The Whisper Register

Corrections and updates to this record

1. 2026-09-28T15:15:54.839Z · Entry 1

   Added a verified primary-source link for entry 1's existing May 18 announcement. Only that historical observation's document match was checked; the debt rumor, status, first-sighting label, tape, lag and prior trail were not changed. The original import's missing-link notes remain a description of the supplied package.

   Prior record for entry 1

   Previous first-seen label15 SEP

   Previous source-record statuscorroborated

   Previous recorded claimTen banks are lending $22 billion, with a $1 billion revolver beside it, to Crux AI, the Blackstone–Alphabet venture, to buy Google TPUs, secured by the chips and the customer contracts, per Bloomberg's people familiar with the matter. 9fin had it a day earlier at $23 billion. No party has confirmed it. The Whisper, No. 1.

   Previous tapeon Fed day, not attributable. Blackstone 126.70 → 123.45, −2.57%; Alphabet 344.98 → 342.87, −0.61%, September 15 to 16 closes; levels stockanalysis.com, the two percentages also carried by Investing.com's report at 15:44. 22 + 1 = 23; 23 + 5 = 28, against May's "roughly 25." Updated 18 September: Alphabet closed 17 September at 347.33, +1.30%, volume 19,032,520, stockanalysis.com, in a market-wide rally the day after the Fed.

   Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: a closing release from Blackstone, Crux or a lead bank; a rating on the facility or the refinancing bonds; the bonds' offering document; a named bank saying it is not in the group.

   Previous lag label1 trading day from 9fin to Bloomberg; 2 from the unattributed sighting, which the desk does not count as a start.

   1. 18 May · tier 1 · Blackstone release

      The venture announced: $5 billion of initial equity from Blackstone, 500 MW online in 2027, Google supplying TPUs, software and services. No debt mentioned.

   2. May, per 22 May account · tier 3 · Bloomberg

      "Roughly $25 billion with leverage," one person familiar; Blackstone majority owner; Benjamin Treynor Sloss chief executive.

   3. 14 Sep 09:05 · tier 5 · unattributed

      Counted, not named: a crypto-news site wrote that Blackstone was "reportedly targeting investments in the tens of billions… across multiple gigawatts," citing no one.

   4. 15 Sep · tier 4 · 9fin

      "Blackstone looks to raise $23bn debt for Google AI joint venture," sources told 9fin. First attributed sighting; no time shown.

   5. 16 Sep 15:44 · tier 3 · Bloomberg

      First mainstream US headline: $22 billion loan plus $1 billion revolver, ten banks (Goldman, SMBC, Barclays, BNP, Scotiabank named), secured by chips and contracts, possible refinancing in investment-grade bonds. Did not cite 9fin. Time is the stamp on Investing.com's relay.

   6. 16 Sep 16:34 · tier 3 · Reuters

      Relay citing Bloomberg; seven companies did not respond. A later headline reads "source says," unread by the desk, not counted as independent.

   7. 16–17 Sep · tier 5 · aggregators

      Re-checked 18 September. No document appeared. What changed is the language: TipRanks and Gokhshtein published the loan as "secured"; Blockonomi, 17 Sep 12:10 UTC, wrote that Crux "has successfully arranged $22 billion in bank financing" and that the facility "is secured against both the physical TPU hardware and contractual agreements." Nobody has confirmed a dollar of it.

   8. 21 Sep · desk check

      Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 4. Still no closing release, no rating, no offering document and no named bank confirming or denying membership of the group. The aggregator layer has thickened — Finimize, briefs.co, AI Weekly and FourWeekMBA now carry the loan in the past tense — and two Yahoo Finance relays, including a Benzinga piece putting GOOGL and BX "in focus," keep it in front of American readers. Nothing document-grade. Status unchanged.

   9. 22 Sep · desk check

      Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 5. No closing release on Blackstone's press page, whose most recent items are 13, 10 and 9 September and none of them about Crux AI or the facility; no rating, and a KBRA note on AI-compute financing risk that does not evaluate Crux AI; no offering document; no bank on the record either way. A domain-restricted search of sec.gov returns no filing naming Crux AI. Status unchanged.

   10. 24 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 7. Six sessions after Bloomberg's report — 17, 18, 21, 22, 23 and 24 September — there is still no closing release, no rating, no offering document and no named bank either way. The aggregator layer is unchanged in kind — FourWeekMBA, AI Weekly, Finimize, Dealroom and pulse2 all carry the facility, most of them in the past tense — and one relay again states the accurate position in its own headline: the loan is "reported" and its "status still unclear." Status unchanged.

   11. 23 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 6. No closing release, no rating, no offering document and no named bank either way. The aggregator layer thickened again — Finimize, FourWeekMBA, Dealroom, KuCoin and HuggingNews all carry the facility in the past tense — and one relay, Runtimewire, puts the accurate position in its own headline: the loan is "reported" and its "status still unclear." Status unchanged.

   12. 25 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8. Seven sessions after Bloomberg’s report there is still no closing release, no rating, no offering document and no named bank either way, and no filing naming Crux AI on a domain-restricted search of sec.gov. Status unchanged.

2. 2026-09-28T15:19:23.331Z · Entry 2

   Added verified primary-source links for entry 2's existing September 15 issuer notice and February 11 depositary filing. This limited document check does not settle the listing rumor or verify the separate March programme. Original observations, status, first-sighting label, tape and lag are retained; the original import notes still describe the supplied package.

   Prior record for entry 2

   Previous first-seen label14 SEP

   Previous source-record statuscorroborated

   Previous recorded claimKioxia is weighing a US listing of American depositary shares to raise at least $10 billion, possibly next year, with Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, per Bloomberg's people familiar; the deliberations are "preliminary." The plan is the company's, stated in May; the size is single-sourced. The Whisper, No. 1.

   Previous tapeTokyo readings one feed, unsworn; no US-listed security yet.

   Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: a public Form F-1 on EDGAR; an exchange application; a Kioxia release naming the exchange; the November results. Amended 24 September: the Form F-6EF of 11 February is on file, was filed by a depositary rather than by Kioxia, and does not settle it; neither does the unsponsored KXIAY programme.

   Previous lag label0 trading days; the first sighting of the size was the mainstream headline.

   1. May · tier 1 · Kioxia

      The company said it was preparing to list ADRs to broaden its investor base, per Reuters' account of 14 September.

   2. 25 Jun 03:27 · tier 4 · TradingKey

      Added 21 September, an earlier surface the desk had missed: Kioxia "intends to issue American Depositary Receipts and list on a U.S. stock exchange by spring 2027," subject to regulatory approval, with exchange, offering size and timeline unsettled. The plan and its approximate date were therefore in print three months before Bloomberg's report; what is single-sourced is the size, not the listing.

   3. 14 Sep 08:58 · tier 3 · Bloomberg

      At least $10 billion, three banks named, size and lineup subject to change; Kioxia did not reply outside business hours. Reuters relayed it; The Star's copy stamped 08:58 Eastern. The sighting was the headline.

   4. 14–15 Sep · tier 4 · SED, Invezz

      Seoul Economic Daily and Invezz relayed Bloomberg; Invezz read the Tokyo shares at ¥51,720 on the 14th and ¥51,350 by the 15th, against a June high of ¥112,750.

