This week’s deep dive uncovers one of the most overlooked winners of the global AI hardware race: Chroma ATE, the Taiwanese test-and-measurement company quietly sitting at the heart of Nvidia’s supply chain.
While CoWoS packaging gets the headlines, the real bottleneck has become testing—both power and system-level. Chroma’s machines are the final gate every GB200 must pass through before it ships. And as AI servers double and triple their power draw, Chroma has turned a once-niche business into one of the most profitable corners of the semiconductor industry.
How profitable? Gross margins now exceed TSMC’s peak pandemic-era levels.
Why? A mix of high-power test equipment, unshakeable customer dependence, a sudden shift toward 800-volt DC power architectures, and demand so intense that “prices are up—so why roll them back?”
This week’s story breaks down how Chroma became indispensable to Nvidia, why its margins have blown past expectations, and how it’s now preparing to challenge KLA for a place inside TSMC’s fabs.
cwnewsroom.substack.com
While CoWoS packaging gets the headlines, the real bottleneck has become testing—both power and system-level. Chroma’s machines are the final gate every GB200 must pass through before it ships. And as AI servers double and triple their power draw, Chroma has turned a once-niche business into one of the most profitable corners of the semiconductor industry.
How profitable? Gross margins now exceed TSMC’s peak pandemic-era levels.
Why? A mix of high-power test equipment, unshakeable customer dependence, a sudden shift toward 800-volt DC power architectures, and demand so intense that “prices are up—so why roll them back?”
This week’s story breaks down how Chroma became indispensable to Nvidia, why its margins have blown past expectations, and how it’s now preparing to challenge KLA for a place inside TSMC’s fabs.
The Testing Giant You May Not Know — and Why Nvidia Can’t Ship Chips Without It
Liang-rong Chen
cwnewsroom.substack.com