Samsung guides to an $80 billion quarter. TSMC's September sales rose 54.6%

The question hanging over AI stocks this month has been whether the spending can keep growing at this pace. Two of the companies closest to that spending answered overnight with some of the largest numbers the chip industry has ever produced.

Samsung: a quarter unlike any before it

Samsung Electronics said its preliminary third-quarter operating profit was 107.4 trillion won, or roughly $80 billion. That compares with 12.17 trillion won in the same quarter last year, an increase of about 783%, and with 89.49 trillion won in the second quarter, a rise of about 20% in three months.

The driver is memory. Prices and demand for the high-bandwidth memory that sits beside AI processors have climbed sharply as data-center builders race to secure supply, and conventional memory has tightened along with it. Reports ahead of the release suggested memory margins could top 80%. Samsung's results are preliminary; the company publishes a full breakdown by division on October 29.

TSMC: near a record, again

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, which makes chips for Nvidia and Apple, reported September revenue of NT$511.86 billion, about $16.03 billion. That was 54.6% higher than a year earlier and only 0.6% below August, which was the company's highest month on record.

For the first nine months of 2026, TSMC's revenue totaled NT$3,898.73 billion, up 41.1% from the same stretch last year. Based on its monthly reports, Euronews calculated third-quarter revenue at about NT$1.49 trillion, or roughly $46.8 billion, which would be above the top of the $44.6 billion to $45.8 billion range TSMC guided to. The company reports full quarterly results and gives its outlook on October 15, a day after Dutch equipment maker ASML.

Monthly sales tell you how much was shipped. The October 15 call will tell investors how much TSMC expects to ship next, and at what margin.

Broadcom's $50 billion financing question

The other headline in the sector is about how this build-out gets paid for. Broadcom is arranging more than $50 billion in financing for the custom AI chips it is developing with OpenAI, The Wall Street Journal reported, with Apollo Global Management and Blackstone in talks to participate. The talks are said to be early and the size could change.

That kind of deal is part of a broader shift: chip suppliers and private credit firms increasingly help AI developers fund the hardware they buy. It also feeds the debate that has kept some investors cautious, namely how much of the AI boom rests on borrowed money. Broadcom shares slipped more than 1% in early premarket trading after the report.

How US chip stocks are trading

The overnight numbers did not translate into an across-the-board rally. TSMC's US-listed shares and Micron Technology were both down more than 1% early in the premarket, as rising Treasury yields weighed on the broader market. Micron had been one of Wednesday's best performers in the S&P 500.

Elsewhere in AI infrastructure, Applied Digital rose about 3.9% to $24.73 in premarket trading after first-quarter results beat expectations and the data-center operator announced an agreement securing up to 1 gigawatt of power capacity in Finland. Wolfspeed added between 16% and 18% before the bell, extending its after-hours jump on a conditional loan commitment of up to $1.5 billion from the Department of War.

What comes next

The calendar for the chip trade is busy over the next two weeks:

• October 14 — ASML reports third-quarter results.
• October 15 — TSMC reports full third-quarter results and its outlook.
• October 29 — Samsung releases detailed third-quarter figures by division.

The bottom line

Samsung and TSMC confirmed that AI demand was still accelerating through September, at least at the companies that make the chips and memory. The open questions sit elsewhere: how long data-center customers can keep spending at this rate, how much of it is financed with debt, and how high bond yields can go before investors pay less for that growth. The October 15 TSMC call is the next major read on all three.