   5. 18 Sep · desk check

      Re-checked against EDGAR's full-text index: no Form F-1 for Kioxia. No new sighting since 14 September and no denial. Status unchanged.

   6. 15 Sep · tier 1 · Kioxia

      Added 22 September, and the highest tier this claim has reached. "Notice Regarding Certain Media Reports," on the company's own site: "There have been media reports regarding the listing of the Company's American Depositary Shares on a U.S. stock exchange. These reports are not announcements made by the Company," and "details of the listing such as the schedule, listing market, and listing method have not yet been decided," with the note that preparations may be discontinued. Neither confirms nor denies the size, the banks or the timing. The desk had missed this through three issues; see the audit block.

   7. 11 Feb · tier 1 · BNY Mellon / EDGAR

      Added 24 September, and the document this register said did not exist. Form F-6EF, accession 0001019155-26-000048, filed 11 February 2026, registering 50,000,000 American depositary shares over Kioxia common stock. No exchange is named in it, and Kioxia did not file it: it is signed by The Bank of New York Mellon, 240 Greenwich Street, as depositary, with Kioxia Holdings Corporation named only as "the issuer of deposited securities," neither registrant nor signatory. It predates Bloomberg's report by seven months and says nothing about the size, the banks, the exchange or the timing the claim is about. See the audit block.

   8. 9 Mar · tier 1 · depositary bulletin

      Added 24 September. The Kioxia line that actually trades over the counter, KXIAY, is a different programme under a different bank: an unsponsored depositary receipt facility with J.P. Morgan as depositary, ten ordinary shares to one receipt, CUSIP 49726J108, listed in BNY Mellon's bulletin of new unsponsored programmes dated 9 March 2026. An unsponsored facility is established by a bank without the issuer's participation, so it is evidence about banks and not about Kioxia's intentions.

   9. 21 Sep · desk check

      EDGAR re-checked for The Whisper, No. 4: still no Form F-1. The Japan Times and Yahoo Finance relays of the 14 September report remain the American surface. Status unchanged.

   10. 22 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 5: still no Form F-1 or F-6 for Kioxia, and no IR item since the 15 September notice. A trap recorded for future searches: the F-1 that surfaces on these search terms is SK hynix Inc., CIK 2120882, filed 24 June, Nasdaq Global Select under SKHY, with BofA Securities, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan as global coordinators — a different issuer with a near-identical bank lineup to the three attributed to Kioxia. Status unchanged.

   11. 24 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 7. Still no Form F-1, no exchange application and no company item since the 15 September notice. The F-6EF above was found on this check and is filed in its own place in the trail; it is the highest-tier document on this entry after that notice, and it does not touch the claim as printed.

   12. 25 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8. Still no Form F-1, no exchange application and no company item since the 15 September notice. Status unchanged.

3. 2026-09-28T20:53:52.814Z · Entry 1

   The Whisper, No. 9 — 28 September 2026: append the supplied 28 Sep observation for entry 1. Existing sourcing history and source links are retained; status is unchanged.

   Prior record for entry 1

   Previous first-seen label15 SEP

   Previous source-record statuscorroborated

   Previous recorded claimTen banks are lending $22 billion, with a $1 billion revolver beside it, to Crux AI, the Blackstone–Alphabet venture, to buy Google TPUs, secured by the chips and the customer contracts, per Bloomberg's people familiar with the matter. 9fin had it a day earlier at $23 billion. No party has confirmed it. The Whisper, No. 1.

   Previous tapeon Fed day, not attributable. Blackstone 126.70 → 123.45, −2.57%; Alphabet 344.98 → 342.87, −0.61%, September 15 to 16 closes; levels stockanalysis.com, the two percentages also carried by Investing.com's report at 15:44. 22 + 1 = 23; 23 + 5 = 28, against May's "roughly 25." Updated 18 September: Alphabet closed 17 September at 347.33, +1.30%, volume 19,032,520, stockanalysis.com, in a market-wide rally the day after the Fed.

   Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: a closing release from Blackstone, Crux or a lead bank; a rating on the facility or the refinancing bonds; the bonds' offering document; a named bank saying it is not in the group.

   Previous lag label1 trading day from 9fin to Bloomberg; 2 from the unattributed sighting, which the desk does not count as a start.

   1. 18 May · tier 1 · Blackstone release

      The venture announced: $5 billion of initial equity from Blackstone, 500 MW online in 2027, Google supplying TPUs, software and services. No debt mentioned.

   2. May, per 22 May account · tier 3 · Bloomberg

      "Roughly $25 billion with leverage," one person familiar; Blackstone majority owner; Benjamin Treynor Sloss chief executive.

   3. 14 Sep 09:05 · tier 5 · unattributed

      Counted, not named: a crypto-news site wrote that Blackstone was "reportedly targeting investments in the tens of billions… across multiple gigawatts," citing no one.

   4. 15 Sep · tier 4 · 9fin

      "Blackstone looks to raise $23bn debt for Google AI joint venture," sources told 9fin. First attributed sighting; no time shown.

   5. 16 Sep 15:44 · tier 3 · Bloomberg

      First mainstream US headline: $22 billion loan plus $1 billion revolver, ten banks (Goldman, SMBC, Barclays, BNP, Scotiabank named), secured by chips and contracts, possible refinancing in investment-grade bonds. Did not cite 9fin. Time is the stamp on Investing.com's relay.

   6. 16 Sep 16:34 · tier 3 · Reuters

      Relay citing Bloomberg; seven companies did not respond. A later headline reads "source says," unread by the desk, not counted as independent.

   7. 16–17 Sep · tier 5 · aggregators

      Re-checked 18 September. No document appeared. What changed is the language: TipRanks and Gokhshtein published the loan as "secured"; Blockonomi, 17 Sep 12:10 UTC, wrote that Crux "has successfully arranged $22 billion in bank financing" and that the facility "is secured against both the physical TPU hardware and contractual agreements." Nobody has confirmed a dollar of it.

   8. 21 Sep · desk check

      Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 4. Still no closing release, no rating, no offering document and no named bank confirming or denying membership of the group. The aggregator layer has thickened — Finimize, briefs.co, AI Weekly and FourWeekMBA now carry the loan in the past tense — and two Yahoo Finance relays, including a Benzinga piece putting GOOGL and BX "in focus," keep it in front of American readers. Nothing document-grade. Status unchanged.

   9. 22 Sep · desk check

      Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 5. No closing release on Blackstone's press page, whose most recent items are 13, 10 and 9 September and none of them about Crux AI or the facility; no rating, and a KBRA note on AI-compute financing risk that does not evaluate Crux AI; no offering document; no bank on the record either way. A domain-restricted search of sec.gov returns no filing naming Crux AI. Status unchanged.

   10. 24 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 7. Six sessions after Bloomberg's report — 17, 18, 21, 22, 23 and 24 September — there is still no closing release, no rating, no offering document and no named bank either way. The aggregator layer is unchanged in kind — FourWeekMBA, AI Weekly, Finimize, Dealroom and pulse2 all carry the facility, most of them in the past tense — and one relay again states the accurate position in its own headline: the loan is "reported" and its "status still unclear." Status unchanged.

   11. 23 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 6. No closing release, no rating, no offering document and no named bank either way. The aggregator layer thickened again — Finimize, FourWeekMBA, Dealroom, KuCoin and HuggingNews all carry the facility in the past tense — and one relay, Runtimewire, puts the accurate position in its own headline: the loan is "reported" and its "status still unclear." Status unchanged.

