Wave‑3 investing: packaging names to watch
Investors are shifting attention to a third wave of AI infrastructure winners — firms that produce advanced packaging and assembly — with names like Amkor (AMKR), ASE/ASX and ONTO called out as potential beneficiaries as packaging bottlenecks persist. (x.com) The thesis: if chipmakers can’t make more die, they’ll pay more to package and integrate existing chips efficiently, which makes specialist packagers a leverage play on AI hardware demand. (x.com)
The new choke point in artificial intelligence chips is no longer just making the silicon. It is the last step: taking multiple finished chip pieces, memory stacks, and substrates and turning them into one working module, and Nvidia has reserved most of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s top packaging capacity. (cnbc.com) That shift is why investors have started looking past the obvious winners like chip designers and foundries. If the number of fresh chip dies is capped, the next way to sell more computing power is to connect existing dies more tightly inside the package. (cnbc.com) (investor.tsmc.com) A chip package used to be a protective shell, like a cardboard box around a product. In artificial intelligence servers, the package now acts more like a motherboard shrunk down to the size of your hand, moving huge amounts of data between logic chips and high bandwidth memory. (investor.tsmc.com) (investors.ontoinnovation.com) Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s main platform here is called chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, or CoWoS. The company said in its 2024 annual report that CoWoS has had strong growth momentum since 2023, and that newer versions entered volume production in 2024 as package sizes kept expanding for high-performance computing. (investor.tsmc.com 1) (investor.tsmc.com 2) Once that becomes the scarce step, companies that specialize in outsourced semiconductor assembly and test get more attention. Amkor Technology and ASE Technology Holding both sit in that lane: they do the packaging and testing work that many chip companies do not keep in-house. (ir.aseglobal.com) (businesswire.com) Amkor’s own numbers show why the market is circling it. The company said 2025 was a “pivotal year,” reported record advanced packaging and computing revenue, and guided 2026 capital spending to roughly $2.5 billion to $3.0 billion after posting $6.71 billion of 2025 sales. (businesswire.com) Amkor also says 82% of its 2024 revenue came from advanced packaging, which means it is not a side bet inside the business. If artificial intelligence demand keeps pushing customers toward more complex multi-chip modules, most of Amkor is already pointed at that trend. (docs.publicnow.com) ASE is the other obvious name because scale matters when customers want millions of units built, tested, and shipped on tight schedules. ASE describes itself as exposed to demand for outsourced semiconductor packaging and testing services, and it remains the world’s largest player in that segment. (ir.aseglobal.com) (jakotaindex.com) Onto Innovation is a different kind of pick. It does not package the chips itself; it sells the inspection and metrology tools that help manufacturers catch tiny defects in bumps, bonds, and wafer-to-wafer connections before expensive packages fail. (investors.ontoinnovation.com 1) (investors.ontoinnovation.com 2) That matters because advanced packages add more opportunities for something microscopic to go wrong. Onto said in March 2026 that a leading high bandwidth memory maker selected its Dragonfly G5 system for the high bandwidth memory 4 ramp, and that advanced packaging is expected to grow more than 30% for the company in 2026. (investors.ontoinnovation.com) The clean version of the trade is simple. Wave one was the companies designing the artificial intelligence chips, wave two was the factories making them, and wave three is the firms that can assemble, inspect, and ship the finished computing bricks when packaging capacity is the part everyone is fighting over. (cnbc.com) (businesswire.com) (investors.ontoinnovation.com)
