Wistron says AI demand real — US plants start production H1 2026; orders backed through 2027
Wistron chairman Simon Lin said the AI hardware boom is genuine and expects strong growth in AI-related orders through 2027. Wistron (supplier to Nvidia) forecasts major order growth in 2026 vs 2025. Its new US manufacturing plants — part of a broader Nvidia effort to build AI servers onshore — are on track to begin production in the first half of 2026, with some capacity dedicated to Nvidia’s project to build up to $500 billion of AI servers in the US over four years. Industry figures support the outlook: the global semiconductor market approached $1 trillion in early 2026, logic and memory chips grew >30% year‑over‑year, and Foxconn reported January revenue up 35.5% driven by AI server shipments. Nvidia’s next-generation Rubin/Vera platform entered mass production (3nm) and is expected to ship large volumes in H2 2026, increasing demand for advanced assembly and supply‑chain capacity. Orders for AI servers are reported to extend through 2027, reflecting infrastructure demand for both training and inference workloads. Key implications: accelerated US onshoring of AI server manufacture, elevated hardware order visibility through 2027, and intensified demand for advanced-node chips and server assembly capacity.
Bullish
This news is bullish for crypto markets indirectly through improved macro and infrastructure sentiment. Key drivers: 1) Strong, multi-year hardware demand (orders through 2027) and major onshoring projects reduce supply uncertainty and signal sustained enterprise spending on AI — a sector that has been a major driver of risk-on flows into tech and related assets. 2) Nvidia’s Rubin/Vera mass production (3nm) and $500B server program imply ongoing capital expenditure across suppliers (Wistron, Foxconn, foundries), which supports chip, data-center, and cloud ecosystems that pair with blockchain projects (e.g., AI-accelerated analytics, oracle services, and L2 indexing). 3) The market reaction to prior large-scale AI hardware commitments has tended to lift risk assets and tech equities; traders often rotate gains into correlated crypto assets (BTC, ETH) on improved risk appetite. Short-term impact: positive sentiment spike for risk assets and increased volatility as traders price in stronger tech demand and hardware earnings; possible outperformance of infrastructure- and AI-adjacent tokens. Long-term impact: structurally higher demand for compute supports growth in on-chain AI use cases and cloud services that could increase enterprise crypto adoption and token utility. Risks: macro shocks, regulatory setbacks, or supply-chain bottlenecks could temper enthusiasm. Overall, the article signals durable demand that favors a bullish stance for markets sensitive to AI and tech-capex cycles.