   12. 25 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8. Seven sessions after Bloomberg’s report there is still no closing release, no rating, no offering document and no named bank either way, and no filing naming Crux AI on a domain-restricted search of sec.gov. Status unchanged.

   13. 28 Sep 2026 14:40 UTC — source-link verification · desk check · primary-source link verification

       Source-link check for the existing 18 May Blackstone observation: the linked May 18, 2026 issuer announcement supports the equity commitment, expected capacity and Google's contribution recorded above. It does not confirm the separate loan, revolver, lenders or closing. This is a citation update, not a new first sighting or rumor-status change; the historical observations and supplied September 25 cutoff remain unchanged.

       • Source 1: https://www.blackstone.com/news/press/blackstone-announces-joint-venture-with-google-to-create-new-tpu-cloud/

4. 2026-09-28T20:54:47.158Z · Entry 2

   The Whisper, No. 9 — 28 September 2026: append the supplied 28 Sep observation for entry 2. Existing sourcing history and source links are retained; status is unchanged.

   Prior record for entry 2

   Previous first-seen label14 SEP

   Previous source-record statuscorroborated

   Previous recorded claimKioxia is weighing a US listing of American depositary shares to raise at least $10 billion, possibly next year, with Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, per Bloomberg's people familiar; the deliberations are "preliminary." The plan is the company's, stated in May; the size is single-sourced. The Whisper, No. 1.

   Previous tapeTokyo readings one feed, unsworn; no US-listed security yet.

   Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: a public Form F-1 on EDGAR; an exchange application; a Kioxia release naming the exchange; the November results. Amended 24 September: the Form F-6EF of 11 February is on file, was filed by a depositary rather than by Kioxia, and does not settle it; neither does the unsponsored KXIAY programme.

   Previous lag label0 trading days; the first sighting of the size was the mainstream headline.

   1. May · tier 1 · Kioxia

      The company said it was preparing to list ADRs to broaden its investor base, per Reuters' account of 14 September.

   2. 25 Jun 03:27 · tier 4 · TradingKey

      Added 21 September, an earlier surface the desk had missed: Kioxia "intends to issue American Depositary Receipts and list on a U.S. stock exchange by spring 2027," subject to regulatory approval, with exchange, offering size and timeline unsettled. The plan and its approximate date were therefore in print three months before Bloomberg's report; what is single-sourced is the size, not the listing.

   3. 14 Sep 08:58 · tier 3 · Bloomberg

      At least $10 billion, three banks named, size and lineup subject to change; Kioxia did not reply outside business hours. Reuters relayed it; The Star's copy stamped 08:58 Eastern. The sighting was the headline.

   4. 14–15 Sep · tier 4 · SED, Invezz

      Seoul Economic Daily and Invezz relayed Bloomberg; Invezz read the Tokyo shares at ¥51,720 on the 14th and ¥51,350 by the 15th, against a June high of ¥112,750.

   5. 18 Sep · desk check

      Re-checked against EDGAR's full-text index: no Form F-1 for Kioxia. No new sighting since 14 September and no denial. Status unchanged.

   6. 15 Sep · tier 1 · Kioxia

      Added 22 September, and the highest tier this claim has reached. "Notice Regarding Certain Media Reports," on the company's own site: "There have been media reports regarding the listing of the Company's American Depositary Shares on a U.S. stock exchange. These reports are not announcements made by the Company," and "details of the listing such as the schedule, listing market, and listing method have not yet been decided," with the note that preparations may be discontinued. Neither confirms nor denies the size, the banks or the timing. The desk had missed this through three issues; see the audit block.

   7. 11 Feb · tier 1 · BNY Mellon / EDGAR

      Added 24 September, and the document this register said did not exist. Form F-6EF, accession 0001019155-26-000048, filed 11 February 2026, registering 50,000,000 American depositary shares over Kioxia common stock. No exchange is named in it, and Kioxia did not file it: it is signed by The Bank of New York Mellon, 240 Greenwich Street, as depositary, with Kioxia Holdings Corporation named only as "the issuer of deposited securities," neither registrant nor signatory. It predates Bloomberg's report by seven months and says nothing about the size, the banks, the exchange or the timing the claim is about. See the audit block.

   8. 9 Mar · tier 1 · depositary bulletin

      Added 24 September. The Kioxia line that actually trades over the counter, KXIAY, is a different programme under a different bank: an unsponsored depositary receipt facility with J.P. Morgan as depositary, ten ordinary shares to one receipt, CUSIP 49726J108, listed in BNY Mellon's bulletin of new unsponsored programmes dated 9 March 2026. An unsponsored facility is established by a bank without the issuer's participation, so it is evidence about banks and not about Kioxia's intentions.

   9. 21 Sep · desk check

      EDGAR re-checked for The Whisper, No. 4: still no Form F-1. The Japan Times and Yahoo Finance relays of the 14 September report remain the American surface. Status unchanged.

   10. 22 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 5: still no Form F-1 or F-6 for Kioxia, and no IR item since the 15 September notice. A trap recorded for future searches: the F-1 that surfaces on these search terms is SK hynix Inc., CIK 2120882, filed 24 June, Nasdaq Global Select under SKHY, with BofA Securities, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan as global coordinators — a different issuer with a near-identical bank lineup to the three attributed to Kioxia. Status unchanged.

   11. 24 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 7. Still no Form F-1, no exchange application and no company item since the 15 September notice. The F-6EF above was found on this check and is filed in its own place in the trail; it is the highest-tier document on this entry after that notice, and it does not touch the claim as printed.

   12. 25 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8. Still no Form F-1, no exchange application and no company item since the 15 September notice. Status unchanged.

   13. 28 Sep 2026 14:40 UTC — source-link verification · desk check · primary-source link verification

       Source-link check for two existing observations: Source 1 is Kioxia's September 15, 2026 media-response notice, supporting the recorded preparation and uncertainty. Source 2 is the February 11, 2026 F-6 filing, accession 0001019155-26-000048, supporting the depositary filing observation. Neither establishes the reported offering size, bank lineup, exchange or timing. The separate March depositary programme and remaining trail were not checked in this citation update. Status, historical dates, text and the supplied September 25 cutoff remain unchanged.

       • Source 1: https://www.kioxia-holdings.com/en-jp/news/2026/20260915-1.html
       • Source 2: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1201935/000101915526000048/kholdingsf6ef.htm

5. 2026-09-28T20:55:03.703Z · Entry 3

   The Whisper, No. 9 — 28 September 2026: append the supplied 28 Sep observation for entry 3. Existing sourcing history and source links are retained; status is unchanged.

   Prior record for entry 3

   Previous first-seen label17 SEP

   Previous source-record statusopen

   Previous recorded claimAMD has told its partners that prices on its graphics processors, AI accelerators and chipsets will rise by roughly ten percent in the fourth quarter of 2026, because TSMC has told AMD the same about wafers, per Wccftech citing ChannelGate, a supply-chain channel on WeChat. Neither company has commented. Every English-language sighting traces to that one channel. The Whisper, No. 2.

