Marvell and MediaTek are double-booking one tight Taiwan wafer queue
Marvell has promised custom AI silicon will more than double in fiscal 2028 and MediaTek ships its first custom cloud chip this quarter, both out of one Taiwan capacity pool that has already raised its price. Marvell's Investor Day on 6 October and MediaTek's September sales on 8 October will test whose forecast the wafer queue can serve.
Vincent Jiang · 3 min read
The wafer queue raised its price first
MediaTek's Google TPU order book keeps rising, and supply-chain reporting on 1 October says capacity, not demand, is now the limit, with chipmakers and cloud providers fighting for output around Hsinchu 1. The scarcity is already priced: TSMC plans wafer price increases of 3-6% from 2027, steepest on the advanced nodes AI chips use, with tight AI capacity and advanced packaging expected through 2030 2.
One layer down, Unimicron is paying more than NT$10bn (US$313.65m) for a Hukou site to relieve tight ABF substrate supply 3. Marvell has promised custom sales will more than double in fiscal 2028 4; MediaTek has promised its first custom chip this quarter and up to a fifth of its addressable market by 2027 5. Only one of them has put a dollar figure on its place in line.
Only one capacity bet carries a number
MediaTek starts mass production of its first custom AI chip for a major US cloud provider this quarter, expects more than US$2bn of data-center revenue in 2026, and lifted its 2027 addressable-market target to 15-20% from 10-15%, all company-claimed 5. August revenue of NT$64.18bn, up 44.08% year over year, is the validated receipt 56.
Marvell, across the same queue, guided fiscal 2028 revenue to about $18bn with custom sales more than doubling, against what chief executive Matt Murphy called "pervasive industry-wide constraints" 4. Its new chief financial officer, Dan Durn, attached the only hard number in the chain: roughly $1bn of capacity prepayments to suppliers this fiscal year 4. The AT&S Kulim substrate expansion names Marvell as its extra customer, with no value disclosed 78.
Seven rising quarters, then a guide that jumps to $3.15bn
- Revenue
- Estimate
Data
| Revenue | |
|---|---|
| Q4 '24 | $1.82B |
| Q1 '25 | $1.9B |
| Q2 '25 | $2.01B |
| Q3 '25 | $2.08B |
| Q4 '25 | $2.22B |
| Q1 '26 | $2.42B |
| Q2 '26 | $2.74B |
| Q3 '26E (estimate) | $3.15B |
Nvidia wrote the biggest check of the three
Nvidia said on 31 August it is investing $3.5bn in MediaTek, a third whale settling onto the same ramp 9.
Three disclosed checks against one wafer queue, and Nvidia's is the biggest
Data
| Value | |
|---|---|
| Unimicron Hukou substrate site | $0.31B |
| Marvell supplier prepayments, this fiscal year | $1B |
| Nvidia investment in MediaTek | $3.5B |
Who pays if capacity picks the winner
The exposed holder is Marvell's: $231bn at 38.8 times fiscal 2028 consensus earnings, on a 34% net margin that is forecast, not shown, with gross margin guided down this quarter as custom ramps 10. Its Google warrant, sized by JPMorgan's Harlan Sur at $120bn of cumulative revenue over six years if all milestones hit, attaches to the TPU ecosystem, and Murphy says that revenue lands mostly in fiscal 2029 4.
Timing is the fair counterpoint: MediaTek's ramp peaks now and Marvell's later, and the queue pays its owners either way. TSMC's 3-6% rise lands in 2027, and the substrate chain, from Unimicron's Hukou land to AT&S's Kulim build-out, expands against guaranteed demand 237.
No disclosed figure sizes the pool or who holds a place in it, so the collision is a position, not a measurement. The readings arrive on 6 October at Marvell's Investor Day 4 and 8 October with MediaTek's September sales 5.
Deepdive
AI-generated from this story and its cited sources. Not investment advice.
