Winbond president Chen Pei-ming said the company’s 14-nanometre process will come in two generations, one without and one with extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, and that if development goes smoothly Winbond expects to introduce EUV in 2030, MoneyDJ reported on 9 November, in our translation.
Winbond reported third-quarter net profit of NT$35.422 billion on 3 November, up 45.7% from the previous quarter and 11 times from a year earlier, according to Anue’s report of its results. Nanya Technology, also based in Taiwan, reported third-quarter net profit of NT$87.627 billion and says its EUV work is proceeding as planned.
The X account @jukan05 framed the plans as “another ripple effect of the memory supercycle”, writing that Taiwanese DRAM makers “have made so much money that they’re now looking to buy EUV scanners”.
Business Pill · GPUs Explained
An evergreen Business Engineer explainer on GPUs and AI hardware. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss Winbond, Nanya or EUV.
The key insight: Winbond’s president said the company expects to introduce EUV in 2030 if development goes smoothly, with ASML promising its first EUV tool in about two years, MoneyDJ reported. Nanya’s net profit for the first nine months of 2026 was NT$163.877 billion, equal to 47.3% of its reported NT$346.6 billion Fab 5A cap, by our arithmetic.
Chen said Winbond has worked with ASML on EUV for about three and a half years and is sending staff to ASML for training, trial runs and measurement, according to MoneyDJ. The equipment maker has promised Winbond its first EUV tool in about two years, and later tools would take about three and a half years at current lead times, Chen said.
The investment of more than NT$70 billion approved recently covers Module B civil works, mechanical and electrical facilities and some long-lead-time equipment, and is not the total for Module B, Chen said. For the fourth quarter, he said memory prices will still rise and revenue should keep growing, but by less than in previous quarters, and that the current price increases cannot be treated as something that will keep going up.
Nanya’s January to September 2026 net profit against its reported NT$346.6 billion Fab 5A cap for 2026 to 2029, and Winbond’s third-quarter net profit against the more than NT$70 billion it approved for Module B. NT$ billion. The ratios are our arithmetic.
What Was Posted on X
Another ripple effect of the memory supercycle: Taiwanese DRAM makers I thought were on their last legs have made so much money that they’re now looking to buy EUV scanners to develop DRAM on more advanced nodes.
Nanya has already announced its plans, and Winbond is reportedly aiming to bring DRAM made with EUV lithography to market by 2030.
The X account @jukan05 posted on 9 November that Taiwanese DRAM makers have made so much money in the memory supercycle that they are now looking to buy EUV scanners, saying Nanya has announced its plans and Winbond is reportedly aiming for EUV-made DRAM by 2030. This piece reads MoneyDJ’s 9 November report on Winbond in full and translates it.
Nanya’s EUV Fab
Nanya said it would deploy EUV in an April 2021 press release announcing a new 10nm-class DRAM fab in New Taipei City with capacity of about 45,000 wafers a month. In August, Commercial Times reported that Nanya had launched a Fab 5A investment plan for 2026 to 2029 capped at NT$346.6 billion, including EUV equipment, according to TrendForce.
TrendForce’s summary of that report puts wafer starts in the second half of 2027 and output at 30,000 wafers a month in 2028. On 12 October Nanya reported third-quarter revenue of NT$133.649 billion and a gross margin of 85.7%, according to TechNews, with average DRAM selling prices up more than 60% from the previous quarter.
Profits Against the Spending
Nanya’s net profit for the first nine months of 2026 was NT$163.877 billion, equal to 47.3% of the NT$346.6 billion Fab 5A cap for 2026 to 2029, by our arithmetic. Its third-quarter profit alone was 25.3% of that cap, also by our arithmetic.
Winbond’s third-quarter profit of NT$35.422 billion is equal to about half of the more than NT$70 billion it approved for Module B, by our arithmetic. Neither company has said its profits will fund EUV directly.
Connecting the Coverage
For comparison, we reported in SK Hynix EUV Order Equals Up to 29 ASML Tools at 2025 Prices that lead times for critical tools had stretched to as much as twice what they were, according to that report. That piece put ASML’s 2025 average at about €237.4 million per standard EUV system, from its annual report; our guide to ASML machine pricing has the full range.
As we read the two companies’ numbers, the EUV plans now sit alongside large quarterly profits: Nanya’s third-quarter gross margin was 85.7% and Winbond’s was 70.6%, according to TechNews and Anue.
As we read Chen’s remarks, Winbond is staging the spending: the more than NT$70 billion approved covers Module B civil works and some long-lead-time equipment, and is not Module B’s total, he said.
Winbond president Chen Pei-ming, via MoneyDJ (our translation)
“if development goes smoothly, it expects to introduce EUV in 2030”
Three Implications
FOR ASML Winbond says ASML has promised its first EUV tool in about two years, with later tools at about three and a half years at current lead times.
FOR NANYA TrendForce, summarising Commercial Times, puts Fab 5A wafer starts in the second half of 2027 and 30,000 wafers a month in 2028.
NEXT DATA POINT Winbond’s president said fourth-quarter revenue should keep growing, but by less than in previous quarters.
The framework says: “HBM growth is outpacing accelerator demand, making memory the rate-limiting factor in the AI scaling equation.”
As we read it, the framework is about HBM; Winbond and Nanya are not named in it and it predates their results. Their EUV plans are set out in the reports cited above.
What Is Not Established
Winbond’s 2030 date depends, in Chen’s words, on development going smoothly, and Winbond has not given a total EUV budget. The Fab 5A cap and wafer schedule come from Commercial Times as summarised by TrendForce, not from a Nanya filing we read. The Winbond and Nanya quotations are our translations of Chinese-language reports.
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Winbond’s president said the company expects to introduce EUV in 2030 if development goes smoothly, with ASML promising a first tool in about two years. Nanya, which set out an EUV plan in a 2021 press release, made NT$163.877 billion in the first nine months of 2026, equal to 47.3% of its reported Fab 5A cap, by our arithmetic.
A note on sourcing. Winbond’s president is quoted from MoneyDJ’s 9 November report and Winbond’s results from Anue’s 3 November report; Nanya’s results are from TechNews’ 12 October report. All three are Chinese-language and the quotations are our translations. The Fab 5A cap and schedule are Commercial Times’ reporting as summarised by TrendForce. The profit-to-investment ratios are our arithmetic.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