   Previous tape512.50 → 559.82, +47.32, +9.23%, the 16 September close before the first attributed sighting to the 18 September close, sworn — stockanalysis.com and Investing.com carry both figures identically to the cent; the percentage is this desk's arithmetic, 47.32 ÷ 512.50. Intraday 21 September, one feed and unsworn: 606.68 at 1:24 p.m. on stockanalysis.com, +46.86, +8.37% on the session, range 582.27–615.99, volume 29.5m, which carries the move from the same base to +94.18, +18.38%. The same page put the market capitalisation at $990.39 billion. Volumes where the feeds disagree, both printed: 28.17m against 28.46m on 17 September, 31.17m against 31.87m on 18 September. Amended 21 September with the corrected stamp: the report ran at 8:26 a.m. on 17 September, sixty-four minutes before the open, and AMD opened at 533.60 — both feeds, sworn — a gap of 4.12% on the prior close, 533.60 ÷ 512.50, closing the session up 6.36%. Where the stock traded before 8:26 the desk cannot establish and does not guess; the earlier claim that the advance preceded the report is withdrawn. The advance has also run on through a broad semiconductor rally, so the desk still attributes nothing. Updated 22 September: Monday's close is sworn at 615.52 — stockanalysis.com and stockinvest.us, which wrote that AMD "ended at $615.52," with Yahoo Finance carrying the same as its previous close — which carries the move from the same base to +103.02, +20.10%, this desk's arithmetic, 103.02 ÷ 512.50. Today unsworn, both printed: 618.34 at 12:03 p.m. Eastern on stockanalysis.com, 614.92 at 10:46 a.m. on Yahoo Finance. A caution: Investing.com's AMD historical table was stale at 18 September when checked today, and its quote page showed a 15:39 intraday print of 615.71 that is not a close; it is not used for Monday.

   Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: a partner or OEM price list showing fourth-quarter increases in that range; AMD's third-quarter results and call on 3 November, where a ten percent rise reaches the gross-margin line; TSMC's October call on 2027 wafer pricing; an on-the-record statement. Kills it: AMD saying no such notice went to partners, or fourth-quarter price lists arriving unchanged.

   Previous lag label1 trading day, corrected 21 September from running. First attributed sighting 17 September 8:26 a.m.; first mainstream US headline 18 September 5:22 a.m. on Yahoo Finance. The first independently authored American market story came on 21 September, two trading days out; the desk counts the earlier one.

   1. 21 Jul · tier 3 · Nikkei

      The upstream claim, via Tom's Hardware: TSMC to raise advanced-node baseline prices five to ten percent from the start of 2027, with "another 10% to 15% premium on top of the standard increase" for incremental HPC capacity, citing people with knowledge of the matter. Named no customer.

   2. 17 Sep · tier 5 · channel

      ChannelGate, a WeChat supply-chain account, relayed by a leak account on X. Counted, not named. Origin of the AMD-specific leg.

   3. 17 Sep 08:26 · tier 4 · Wccftech

      First attributed sighting; stamp corrected 21 September from 12:26 p.m., which was the page metadata's UTC time, to 8:26 a.m. Eastern per the article's own byline. "TSMC has notified its customers about the price hikes, leading to AMD notifying its partners about the same. The price hike is roughly 10% and is planned to be implemented in the fourth quarter of 2026." Cited ChannelGate; did not stand alone; said a ten percent Ryzen increase "should be treated as a 'possibility' rather than a confirmed development." Wccftech gives ChannelGate no descriptor; Club386, the same day, identifies it as the WeChat arm of a Chinese leak site.

   4. 17–18 Sep · tier 4 · relays

      Counted, not weighted: six English-language sites, among them ThinkComputers, Club386, Notebookcheck, PC Guide, XenoSpectrum and Technetbook. All downstream of the same item or the same channel.

   5. 18 Sep 05:22 · tier 3 · Yahoo Finance

      First mainstream US headline. Amended 21 September: logged in The Whisper, No. 2, as a Stocktwits relay, it was published on Yahoo Finance's markets pages as "AMD Stock Rises Premarket: Report Flags Chip Price Hike Linked To TSMC Costs," naming both Wccftech and ChannelGate; AMD up 1.4 percent premarket, a third consecutive advance, the three-session gain above twelve percent. The lag closed here.

   6. 18 Sep · tier 4 · TrendForce

      Carried in its own news file as AMD "preparing a 10% price hike for GPUs, AI chips, and chipsets in Q4 2026, attributed to rising manufacturing costs at TSMC." Downstream of the same origin; not counted as a second surface.

   7. 19 Sep · tier 2 · TSMC via Digital Citizen

      The first named-company material in the trail, and the highest tier this claim has reached. A TSMC spokesperson, asked about the report: "Our pricing strategy is strategic, not opportunistic. We will continue to work closely with customers and sell our value to them." Neither a confirmation nor a denial. The same piece set the leak's Q4 2026 timing against TSMC's July guidance of 2027 and allowed that the two "may describe one negotiation at different stages or two separate cost actions."

   8. 21 Sep 09:37 · tier 4 · 24/7 Wall St.

      First American market story written independently of the technology press, also carried on Yahoo Finance: "AMD Rises 5% as Report Flags 10% Chip Price Increase; NVIDIA and Taiwan Semiconductor Tick Up." AMD 586.66, Nvidia 223.72, TSM 440.92. Calls the claim "unconfirmed," does not name ChannelGate, and adds that "a denial or narrower scope would remove the framing that's lifting AMD stock this morning."

   9. 21 Sep · tier 4 · PCWorld

      Added 22 September. Quotes the origin channel directly, through a leak account on X: "AMD will increase chip price about 10% in Q4 / It is result from TSMC's price increase." No AMD comment. Not an independent surface; it is the same WeChat account, one relay closer to the source than Wccftech was.

   10. 22 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 5. No new sighting today, no AMD statement, no denial, and no partner or OEM price list. The claim is forking in the relay layer: one branch has Ryzen spared, the other has Ryzen following, and both cite the same channel. Status unchanged.

   11. 23 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 6. TweakTown has joined the relay layer, alongside Digital Trends, XenoSpectrum, ThinkComputers and Startup Fortune, and the Ryzen fork persists across them; every one is downstream of the same WeChat channel. No AMD statement, no denial and no partner or OEM price list. Status unchanged.

   12. 24 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 7. Digital Trends, Startup Fortune and Compsmag have joined the relay layer and the Ryzen fork persists across it; every branch still cites the same WeChat channel. No AMD statement, no denial and no partner or OEM price list. Status unchanged.

   13. 25 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8, the sixth session since the first attributed sighting. No AMD statement, no denial and no partner or OEM price list. Recorded beside this entry today: an unrelated and independently sourced claim, printed as entry 11, that the silicon wafers upstream of TSMC are themselves being repriced for 2027. The desk logs the two as separate claims and does not treat either as evidence for the other. Status unchanged.

6. 2026-09-28T20:55:08.487Z · Entry 4

   The Whisper, No. 9 — 28 September 2026: append the supplied 28 Sep observation for entry 4. Existing sourcing history and source links are retained; status is unchanged.

   Prior record for entry 4

   Previous first-seen label18 SEP

   Previous source-record statuscorroborated

   Previous recorded claimSolidigm, SK Hynix's US NAND subsidiary, is weighing its first American NAND plant, with upstate New York the leading candidate site, per Reuters' three people familiar with the matter. SK Hynix says it is reviewing options and that nothing is confirmed. The Whisper, No. 2.

