Lead
Two of the three companies that matter for AI capex reported this week. TSM beat by 4% on revenue, guided Q2 within the consensus range, and stock did basically nothing. ASML beat, guided lighter than the bull case, and faded 1.8%. That muted price action is the entire story: the market is no longer paying for surprise. It's paying for durability.
What's actually happening in semis
The capex story has shifted from "how big can it get" to "how long can it last." Both TSM and ASML implicitly told us the answer: at least through 2027, with the bottleneck moving from leading-edge wafers to advanced packaging.
Where the money goes from here
Watch CoWoS capacity announcements over the next two quarters. If TSM expands packaging capacity faster than the Street models, NVDA's gross margin floor goes up — not down. That's the variant view.