Nvidia just answered the question hanging over AI: the boom isn’t slowing, it’s accelerating, with five US giants set to spend $1.3 trillion next year. Boom or bubble, the scale is staggering — and Europe, able to regulate AI but not to build it, is barely at the table.
TSMC reported record June and Q2 2026 revenue — June sales up 67.9% year-on-year to the largest monthly figure in its 40-year history, driven by AI chip demand, with 3nm and advanced packaging sold out through year-end. The company makes nearly every leading-edge AI chip on earth and holds 73% of the foundry market, concentrating the entire AI economy on one island in a geopolitically tense strait. But beneath that concentration lies a fact rarely stated: none of those chips can be made without one machine, built only by Europe’s ASML. gafam.ai reads the chokepoint Europe actually holds.