   Previous tapethe desk swore in no reading for this entry. Corrected 21 September — this line previously said there is no US-listed security. SK hynix trades on Nasdaq as SKHY, American depositary shares, since 10 July 2026; Benzinga's 18 September piece used that ticker and was right. No reading has been sworn in even so, and none is printed.

   Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: a New York State incentive award or economic-development board document; a site or construction permit; an SK Hynix board resolution; a Solidigm announcement naming the site.

   Previous lag label0 trading days; the wire report was itself the first mainstream US headline.

   1. 18 Sep 04:41 · tier 4 · DigiTimes

      Its own item, Taipei 16:41: Solidigm "is considering building its first NAND manufacturing plant in the US, with upstate New York emerging as a leading candidate." Paywalled beyond the lede; no sources shown.

   2. 18 Sep 05:08 · tier 3 · Reuters

      First mainstream US headline, as carried by the Korea JoongAng Daily at 18:08 Seoul. Three people familiar with the matter; one said no agreement had been reached and key details remain under discussion. Solidigm did not respond outside business hours.

   3. 18 Sep 05:08 · tier 2 · SK Hynix

      On the record, confirming neither: "subsidiary Solidigm is reviewing various options to strengthen its business competitiveness, but no specific plans have been confirmed."

   4. 18 Sep · tier 4 · SED, relays

      Added 21 September. Seoul Economic Daily carried it the same day as "SK hynix Weighs First U.S. NAND Plant as AI Demand Surges"; Investing.com and MarketScreener relayed Reuters; Benzinga wrote up the Friday share move directly. All downstream of the Reuters report.

   5. 21 Sep · desk check

      Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 4. No New York State incentive award, no site or construction permit, no board resolution, and no change to SK Hynix's on-the-record line. The claim has spread across the market layer, not the document layer. Status unchanged.

   6. 18 Sep · tier 2 · Solidigm

      Added 22 September. Solidigm itself, on the record in the Reuters syndication the register had only recorded as "did not respond": "No decision regarding any specific course of action has been made." A 20 September follow-up adds that no factory has been approved, no site selected and no construction timetable exists, with Solidigm declining to "comment on market rumors."

   7. 22 Sep · desk check

      Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 5. No Empire State Development incentive award and no Green CHIPS document naming Solidigm; no announcement from the governor's office; no site or construction permit; no board resolution. Status unchanged.

   8. 25 Sep · desk check

      Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8. No Empire State Development incentive award, no site or construction permit, no board resolution and no change to either company’s on-the-record line. Status unchanged.

7. 2026-09-28T20:55:16.445Z · Entry 5

   The Whisper, No. 9 — 28 September 2026: append the supplied 28 Sep observation for entry 5 and update lag from the supplied register. Existing sourcing history and source links are retained; status is unchanged.

   Prior record for entry 5

   Previous first-seen label15 SEP

   Previous source-record statuscorroborated

   Previous recorded claimSamsung Electronics has begun running wafers for Tesla's next-generation AI5 processor at its foundry in Taylor, Texas, ahead of a start scheduled for November, per Seoul Economic Daily's semiconductor industry sources. Neither company has said it, and no American wire has reported it. The Whisper, No. 3.

   Previous tapeTesla 358.97 → 366.20, +2.01%, 14 to 17 September closes, sworn — 358.97 on stockanalysis.com and Investing.com, 366.20 on stockanalysis.com and Google Finance, whose Friday quote of 362.60 less 3.60 implies it; Investing.com carries 366.69 for the 17th and is printed, not sworn. On the claim's own session, 15 September, Tesla fell 0.67% to 356.58 on 30,168,264 shares against Monday's 32,068,734. Thursday alone was 8.12 points of the 7.23-point move, in a session the Nasdaq Composite rose 1.69% the day after the Fed. Samsung Electronics: −4.05% Monday, −0.2% Tuesday to 248,500 won, "only modestly higher" Wednesday per Invezz; 261,000 won, +3.37%, at Friday's Seoul close, one feed.

   Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: Samsung's third-quarter results in late October; Tesla's results and 10-Q; a Samsung release or Taylor site announcement; a Yonhap report carrying a company confirmation. Kills it: a statement from either company that Taylor has not begun AI5 wafers, or a Samsung disclosure putting the start in November as scheduled.

   Previous lag label8 trading days and running, at 25 September. No mainstream American headline exists; the count stays open until one does.

   1. 28 Jul 2025 · tier 1 · contract

      A $16.5 billion multi-year supply agreement, about 22 trillion won, disclosed by Elon Musk after Tesla had asked that the counterparty stay unnamed; Bloomberg reported it.

   2. 22 Oct 2025 · tier 2 · Musk, CNBC

      Musk on the record: AI5 to be made by Samsung in Texas and TSMC in Arizona. This, and not the start, is what the American press has.

   3. 5 Nov 2025 · tier 4 · TrendForce

      Musk signals AI5 mass production slipping to 2027, "casting uncertainty over Samsung."

   4. 24 Apr · tier 1 · Samsung

      Equipment-installation ceremony at the Taylor plant, as referenced by Seoul Economic Daily.

   5. 13 Jul · tier 4 · TrendForce / Yonhap

      AI5 tape-out complete, production expected on Samsung's 2nm process in Texas; "the disclosure marks the first time Samsung Foundry's production timeline for the Tesla AI5 chip has been revealed in concrete terms." Taylor ramp put in 2027. Korea Times and Electrek the same day.

   6. 15 Sep 17:21 · tier 4 · Seoul Economic Daily

      First sighting. Samsung "has begun prototype production at its Taylor, Texas, foundry to supply artificial intelligence chips to Tesla"; it "plans to complete mass-production verification by the end of this year and begin full supply next year." Page stamp 17:21, updated 23:35, Seoul time, which puts it near 4:21 a.m. Eastern. The headline said mass production over a body that said prototype.

   7. 16 Sep 00:28 · tier 2 · KB Securities via ChosunBiz

      Kim Dong-won, named, on Samsung's 2nm gate-all-around yield improving from below 50 percent, carried by Invezz under "Samsung stock is ignoring a $16.5 billion Tesla catalyst." About the plant's capability, not the start.

   8. 16 Sep 07:00 KST · tier 4 · Seoul Economic Daily

      The same reporting re-headlined "Samsung Starts Trial Production of Tesla AI Chips in Texas," ahead of the originally scheduled November startup.

   9. 17 Sep 11:51 · tier 4 · DigiTimes

      Second independent surface, by its own Taipei stamp: trial production, 2nm wafer production and yield verification ahead of full-scale operations. Names no source and does not cite Seoul.

   10. 16–18 Sep · tier 5 · aggregators

       Counted, not named as sources: nine sites, among them one whose headline says the node is "silencing yield doubters," a claim in none of the underlying reporting.

   11. 21 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 4. Still no mainstream American headline and no company statement either way; the only movement is in the enthusiast layer, where Not a Tesla App and similar sites now carry the trial start as settled fact. The lag continues to run.

   12. 22 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 5 against CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, Barron's, Reuters, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal. None carries the September wafer-start claim; Yahoo Finance's Tesla AI5 items stop at the tape-out and dual-foundry stories, and the nearest American piece is Electrek's 13 July tape-out report, which is a different claim. No Samsung or Tesla statement. The lag runs on.

