They say there was a little panic a while back, about artificial intelligence. A bubble, some called it. As if bubbles don’t always pop. So it goes. But the big companies, the ones with more money than sense, decided to throw a lot of it at the problem. Or, you know, at the opportunity. Billions. Just…billions. It’s enough to make you wonder what we’re all doing here.
Microsoft, for instance, decided to spend a bit more. Sixty-six percent more. Thirty-seven and a half billion dollars. Meta, even more. One hundred sixty-two to one hundred sixty-nine billion. Alphabet? Doubled their spending. To around one hundred seventy-five to one hundred eighty-five billion. And Amazon? Two hundred billion. It’s all just numbers, really. Big numbers. Enough to build a lot of things. Or, you know, not.
All this money goes into data centers. Those are the places where the thinking happens. Or, you know, the pretending to think. They’re not cheap. Seven to twelve million dollars just to build one, per megawatt. Then you have to pay for the electricity. And the maintenance. It adds up. It always does.
So, who benefits? Not the philosophers, certainly. Not the poets. No, it’s the people who sell the shovels. Or, in this case, the chips. And two companies stand out. Two companies that will make a tidy profit, no matter who wins the AI race. Because everyone needs chips. It’s a sad, beautiful truth.
Chip and Shovel
First, there’s Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, or TSM. They don’t design chips. They just make them. For everyone else. Apple. Nvidia. They control seventy-two percent of the market. And growing. It’s a lot of power. It’s almost a monopoly. They brought in one hundred twenty-two point forty-two billion dollars last year. Up thirty-five point nine percent. It’s enough to make you feel a little…small.
Taiwan makes sixty percent of the world’s semiconductors. Ninety percent of the advanced ones. The ones that are seven nanometers or smaller. The ones that make the AI algorithms work. It’s a strange thing, isn’t it? A small island nation controlling the future. So it goes.
Every data center needs their chips. And TSM has a moat around its business. A very large, very secure moat. They’re not going anywhere.
High Profits in the Low Countries
But TSM isn’t the only game in town. There’s ASML, a company from the Netherlands. They make the machines that make the chips. Extreme ultraviolet lithography machines. They’re the size of buses. And they cost half a billion dollars. Each. It’s a ridiculous amount of money. But people are paying it. Because ASML is the only company that makes them. A true monopoly. So it goes.
They’re swamped with orders. Making money hand over fist. Thirty-two point six billion euros in sales last year. Up fifteen percent. Their bookings more than doubled. It’s a good time to be in the lithography business. A very good time.
A monopoly? Maybe. But it’s a well-run one. Efficient. Ruthless, even. They know what they’re doing. And they’re not about to stop.
So, there you have it. Two companies. ASML and Taiwan Semiconductor. A two-ticker play on the entire tech industry. And the AI capex war. Who wins that war? It doesn’t really matter. These two will come out on top, regardless. Because they’re foundational. They’re essential. They’re the shovels in this particular gold rush. And that, my friends, makes them worth a look. Even if it all ends in tears.
Read More
- Building 3D Worlds from Words: Is Reinforcement Learning the Key?
- Securing the Agent Ecosystem: Detecting Malicious Workflow Patterns
- Gold Rate Forecast
- 2025 Crypto Wallets: Secure, Smart, and Surprisingly Simple!
- The Best Directors of 2025
- TV Shows Where Asian Representation Felt Like Stereotype Checklists
- Games That Faced Bans in Countries Over Political Themes
- 📢 New Prestige Skin – Hedonist Liberta
- Most Famous Richards in the World
- Top 20 Educational Video Games
2026-03-10 00:52