CXMT hits 10% DRAM share; all three HBM vendors now route base dies through TSMC
Silicon Analysts Weekly for the week of 2026-10-12 to 2026-10-19: CXMT hits 10% DRAM share; all three HBM vendors now route base dies through TSMC. A sourced, provenance-marked briefing on AI-chip supply-chain and pricing movements — HBM pricing, wafer pricing, foundry and CoWoS capacity, per-chip bill-of-materials cost, and HBM qualification status — derived from public data. Part of the Silicon Analysts semiconductor data layer.
Correction: Last week's subject line, "HBM3E price −90.5% WoW", was wrong. Our data agent read a price quoted per gigabit as a price per gigabyte (an 8× unit error) and filed it under the wrong period. HBM3E prices did not fall that week. Our first item, "Samsung × NVIDIA Vera Rubin (HBM3E 12-Hi) now Volume shipping", was also wrong: Vera Rubin uses HBM4, not HBM3E, and no independent source tied those shipments to NVIDIA. Issue #16's "RunPod H200 +27.9% WoW" compared two different RunPod price tiers; the price did not rise. We have fixed all three and added checks to hold items like these for review. (correction log)
The take
The consolidation of NVHBM base-die production at TSMC—now the sole capable foundry for Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron alike—is the structural story of the week: a single-point dependency at the base of every next-gen accelerator stack. Separately, CXMT's jump to 10% global DRAM share in one year is real, but investors are right to question whether AI-cycle pricing and export exposure can hold that together.
What moved this week
COREWEAVE H200 spot $/GPU-hr — +1.2% WoW · full history
DDR5 16GB SPOT spot $/unit — −0.9% WoW · full history
Supply-chain & pricing signals
Samsung Outsources NVHBM Base Dies to TSMC as SF2 Yields Fall 50% Short — Samsung's foundry yields on SF2 process (50-60%) lag TSMC N3 (90%+), forcing all three HBM vendors (Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron) to rely on TSMC for Nvidia's NVHBM base dies. This marks a critical erosion of Samsung's vertical integration in premium AI memory and consolidates TSMC's foundry dominance for next-gen accelerator architectures. (Techtimes) · _In our data:_ SK Hynix — 2 developments tracked this quarter · Market Intelligence · HBM price by generation · HBM market share by vendor
China's CXMT Captures 10% Global DRAM Share; Profit Swing Masks Export Reliance — CXMT forecasts 131-132.5B yuan profit (Jan-Sep 2026) vs. 5.28B yuan loss year-ago, driven by AI DRAM demand surge and price appreciation. Market share jumped from 5% to 10%, yet stock fell 6.5% as investors question sustainability post-cycle and tariff/export control risks from Western chip competition. (CNBC) · _In our data:_ Market Intelligence
Microsoft Exits Nscale UK AI Data Center; Power Grid Delays Until 2030s — Microsoft withdrawal from £2B Loughton AI data center due to UK grid supply delays from end-2026 to 2030+ signals critical infrastructure bottleneck constraining accelerator deployment in Europe. Power grid modernization deficits now explicitly blocking hyperscaler expansion, rippling through semiconductor demand forecasts. (BBC) · _In our data:_ Market Intelligence
HBM Price per GB by Generation — HBM3E (headlined in issue #18) — was $1.55/GB (H2 2025) → now $16.4/GB (2025); the H2 2025 point is removed (Not a 90.5% fall: a July 2026 per-gigabit asking price ($1.5-1.6/Gb, about $12.4/GB) was stored as $/GB and filed under H2 2025.)
RUNPOD H200 on-demand $/GPU-hr (headlined in issue #16) — was $4.59 / $4.00 / $4.31 (other RunPod tiers and pages) → now $3.59/GPU-hr, Community Cloud (RunPod lists H200 on demand at $3.59 (Community Cloud) and $4.59 (Secure Cloud). Our check switched tiers; we show Community.)
Samsung × NVIDIA Vera Rubin (HBM3E 12-Hi) (headlined in issue #18) — was Volume shipping @ 2026-01-01 → now withdrawn (The cited article (Sisa Journal-e, 2026-01-08) reports that Samsung had begun supplying 12-high HBM3E without naming a customer, and that…)
capacity readings (customer allocation) — was 26 published readings in 10 series whose only sources were social posts, forum threads, this site or a search page → now all withdrawn; 8 re-published as 5 new readings citing the original publisher (Withdrawn: these readings cited only social posts, forums, our own pages or a search page. Verified originals are now cited as new readings.)
capacity readings (ramp) — was 14 published readings in 10 series whose only sources were social posts, forum threads, this site or a search page → now all withdrawn; 5 re-published as 4 new readings citing the original publisher (Withdrawn: these readings cited only social posts, forums, our own pages or a search page. Verified originals are now cited as new readings.)
capacity readings (utilization) — was 28 published readings in 11 series whose only sources were social posts, forum threads, this site or a search page → now all withdrawn; 12 re-published as 4 new readings citing the original publisher (Withdrawn: these readings cited only social posts, forums, our own pages or a search page. Verified originals are now cited as new readings.)
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Sourced public intelligence, not insider data. Qualification status changes publish automatically once corroborated, not after human review. Full timelines on the HBM Qualification Tracker.