   13. 23 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 6 against the same American outlets. None carries the September wafer-start claim; Electrek's 13 July tape-out piece remains the nearest American surface and is a different claim, and the enthusiast layer continues to carry the trial start as settled fact. No Samsung or Tesla statement. The lag runs on, now six trading days.

   14. 24 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 7 against CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, Barron's, Reuters and Bloomberg. None carries the September wafer-start claim. The enthusiast layer has widened again — Drive Tesla Canada, Not a Tesla App, The Electric Viking, Basenor and BigGo all carry the trial start as settled fact, all downstream of Seoul Economic Daily and DigiTimes — and Electrek's 13 July tape-out piece remains the nearest American surface and is a different claim. No company statement. The lag runs on, now seven trading days.

   15. 25 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8 against CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, Barron’s, Reuters and Bloomberg. None carries the September wafer-start claim; the enthusiast layer continues to carry the trial start as settled fact, all of it downstream of Seoul Economic Daily and DigiTimes. No company statement. The lag runs on, now eight trading days.

8. 2026-09-28T20:55:22.420Z · Entry 6

   The Whisper, No. 9 — 28 September 2026: append the supplied 27 Sep 14:06 observation for entry 6. Existing sourcing history and source links are retained; status is unchanged.

   Prior record for entry 6

   Previous first-seen label14 SEP

   Previous source-record statuscorroborated

   Previous recorded claimTSMC's 2nm capacity is expected to rise from 90,000 wafers a month at end-2026 to 110,000 by mid-2027, its 3nm from more than 180,000 to 210,000, and CoWoS packaging from roughly 130,000 a month to 260,000 by end-2028, per TrendForce citing Taiwan's Economic Daily News. TSMC has not published these figures. The Whisper, No. 3.

   Previous tapenot separable. The claim concerns capacity two to eight quarters out and no single session's move can be attributed to it.

   Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: TSMC's third-quarter call in October, its capex guidance, and its monthly revenue releases on the tenth of each month.

   Previous lag label9 trading days and running, at 25 September. No mainstream American headline for the capacity figures; the groundbreaking was reported, the numbers were not.

   1. 14 Sep · tier 4 · TrendForce / EDN

      First sighting. The capacity numbers above, attributed to Economic Daily News; a 22 percent lift at 2nm, 17 percent at 3nm and a doubling of CoWoS on this desk's arithmetic from the published figures.

   2. 15 Sep 11:30 · tier 4 · DigiTimes

      Second independent surface, by its own Taipei stamp: 3nm, 2nm and CoWoS all tight through the third quarter, Nvidia and Apple dominating advanced process and packaging, and Amazon's Annapurna unit expanding AI chip tape-outs and given more 3nm capacity. Supply-chain sources. Body paywalled.

   3. 21 Sep 07:37 · tier 1 · TSMC via Reuters

      Added 21 September. Ground was broken on an advanced-packaging industrial park at Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan, anchored by TSMC, reported by Reuters under a Taipei dateline of 21 September (some US syndications carry a 20 September date) and carried by Benzinga at 7:37 a.m. Eastern, with operations expected in the fourth quarter of 2029. Document-grade, and evidence about direction rather than about the claim's numbers: 2029 sits a year beyond the end of the claim's window, and no wafer or CoWoS figure in the claim is addressed.

   4. 21 Sep 09:59 · tier 4 · DigiTimes

      Weekly roundup, by its own stamp: semiconductor equipment makers facing lead times of up to forty months on certain Japanese components, and local component deliveries stretching about fifty percent. The physical constraint any such ramp meets. Not a second surface for the capacity figures.

   5. 22 Sep · desk check

      Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 5. No new sighting of the capacity figures and no TSMC statement on them; the company's only reference point remains the July call's 2026 capex guidance of $60–64 billion. The one TSMC item TrendForce carried today is adjacent and does not confirm the numbers. The date to mark: TSMC's September monthly revenue release, Thursday 8 October, 13:30 Taipei, per the company's own financial calendar. Status unchanged.

   6. 23 Sep · desk check

      Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 6 against TrendForce's current news file, whose 23 September items run to DRAM spot prices, LPDDR6 validation, a glass-substrate roundup and a NAND patent ruling, none of which touches the capacity figures. No new sighting and no TSMC statement on them. Status unchanged.

   7. 24 Sep · desk check

      Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 7 against TrendForce's current news file, whose 24 September items run to Chinese memory capacity, a Meta device launch, a GDDR7 end-of-life report, an optical-transceiver listing and a Qualcomm node statement, none of which touches the capacity figures. No new sighting and no TSMC statement on them. The date to mark remains TSMC's September monthly revenue release, Thursday 8 October, 13:30 Taipei. Status unchanged.

   8. 25 Sep · desk check

      Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8 against TrendForce’s current news file, whose 25 September items run to twelve-inch wafer contract pricing and a rare-earths piece, neither of which touches the capacity figures. No new sighting and no TSMC statement on them. The date to mark remains Thursday 8 October, 13:30 Taipei. Status unchanged.

9. 2026-09-28T20:55:31.789Z · Entry 6

   The Whisper, No. 9 — 28 September 2026: append the supplied 27 Sep 23:07 observation for entry 6. Existing sourcing history and source links are retained; status is unchanged.

   Prior record for entry 6

   Previous first-seen label14 SEP

   Previous source-record statuscorroborated

   Previous recorded claimTSMC's 2nm capacity is expected to rise from 90,000 wafers a month at end-2026 to 110,000 by mid-2027, its 3nm from more than 180,000 to 210,000, and CoWoS packaging from roughly 130,000 a month to 260,000 by end-2028, per TrendForce citing Taiwan's Economic Daily News. TSMC has not published these figures. The Whisper, No. 3.

   Previous tapenot separable. The claim concerns capacity two to eight quarters out and no single session's move can be attributed to it.

   Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: TSMC's third-quarter call in October, its capex guidance, and its monthly revenue releases on the tenth of each month.

   Previous lag label9 trading days and running, at 25 September. No mainstream American headline for the capacity figures; the groundbreaking was reported, the numbers were not.

   1. 14 Sep · tier 4 · TrendForce / EDN

      First sighting. The capacity numbers above, attributed to Economic Daily News; a 22 percent lift at 2nm, 17 percent at 3nm and a doubling of CoWoS on this desk's arithmetic from the published figures.

   2. 15 Sep 11:30 · tier 4 · DigiTimes

      Second independent surface, by its own Taipei stamp: 3nm, 2nm and CoWoS all tight through the third quarter, Nvidia and Apple dominating advanced process and packaging, and Amazon's Annapurna unit expanding AI chip tape-outs and given more 3nm capacity. Supply-chain sources. Body paywalled.

   3. 21 Sep 07:37 · tier 1 · TSMC via Reuters

      Added 21 September. Ground was broken on an advanced-packaging industrial park at Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan, anchored by TSMC, reported by Reuters under a Taipei dateline of 21 September (some US syndications carry a 20 September date) and carried by Benzinga at 7:37 a.m. Eastern, with operations expected in the fourth quarter of 2029. Document-grade, and evidence about direction rather than about the claim's numbers: 2029 sits a year beyond the end of the claim's window, and no wafer or CoWoS figure in the claim is addressed.

