OpenAI Adds Samsung Foundry as a Second Source, Chipping Away at TSMC's AI Monopoly

Daily Top-10 Movers

Prices are Thursday, September 10, 2026 closes at 4:00 PM EDT. Ranked by absolute price change among semiconductor stocks with market cap ≥$5B.

★ highlighted = today's news-driven movers.

Piper Sandler Bets on Arm's Custom Silicon as Qualcomm, Samsung Haggle Over 2nm

• Piper Sandler initiated coverage of Arm Holdings on September 9 with an Overweight rating and a $320 price target, with analyst David O'Connor arguing the semiconductor market is "starving for compute," per Investing.com. O'Connor estimates Arm holds roughly 50% share across its targeted CPU IP markets and that capturing just 10% of the custom-ASIC market could double the company's current earnings power. Why it matters: fresh sell-side conviction on Arm's shift from licensing fees toward custom-silicon royalties is a distinct read on the AI buildout from GPU-centric names, tied to design wins rather than wafer capacity.
• Samsung Foundry and Qualcomm are struggling to agree on pricing for Qualcomm's next generation of Snapdragon application processors on Samsung's 2-nanometer process, even as Samsung's 2nm yield has improved enough to rebuild Qualcomm's confidence in the node, per Sammy Fans, citing South Korea's TheBell. Qualcomm wants lower manufacturing prices than Samsung is willing to offer, putting 2026 production timing at risk. Why it matters: Samsung's reluctance to discount for a marquee customer it once courted aggressively, after already landing Tesla and Broadcom on the same node, signals the foundry believes it no longer needs to compete purely on price.

China's AI Chipmakers Raise Prices on an HBM Shortage as CXMT Cracks a Flagship Phone

• Huawei, Cambricon, MetaX and Iluvatar CoreX have sharply raised prices on current and next-generation AI processors over the past two months, with Huawei lifting its Ascend 950DT accelerator card above 250,000 yuan ($37,255) — a 20% to 50% jump — as a global high-bandwidth memory shortage squeezes China's efforts to build domestic alternatives to Nvidia, per a Reuters exclusive. Cambricon has repriced its unreleased 690 chip 20% to 30% higher, and Huawei's older Ascend 950PR and 910C accelerator cards have also climbed roughly 30% and 22%, respectively, since the start of the year. Why it matters: Chinese chipmakers have relied on grey-market HBM priced several times above what buyers outside China pay since Washington tightened export controls in December 2024, and passing those costs through in list prices shows the shortage — not policy alone — is now the binding constraint on China's Nvidia-alternative buildout.
• China's ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) is now supplying LPDDR5X mobile DRAM alongside Samsung Electronics in ZTE and ByteDance's new Nubia NaviX Ultra flagship, with CXMT's chips running at 10,667 megabits per second — in the same speed class as Samsung's and SK Hynix's high-end parts, per TrendForce. Samsung is also supplying flash storage for the device. Why it matters: CXMT closing the speed gap in premium mobile DRAM, not just budget phones, marks a new competitive front for Samsung and SK Hynix just as both are extracting record pricing power from the AI-driven memory shortage elsewhere in their businesses.

SMIC Narrows the Gap on Samsung as Applied Materials Guidance Approaches 40% Growth

• Global foundry revenue hit a record $53.49 billion in the second quarter, up 11.5% sequentially, with China's SMIC posting the fastest growth among the top three at 20% quarter-over-quarter to more than $3 billion — narrowing its market share to 5.4% from Samsung Foundry's 5.9%, per Evertiq, citing TrendForce. TSMC still dominates with $40.2 billion in quarterly revenue and 72.5% share as its 2nm node contributed revenue for the first time, while Samsung Foundry grew just 1.8% as new advanced orders including HBM base dies ramp only gradually. Why it matters: SMIC closing the gap on Samsung despite continued US export restrictions on advanced chipmaking tools shows China's mature-node foundry capacity keeps expanding even where Samsung's leading-edge ramp is stalling — a bifurcated foundry picture distinct from TSMC's runaway lead at the top.
• Applied Materials CEO Gary Dickerson told the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference on September 9 that the company is now receiving rolling eight-quarter forecasts and longer-term tool commitments from customers, with revenue growth guidance climbing from more than 20% in February to more than 30% in May and now approaching 40%, per Investing.com's summary of the conference remarks. Why it matters: chipmakers reserving capacity eight quarters out, rather than waiting on spot demand, is a direct read on how far the equipment order backlog now extends beyond the current AI capex cycle — a leading indicator for Lam Research, KLA and Tokyo Electron as much as for Applied Materials itself.

DOJ Probes Nvidia's Groq Deal as Iran Tensions Send Oil, Chip Stocks in Opposite Directions

• The Justice Department is investigating whether Nvidia structured its $20 billion non-exclusive licensing agreement with AI chip startup Groq, announced in December, to avoid mandatory antitrust review, the New York Times reported September 9 and Axios confirmed the next day. Regulators are examining whether pairing the technology license with the hiring of Groq founder Jonathan Ross and several core executives amounted to a deal structured to sidestep merger review. Why it matters: if regulators conclude the structure was designed to dodge Hart-Scott-Rodino reporting, the finding could reach a broader pattern of AI-industry licensing-and-hiring deals that have so far avoided antitrust review entirely.
• The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 316.56 points (0.6%) to 52,064.10 on September 10 as Brent crude surged 3.4% to settle above $101 a barrel after President Trump said Washington was reinstating a naval blockade of Iranian ships in the Strait of Hormuz, per Investing.com. Memory-chip shares led the semiconductor sector lower on the session, with SK Hynix and Micron both falling more than 4.5%. Why it matters: a sustained move toward triple-digit oil revives the same inflation and rate-hike risk that has periodically hit high-multiple AI and memory stocks hardest this year, layering a fresh macro shock onto a memory trade already digesting company-specific news.

SemiAnalysis Maps a Power Crunch as Piper Sandler Calls the Chip Market Compute-Starved

• SemiAnalysis's Energy Model, published September 10 in "What Is So Hard About Behind-The-Meter Power For Datacenters? Part 1," found roughly 75 gigawatts of firm, binding orders for behind-the-meter AI compute in the US, with about 20 gigawatts ordered in the second quarter alone and available grid headroom approaching zero by 2027, per SemiAnalysis. The research house projects more than 40 gigawatts of behind-the-meter datacenter capacity by 2028, powering over half of that year's new US datacenters.
• Piper Sandler initiated Arm Holdings at Overweight with a $320 price target on September 9, with analyst David O'Connor writing that the semiconductor market is "starving for compute" and estimating that capturing just 10% of the custom-ASIC market would double Arm's current earnings power, per Investing.com's summary of the note.

The Fed's Rate Call and India's Chip Summit Frame the Week Ahead

• Wednesday, Sept. 16 — the Federal Reserve announces its next interest-rate decision, the culmination of a two-day FOMC meeting and the most consequential single catalyst for richly-valued AI and semiconductor stocks this month, per the Federal Reserve's meeting calendar.
• Thursday, Sept. 17 — SEMICON India 2026 opens in New Delhi, running through Sept. 19 and bringing global equipment, foundry and packaging suppliers together to court India's nascent chipmaking ambitions, per SEMI's event page.