday in board meeting minutes that the company will invest up to $500 million in each of Anthropic and OpenAI.
American depositary receipts of TSMC were broadly flat in premarket trading Tuesday, having risen 28% this year so far through Monday's close.
Of course, someone has to be on the other side of all this hardware spending. One of the big spenders is Japan's SoftBank Group, which on Tuesday reported its first quarterly loss in nearly two years -- hit by $3.7 billion in losses related to equipment for U.S. data-center projects.
The hardware in question wasn't TSMC-made chips, instead SoftBank said it was about power-generation equipment that it rushed to buy in advance and is now reassessing. However, that could eventually be soothed by rebates of up to $2.1 billion on future purchases.
Still, the overall picture is that SoftBank's huge borrowing to fund bets on AI is coming into question amid fears Democrats will slow data-center construction in the U.S. The stock is down 12% this year so far and has dropped 27% in the past month.
Its single biggest AI bet is on ChatGPT-developer OpenAI. SoftBank has invested $64.6 billion for a 13% stake in the AI company. It hopes that will be worth a lot more when OpenAI completes its much-anticipated initial public offering.
But with OpenAI's rival Anthropic slashing the valuation of its own IPO from initial hopes of around $2 trillion to around half that Tuesday, it is yet to be seen if SoftBank will eventually come out on the winning side of its wager.