   4. 21 Sep 09:59 · tier 4 · DigiTimes

      Weekly roundup, by its own stamp: semiconductor equipment makers facing lead times of up to forty months on certain Japanese components, and local component deliveries stretching about fifty percent. The physical constraint any such ramp meets. Not a second surface for the capacity figures.

   5. 22 Sep · desk check

      Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 5. No new sighting of the capacity figures and no TSMC statement on them; the company's only reference point remains the July call's 2026 capex guidance of $60–64 billion. The one TSMC item TrendForce carried today is adjacent and does not confirm the numbers. The date to mark: TSMC's September monthly revenue release, Thursday 8 October, 13:30 Taipei, per the company's own financial calendar. Status unchanged.

   6. 23 Sep · desk check

      Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 6 against TrendForce's current news file, whose 23 September items run to DRAM spot prices, LPDDR6 validation, a glass-substrate roundup and a NAND patent ruling, none of which touches the capacity figures. No new sighting and no TSMC statement on them. Status unchanged.

   7. 24 Sep · desk check

      Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 7 against TrendForce's current news file, whose 24 September items run to Chinese memory capacity, a Meta device launch, a GDDR7 end-of-life report, an optical-transceiver listing and a Qualcomm node statement, none of which touches the capacity figures. No new sighting and no TSMC statement on them. The date to mark remains TSMC's September monthly revenue release, Thursday 8 October, 13:30 Taipei. Status unchanged.

   8. 25 Sep · desk check

      Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8 against TrendForce’s current news file, whose 25 September items run to twelve-inch wafer contract pricing and a rare-earths piece, neither of which touches the capacity figures. No new sighting and no TSMC statement on them. The date to mark remains Thursday 8 October, 13:30 Taipei. Status unchanged.

   9. 27 Sep 14:06 · tier 4 · Economic Daily News

      Added 28 September, and the sighting this issue is built on: the origin outlet revising its own number. Page stamp 28 September 02:06 Taipei, byline Yin Hui-chung (尹慧中), read in the original by this desk. 大廠追加訂單 台積電2奈米擴產進度超前 年底月產能上看12萬片 — major customers have added orders, TSMC's 2nm expansion is ahead of schedule, year-end monthly capacity looking at 120,000 wafers. It states that the market had expected about 90,000 to 100,000 at year-end. Five customers named as raising 2nm-family orders by 10 to 20 percent: Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm, MediaTek. 3nm put near 180,000 a month in the fourth quarter of 2026 and 200,000 to 210,000 in 2027, which is consistent with the 14 September figures. Sourcing language 業界傳出 and 消息人士透露 — the industry says, sources disclose. No firm named, no person named, no document.

      Recorded evidence tier: 4

10. 2026-09-28T20:55:39.718Z · Entry 6

    The Whisper, No. 9 — 28 September 2026: append the supplied 28 Sep observation for entry 6. Existing sourcing history and source links are retained; status is unchanged.

    Prior record for entry 6

    Previous first-seen label14 SEP

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimTSMC's 2nm capacity is expected to rise from 90,000 wafers a month at end-2026 to 110,000 by mid-2027, its 3nm from more than 180,000 to 210,000, and CoWoS packaging from roughly 130,000 a month to 260,000 by end-2028, per TrendForce citing Taiwan's Economic Daily News. TSMC has not published these figures. The Whisper, No. 3.

    Previous tapenot separable. The claim concerns capacity two to eight quarters out and no single session's move can be attributed to it.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: TSMC's third-quarter call in October, its capex guidance, and its monthly revenue releases on the tenth of each month.

    Previous lag label9 trading days and running, at 25 September. No mainstream American headline for the capacity figures; the groundbreaking was reported, the numbers were not.

    1. 14 Sep · tier 4 · TrendForce / EDN

       First sighting. The capacity numbers above, attributed to Economic Daily News; a 22 percent lift at 2nm, 17 percent at 3nm and a doubling of CoWoS on this desk's arithmetic from the published figures.

    2. 15 Sep 11:30 · tier 4 · DigiTimes

       Second independent surface, by its own Taipei stamp: 3nm, 2nm and CoWoS all tight through the third quarter, Nvidia and Apple dominating advanced process and packaging, and Amazon's Annapurna unit expanding AI chip tape-outs and given more 3nm capacity. Supply-chain sources. Body paywalled.

    3. 21 Sep 07:37 · tier 1 · TSMC via Reuters

       Added 21 September. Ground was broken on an advanced-packaging industrial park at Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan, anchored by TSMC, reported by Reuters under a Taipei dateline of 21 September (some US syndications carry a 20 September date) and carried by Benzinga at 7:37 a.m. Eastern, with operations expected in the fourth quarter of 2029. Document-grade, and evidence about direction rather than about the claim's numbers: 2029 sits a year beyond the end of the claim's window, and no wafer or CoWoS figure in the claim is addressed.

    4. 21 Sep 09:59 · tier 4 · DigiTimes

       Weekly roundup, by its own stamp: semiconductor equipment makers facing lead times of up to forty months on certain Japanese components, and local component deliveries stretching about fifty percent. The physical constraint any such ramp meets. Not a second surface for the capacity figures.

    5. 22 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 5. No new sighting of the capacity figures and no TSMC statement on them; the company's only reference point remains the July call's 2026 capex guidance of $60–64 billion. The one TSMC item TrendForce carried today is adjacent and does not confirm the numbers. The date to mark: TSMC's September monthly revenue release, Thursday 8 October, 13:30 Taipei, per the company's own financial calendar. Status unchanged.

    6. 23 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 6 against TrendForce's current news file, whose 23 September items run to DRAM spot prices, LPDDR6 validation, a glass-substrate roundup and a NAND patent ruling, none of which touches the capacity figures. No new sighting and no TSMC statement on them. Status unchanged.

    7. 24 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 7 against TrendForce's current news file, whose 24 September items run to Chinese memory capacity, a Meta device launch, a GDDR7 end-of-life report, an optical-transceiver listing and a Qualcomm node statement, none of which touches the capacity figures. No new sighting and no TSMC statement on them. The date to mark remains TSMC's September monthly revenue release, Thursday 8 October, 13:30 Taipei. Status unchanged.

    8. 25 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8 against TrendForce’s current news file, whose 25 September items run to twelve-inch wafer contract pricing and a rare-earths piece, neither of which touches the capacity figures. No new sighting and no TSMC statement on them. The date to mark remains Thursday 8 October, 13:30 Taipei. Status unchanged.

    9. 27 Sep 14:06 · tier 4 · Economic Daily News

       Added 28 September, and the sighting this issue is built on: the origin outlet revising its own number. Page stamp 28 September 02:06 Taipei, byline Yin Hui-chung (尹慧中), read in the original by this desk. 大廠追加訂單 台積電2奈米擴產進度超前 年底月產能上看12萬片 — major customers have added orders, TSMC's 2nm expansion is ahead of schedule, year-end monthly capacity looking at 120,000 wafers. It states that the market had expected about 90,000 to 100,000 at year-end. Five customers named as raising 2nm-family orders by 10 to 20 percent: Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm, MediaTek. 3nm put near 180,000 a month in the fourth quarter of 2026 and 200,000 to 210,000 in 2027, which is consistent with the 14 September figures. Sourcing language 業界傳出 and 消息人士透露 — the industry says, sources disclose. No firm named, no person named, no document.

