GF SEC: Alphabet Inc. Class C (GOOG.US) TPU v9 progress slightly delayed; Marvell Technology, Inc. (MRVL.US) ASIC supply chain position remains solid.

GF SEC stated that Alphabet Inc. Class C's (GOOG.US, GOOGL.US) TPU v9 chip faces a slight delay due to yield issues with the embedded multi-die interconnect bridge (EMIB) substrate. This could have a short-term negative impact on MediaTek, while in the medium to long term, Marvell Technology, Inc. (MRVL.US) remains favorably positioned in Alphabet Inc. Class C's ASIC supply chain. GF SEC analyst Jeff Pu said in an investor report released on Tuesday: "Based on our supply chain research, we believe the progress of Alphabet Inc. Class C's Humufish Core A design has been delayed by approximately 3 weeks, likely due to a redesign, which in turn required modifications to MediaTek's Core B and I/O. While the sample target remains set for November, we now expect tape-out to be delayed to January 2027, mass production tape-out to be delayed to Q2 2027, and shipments potentially delayed to Q1 2028... However, we believe the supply chain has identified the root cause of the EMIB substrate yield issue, which is expected to restore yields from the current 45-50%." GF SEC also emphasized that Alphabet Inc. Class C's TPU demand is strong for both internal use and external customers, with external customers including Anthropic. The firm noted that this may be one of the factors behind the later-than-expected release of Gemini 4. Pu stated that the recently released Gemini 4 may have been pre-trained on a cluster of approximately 200,000 TPU v7 chips, demonstrating outstanding performance in coding, reasoning, enterprise applications, cybersecurity, and recursive self-improvement. However, Alphabet Inc. Class C appears to be lagging, as a significant portion of its TPU v7 is allocated to external customers, especially in the first half of 2026. Although Alphabet Inc. Class C is increasing internal TPU allocation in the second half of 2026, competition for compute resources remains intense; however, increased internal allocation of TPU v7 may lay a better foundation for the next-generation Gemini model.