TrendForce says the NOR Flash market is going through its biggest structural supply and demand shift in nearly ten years as AI products absorb capacity, with high-capacity parts set for 90% to 110% price increases in the second half of 2026 while DRAM spot trade stays thin.
Global foundry revenue climbed 11.5% sequentially to a record US$53.49 billion in 2Q26 on AI and HPC demand, while TrendForce expects TSMC's CoWoS-L to remain the mainstream advanced packaging platform for AI chips through 2028 despite Intel's EMIB-T challenge.
The September WASDE trimmed US corn production and ending stocks and raised season-average farm prices for corn, soybeans and wheat, while a surge in Chinese urea exports and a large Indian tender have pulled nitrogen prices well below the crisis highs seen earlier this year.
Sprott warns global copper mine supply is at risk of its first decline since 2017 even as a wave of imports overwhelms US warehousing capacity in New Orleans, leaving the market split between tight mine fundamentals and ballooning exchange stocks.
Saudi Aramco has told European term buyers they will receive no Saudi crude in October even as the kingdom pushes roughly 60 million barrels back through the Persian Gulf, while LNG and diesel benchmarks stay supported by low European gas stocks and a prolonged Hormuz supply disruption.
Rack-scale AI hardware is repricing the rest of the data centre: Meta's infrastructure chief said 10kW racks are giving way to 100kW-plus racks needing a second high-speed fibre network, liquid cooling and swing-tolerant power, while Nvidia redirected RTX 5090-class silicon into an 84GB workstation part as memory, not logic, sets the ceiling.
TrendForce reported DDR5 inquiries slowing and some chip prices softening in the week to 15 September while mainstream DDR4 still edged up 0.47% to $45.54, even as HBM3E 2026 contract prices jumped roughly 20% year on year and NAND spot wafers slipped 0.31% to $20.083, a cycle cooling at the margin rather than turning.
TSMC's 3nm and 2nm lines and its CoWoS advanced packaging stayed oversubscribed into late Q3, with overall utilisation near 96.2% and nodes from 16/12nm to 2nm at 100%, as AWS and MediaTek reshuffled allocations and spillover orders flowed to SPIL, Amkor and Powertech.
The September WASDE trimmed the US corn yield for a second straight month to 178.5 bushels per acre and lifted soybean production to a record 4.535 billion bushels, tightening corn carryout to 1.567 billion bushels and pushing the season-average corn price up 30 cents to $4.80 and soybeans up 60 cents to $12.00.
Copper retreated from a record LME cash close of $14,737 a tonne on 8 September to about $14,238 three sessions later after the White House delayed a refined copper tariff decision, but inverted treatment charges and a 1.1% first-half drop in global mine output point to a structural deficit the inventory unwind does not fix.
Brent crude retreated from a four-month high near $108 after Saudi Aramco said it could restore roughly half of the East-West pipeline's capacity within days, even as EIA data showed global oil inventories down about 400 million barrels since January and US distillate stocks heading below 100 million barrels.
The September WASDE cut the US corn yield to 178.5 bushels per acre from 180.7 and trimmed corn ending stocks to 1.567 billion bushels, while lifting soybean production to a record 4.535 billion bushels and raising season-average farm prices to $4.80 for corn, $12.00 for soybeans and $6.40 for wheat.
Copper held near a three-week low around $14,014 a tonne after LME inventories jumped 3.6% to 242,900 tonnes and the cash contract flipped to a $67.50 discount, while gold rallied as much as 2.8% to above $4,380 an ounce after the Fed's first rate increase since 2023 and iron ore firmed on Chinese pre-holiday restocking.
Lead times for critical semiconductor equipment components have more than doubled, with deposition parts stretching from four to ten months and one laser toolmaker waiting up to 40 months for Japanese components, a bottleneck that now threatens to delay memory and foundry expansion while advanced packaging stays dominated by CoWoS-L.
AMD has notified customers of roughly 10% price increases on AI accelerators, graphics processors and motherboard chipsets effective in 4Q26 to offset higher TSMC wafer pricing, while Intel is reportedly preparing a similar 10% increase in October - the clearest sign yet that foundry cost inflation is passing through to AI hardware buyers.
Executives from OpenAI and Intel said CXL memory lacks the bandwidth and practical use cases to replace HBM inside AI accelerators, leaving Samsung and SK hynix's grip on the AI memory tier intact even as TrendForce expects mobile DRAM contract prices to stop rising and enter a high-level plateau in 4Q26.
Oil eased on signs Saudi Arabia is moving to partially restore its East-West pipeline, but the EIA's September outlook still shows global inventories down about 400 million barrels this year, US distillate stocks falling below 100 million barrels and Brent averaging near $90 in the second half - a forecast finalised before the September 11 outage.
Rack-scale AI systems are being re-priced around memory: Nvidia's NVLink Fusion and MGX rack designs are drawing in more accelerator vendors, while 800G optics remain the volume mainstay and 1.6T modules enter early mass production under tight upstream supply.
TrendForce put second-quarter server DRAM revenue at $75.58 billion, up 53% sequentially, with average contract prices 53-58% higher and DDR5 above 90% of shipments. Supplier inventories are at record lows and the shortage is now expected to run through 2027.
TSMC's 3nm and 2nm capacity and CoWoS advanced packaging remain fully committed into late 2026, with overall utilisation around 96% and leading-edge lines at 100%. Intel's EMIB-T is now in evaluation at five major customers as the first credible alternative.