TAIPEI — The company that makes the circuit boards underneath Nvidia’s most expensive chips is raising money while the window is open. Unimicron Technology, one of the main suppliers of printed circuit boards for Nvidia’s high-end AI accelerator cards, is seeking about $1.4 billion from a sale of global depositary shares, according to a term sheet seen by Reuters. The offering of 50 million depositary shares is priced at $26.96 to $27.76 each, a discount of roughly 3% to 6% to the company’s recent closing price in Taipei.
The proceeds have a deliberately unglamorous purpose. Unimicron said it plans to use the money to buy raw materials priced in foreign currencies, a move that trims the mismatch between the dollars and yen it spends and the New Taiwan dollars it earns, and to support capacity for the advanced substrates that package chips for servers and smartphones. For a manufacturer at the center of the AI supply chain, the raise is as much about working capital as it is about growth.
The timing says everything about the market’s mood. Unimicron’s shares have risen more than 700% over the past 12 months as investors poured money into every company attached to the AI build-out, and the narrow discount on the offering suggests the company expects the shares to clear easily. A sale like this only works in a market where enthusiasm for AI infrastructure has made capital cheap for the companies that supply it.
Unimicron occupies a specific place in the chain. The company makes the large, multilayer printed circuit boards that carry the signals between the chips and the rest of an AI server, as well as the substrates that sit directly beneath advanced processors. As AI accelerators have grown more powerful, these components have become more complex and more expensive, and the demand for them has followed the demand for the chips themselves. Nvidia’s accelerator shipments have doubled over the past year, and the boards and substrates underneath them have had to keep pace.
The offering is the latest sign that the AI investment wave is moving upstream. Memory makers were the first to tap the market — SK Hynix is raising about $29 billion in a Nasdaq listing this week — and now the suppliers of packaging, substrates, and testing are following. From chips to boards to the materials that go into them, capital is being raised at every level of the chain, on the assumption that the demand for AI computing will keep growing for years.
The money is also a hedge against the cycle. Unimicron’s customers have been placing orders far into the future, and the company has been building capacity to match, but the substrate business is capital-intensive and cyclical, and the industry remembers what happened the last time AI demand disappointed. Raising cash at current valuations gives Unimicron the flexibility to fund expansion without straining its balance sheet if the environment turns less forgiving.
The risks are the risks of the AI trade in miniature. Substrate demand is tied to the pace of high-end chip production, which depends in turn on packaging capacity at TSMC, on hyperscaler spending, and on a demand cycle that has run hot for two years. A raise timed to peak enthusiasm is efficient for the company and, by definition, priced for the good case. The discount on the offering is small, which suggests investors agree with that assessment — for now.
Unimicron’s business sits at the intersection of two growing markets. Its printed circuit boards carry the signals between the chips and the rest of an AI server, and its advanced substrates provide the base that connects a processor to the board beneath it — both categories have grown more complex, and more expensive, with each generation of AI hardware. The company is one of a small number of suppliers that can make the largest, highest-layer-count boards that Nvidia’s top accelerators require, and its capacity is booked well into the future.
The choice of a global depositary share offering reflects the structure of Taiwan’s capital markets. The instrument lets a Taipei-listed company sell shares to international investors on a European exchange while keeping its primary listing at home, and the planned Luxembourg listing gives buyers a regulated market with familiar settlement. The 3% to 6% discount is standard for such deals, and the fact that it sits at the narrow end suggests institutional demand has been strong.
The offering is a test of how long the AI supply chain’s fundraising window stays open. Every level of the chain — memory, packaging, substrates, and now boards — has tapped the market this year, and each successive deal has been priced at levels that assume the boom continues. Unimicron’s customers have visibility into demand for years, which supports the bet; the risk is that the industry’s capacity decisions, made now in unison, collide with softer demand in 2027 and 2028.
For Unimicron, the sale converts a year of extraordinary share-price appreciation into cash at a moment when the AI industry is spending faster than it can build. The company is betting that the boom has years to run, and it is using the market’s enthusiasm to make sure it has the money to keep up. Whether that bet pays off will be decided not by the offering, but by the demand for the chips its boards support — and by how long the window stays open.
