Nomura: It is too early to determine that chip stocks have peaked; AI server demand and supply chain bottlenecks are still forcing cloud providers to continue investing.

BlockBeats news, July 2 - Nomura recently stated in a semiconductor deep-dive report that cloud vendors will still find it difficult to halt expansion by 2027. The iteration of AI models, growth in inference demand, expansion of data center construction plans, and tight supply in storage and advanced packaging will all compel cloud vendors to continue locking down chip, packaging, substrate, storage, and server resources.

Nomura's logic is that AI capital expenditure is not a short-term choice for a single company, but rather competitive pressure among large cloud platforms. As long as Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta, and others are still competing for AI models, enterprise customers, and inference traffic, they will find it hard to voluntarily slow down infrastructure construction. Even if costs rise, stopping may mean losing their platform competitive position.

The report specifically mentions that while TSMC is expanding CoWoS advanced packaging capacity, small substrate suppliers could become a new bottleneck. In other words, the bottleneck is not only in GPUs but also in advanced packaging, ABF/substrates, HBM, server assembly, and power infrastructure.

Nomura therefore favors supply chain companies such as TSMC, ASE, Aspeed, MediaTek, GlobalWafers, KYEC, Elite Material, and Zhen Ding. Its assessment contrasts with concerns about an "AI overheating": the real issue is not that demand disappears, but that the supply chain is still insufficient; as long as bottlenecks exist, cloud vendors will continue to pay for scarce capacity.