Nvidia will stay TSMC’s biggest customer in 2027, but AMD’s EPYC Venice could pinch the CPU bragging rights.
TSMC is seeing rising demand for 2.5D advanced packaging as CPUs become more important in the agentic AI bunfight. Apparently, GPUs alone are no longer enough to feed the machine.
Morgan Stanley reckons Nvidia will remain TSMC’s largest CoWoS customer in 2027. TSMC is expected to reach wafer capacity of 200,000 wafers a month that year.
Nvidia is using TSMC’s CoWoS packaging for two main product families. CoWoS-L is for AI GPUs such as Blackwell and Rubin, while CoWoS-R is for Vera CPUs.
CoWoS-L capacity is expected to hit about 910,000 units, up 40 per cent year on year. Vera shipments are expected to double, which would help Nvidia lift data centre revenue by 52 per cent.
Morgan Stanley said:“Nvidia uses TSMC’s CoWoS-L as the single source for all its AI GPU products (e.g. Blackwell and Rubin). Its 2027 CoWoS-L consumption could reach ~910k, up ~40 per cent year on year. Strong CoWoS-R bookings by Nvidia suggest room for AI GPM products (such as doubling). Taken together, we estimate Nvidia’s 2027 forecast for Nvidia’s data centre revenue to rise 52 per cent year on year.”
Nvidia has been pivoting harder into CPUs to claw back China revenue after GPU restrictions. Several customers have shown interest in Vera CPUs.
The company has hand-delivered the first Vera CPUs to Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceX and Oracle. Nothing says “agentic AI era” like an expensive chip being passed around the usual suspects.
The problem for Nvidia is that AMD is not politely standing at the back. Its next-generation EPYC Venice platform is already in volume production at TSMC.
Venice is based on AMD’s upcoming Zen 6 architecture and is expected to deliver better performance and efficiency. It targets both AI and HPC, while Vera is being pitched squarely at agentic AI.
Morgan Stanley projects Nvidia’s Vera CPUs could reach 5.75 million units by 2027. AMD’s EPYC Venice, though, could reach 6.75 million units in 2027. That is 17 per cent more than Vera and 5.4 times its expected 2026 volume.
“Based on our CoWoS consumption forecasts, Nvidia’s 5nm Vera CPU could grow to 5.75mn units in 2027, while AMD’s 2nm Venice CPU may reach 6.75mn units in 2027 vs. ~1.25mn in 2026,” the beancounters said.
AMD has another advantage on paper, with Venice using TSMC’s advanced 2-nanometre process. Vera is based on a 3-nanometre process. The real headache for both companies may not be each other. It is custom silicon, where the cloud crowd is deciding that buying chips off the shelf is for the riffraff.
OpenAI, Google, Amazon and others are either talking up custom chips or already building them. That turns the AI supply chain into a fight between outside suppliers and in-house silicon vanity projects.