Today's balance sheet: 77% profit growth and first 2nm revenue
TSMC reported Q2 this morning; let me stack the numbers: net income NT$706.56 billion — up 77.4% year-on-year, a record for the fifth consecutive quarter. Revenue US$40.2 billion, up 36%. High-performance computing, the category with AI chips, was 66% of revenue. Node mix: 5nm at 33%, 3nm at 30%, and 2nm entering the revenue line for the first time. June alone was NT$442.68 billion, the highest monthly sales in company history — up 67.9% year-on-year. These are not bubble numbers; this is silicon ordered, fabbed and shipped.[1]
The forward numbers are bolder still: 2026 capex guidance raised from $52-56 billion to $60-64 billion; CEO C.C. Wei added another $100 billion for Arizona, lifting the state commitment to $265 billion — for additional fabs capable of 2nm mass production plus advanced packaging. In Wei's words, the investment will 'foster the development of the U.S. semiconductor ecosystem.' Q3 guidance: revenue of $44.6-45.8 billion at a 56-58% operating margin. The answer to where demand comes from hasn't changed: AI.[1]
What's behind the meter?
News of the electricity to run those chips arrived the same days. Investors led by Blackstone put $5.34 billion into five 'behind-the-meter' plants by gas company Williams for a 49% stake; Williams keeps control at 51%, with a buyout right between years seven and 14. The projects carry philosophers' names: Socrates, Apollo, Aquila, Socrates the Younger, Neo. Socrates, in New Albany, Ohio, will feed 200 MW to a Meta data center campus and is nearing completion; Neo, the largest at 682 MW, comes online in the second half of 2028. The portfolio totals roughly 2.6 GW, against a project backlog above 6 GW.[2]
'Behind the meter' translates as: instead of queueing for years for a grid connection, you generate the power in the data center's backyard. It's no accident that finance's biggest names moved from chips to turbines — the constraint is no longer silicon, it's watts. And note this detail: all 2.6 gigawatts of that portfolio are natural gas. There is no such place as the cloud; there are machines wired to someone's transformer, turbine and gas pipeline. We will keep reading the bill in megawatts.[2]