Taiwan Semi Sends $13 Billion Revenue Update
These developments bring more support for our holdings despite Cloudflare’s sobering layoff announcement.
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The market is being lifted higher by Friday morning’s stronger-than-expected April Employment Report and word from U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio that the U.S is expecting a response from Iran on the proposal to end the war the same day. Whether Iran’s response is one that puts them on a path toward larger talks is to be determined.
While we wait to see what Iran’s response entails, and whether it is a “buy the rumor, sell the news” event, let’s review other developments that have caught our attention on Friday, and what they mean for the Portfolio and its holdings.
Taiwan Semi’s April Revenue Report
Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM), a known manufacturing partner for many companies including Nvidia (NVDA) and Apple (AAPL), reported its April revenue rose 17.5% year over year to $13.1 billion. Much like we’ve discussed with Costco (COST), TSM’s April 2026 revenue increase stands on top of the 22% year over year increase booked in April 2025. And for those that would like greater context about the impact of AI and data center on TSM’s April revenue, April 2026 is 74% higher compared to April 2024.
While TSM does not provide end market color in these monthly reports, Hon Hai, another Nvidia and Apple partners, recently shared its April revenue for Cloud and Networking Products benefited from strong AI, while other Computing Products were flat and Smar Consumer Electronics, which includes PC and smartphones, declined.
This suggests the bulk of TSM’s year over year April revenue increase can be traced back to AI and data center demand, a positive for our positions in Nvidia, but also Marvell (MRVL) and Broadcom (AVGO).
Akamai Notches Big AI Win, Lifting Capex Plans
As part of Akamai’s (AKAM) quarterly results, it announced “that a leading frontier model provider has committed to $1.8 billion over seven years for CIS, further validating our position as a key infrastructure provider in the AI economy.”
CIS refers to Akamai’s Cloud Infrastructure Services segment and while $1.8 billion isn’t the biggest tie up, we’ve heard about so far this year, it goes to show how companies are looking to shore up available and oncoming capacity however they can. It also serves to remind us of the need to look past the big four hyperscalers to neoclouds, like Akamai, CoreWeave (CRWV), Nebius, TensorWave, and others, for a more complete picture of capex spending.
For this announced win, Akamai expects to spend $800 million to $825 million in capex with about $700 million targeted for 2H 2026 and the balance in 1H 2027. That follows the significant jump in capex slated for the current quarter discussed on last night’s earnings call. Management explained that significant jump in current quarter capex “as we start to take delivery of the NVIDIA GPUs we discussed on our last quarterly earnings call.”
Cloudflare on AI Adoption and Job Cuts
Cybersecurity company Cloudflare, which we have some exposure to via the Portfolio’s position in the First Trust Nasdaq Cybersecurity ETF (CIBR), shared its usage of AI increased by more than 600% “in the last three months alone.” Per CEO Matthew Prince, staff across functions from engineering to HR, finance and marketing, are running thousands of AI-driven workflows each day.
On the one hand, that is a very confirming data point about AI adoption and usage, however, Cloudflare is joining the ranks of Block (XYZ) and others citing AI as driving productivity gains to enable job cuts. Alongside those AI comments, Cloudflare announced plans to cure more than 1,100 jobs as it shifts to an “agentic AI-firsts operating model.” That about 20% of its global workforce.
With OpenAI and Anthropic aiming to further penetrate the corporate environment, it would be a mistake to think Cloudflare will be the only company to join those ranks.
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At the time of publication, TheStreet Pro Portfolio was long AAPL, AVGO, CIBR, COST, MRVL and NVDA.