       Recorded evidence tier: 4

    10. 27 Sep 23:07 · tier 4 · Yahoo Finance

        First mainstream US headline, nine hours after the revision and nine trading days after the first sighting. Investing.com's report carried on Yahoo Finance's technology pages, byline Ayushman Ojha: "TSMC 2nm wafer capacity to exceed earlier estimates, EDN reports." Credits EDN by name; carries the 120,000 against prior forecasts of 90,000 to 100,000 and the 10-to-20-percent order increase; adds TSMC senior vice-president Hou Yung-ching on first-year 2nm output running 45 percent above 3nm's first year in 2023 and capacity compounding about 70 percent a year through 2028 — company remarks about growth rates, not about the 120,000. The lag closes here on the 2nm leg. The CoWoS leg still has no American headline. Tiered 4 by what the source is; the lag is marked by where the claim reached, which is a different field.

        Recorded evidence tier: 4

11. 2026-09-28T20:55:44.939Z · Entry 6

    28 September — a note on the run, not a correction. The Whisper, No. 9, was built between 11:10 a.m. and 12:20 p.m. Eastern and its observations are stamped to those minutes. No new claim cleared the floor today and no entry is added: the register stays at eleven. Entry 6 is the issue’s feature and its lag is filled at nine trading days, closed by a Yahoo Finance headline published at 11:07 p.m. Eastern on Sunday 27 September — after Friday’s close and before Monday’s open — carrying a 2nm figure a third larger than the one this register has tracked since 14 September. The revision is a sighting and not a document, so the status does not move. Entries 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10 and 11 have a 28 September desk check appended, with the lags on 5, 9, 10 and 11 advanced by one session each.

    Prior record for entry 6

    Previous first-seen label14 SEP

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimTSMC's 2nm capacity is expected to rise from 90,000 wafers a month at end-2026 to 110,000 by mid-2027, its 3nm from more than 180,000 to 210,000, and CoWoS packaging from roughly 130,000 a month to 260,000 by end-2028, per TrendForce citing Taiwan's Economic Daily News. TSMC has not published these figures. The Whisper, No. 3.

    Previous tapenot separable. The claim concerns capacity two to eight quarters out and no single session's move can be attributed to it.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: TSMC's third-quarter call in October, its capex guidance, and its monthly revenue releases on the tenth of each month.

    Previous lag label9 trading days and running, at 25 September. No mainstream American headline for the capacity figures; the groundbreaking was reported, the numbers were not.

    1. 14 Sep · tier 4 · TrendForce / EDN

       First sighting. The capacity numbers above, attributed to Economic Daily News; a 22 percent lift at 2nm, 17 percent at 3nm and a doubling of CoWoS on this desk's arithmetic from the published figures.

    2. 15 Sep 11:30 · tier 4 · DigiTimes

       Second independent surface, by its own Taipei stamp: 3nm, 2nm and CoWoS all tight through the third quarter, Nvidia and Apple dominating advanced process and packaging, and Amazon's Annapurna unit expanding AI chip tape-outs and given more 3nm capacity. Supply-chain sources. Body paywalled.

    3. 21 Sep 07:37 · tier 1 · TSMC via Reuters

       Added 21 September. Ground was broken on an advanced-packaging industrial park at Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan, anchored by TSMC, reported by Reuters under a Taipei dateline of 21 September (some US syndications carry a 20 September date) and carried by Benzinga at 7:37 a.m. Eastern, with operations expected in the fourth quarter of 2029. Document-grade, and evidence about direction rather than about the claim's numbers: 2029 sits a year beyond the end of the claim's window, and no wafer or CoWoS figure in the claim is addressed.

    4. 21 Sep 09:59 · tier 4 · DigiTimes

       Weekly roundup, by its own stamp: semiconductor equipment makers facing lead times of up to forty months on certain Japanese components, and local component deliveries stretching about fifty percent. The physical constraint any such ramp meets. Not a second surface for the capacity figures.

    5. 22 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 5. No new sighting of the capacity figures and no TSMC statement on them; the company's only reference point remains the July call's 2026 capex guidance of $60–64 billion. The one TSMC item TrendForce carried today is adjacent and does not confirm the numbers. The date to mark: TSMC's September monthly revenue release, Thursday 8 October, 13:30 Taipei, per the company's own financial calendar. Status unchanged.

    6. 23 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 6 against TrendForce's current news file, whose 23 September items run to DRAM spot prices, LPDDR6 validation, a glass-substrate roundup and a NAND patent ruling, none of which touches the capacity figures. No new sighting and no TSMC statement on them. Status unchanged.

    7. 24 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 7 against TrendForce's current news file, whose 24 September items run to Chinese memory capacity, a Meta device launch, a GDDR7 end-of-life report, an optical-transceiver listing and a Qualcomm node statement, none of which touches the capacity figures. No new sighting and no TSMC statement on them. The date to mark remains TSMC's September monthly revenue release, Thursday 8 October, 13:30 Taipei. Status unchanged.

    8. 25 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8 against TrendForce’s current news file, whose 25 September items run to twelve-inch wafer contract pricing and a rare-earths piece, neither of which touches the capacity figures. No new sighting and no TSMC statement on them. The date to mark remains Thursday 8 October, 13:30 Taipei. Status unchanged.

    9. 27 Sep 14:06 · tier 4 · Economic Daily News

       Added 28 September, and the sighting this issue is built on: the origin outlet revising its own number. Page stamp 28 September 02:06 Taipei, byline Yin Hui-chung (尹慧中), read in the original by this desk. 大廠追加訂單 台積電2奈米擴產進度超前 年底月產能上看12萬片 — major customers have added orders, TSMC's 2nm expansion is ahead of schedule, year-end monthly capacity looking at 120,000 wafers. It states that the market had expected about 90,000 to 100,000 at year-end. Five customers named as raising 2nm-family orders by 10 to 20 percent: Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm, MediaTek. 3nm put near 180,000 a month in the fourth quarter of 2026 and 200,000 to 210,000 in 2027, which is consistent with the 14 September figures. Sourcing language 業界傳出 and 消息人士透露 — the industry says, sources disclose. No firm named, no person named, no document.

       Recorded evidence tier: 4

    10. 27 Sep 23:07 · tier 4 · Yahoo Finance

        First mainstream US headline, nine hours after the revision and nine trading days after the first sighting. Investing.com's report carried on Yahoo Finance's technology pages, byline Ayushman Ojha: "TSMC 2nm wafer capacity to exceed earlier estimates, EDN reports." Credits EDN by name; carries the 120,000 against prior forecasts of 90,000 to 100,000 and the 10-to-20-percent order increase; adds TSMC senior vice-president Hou Yung-ching on first-year 2nm output running 45 percent above 3nm's first year in 2023 and capacity compounding about 70 percent a year through 2028 — company remarks about growth rates, not about the 120,000. The lag closes here on the 2nm leg. The CoWoS leg still has no American headline. Tiered 4 by what the source is; the lag is marked by where the claim reached, which is a different field.

        Recorded evidence tier: 4

    11. 28 Sep · tier 5 · aggregators

        Counted, not named: TipRanks, GuruFocus via TradingView, CoinCentral, Blockonomi, KuCoin, Parameter and EconoTimes carried the 120,000 by mid-morning; every one credits EDN and none adds a source. Invezz, 28 September 00:10 Eastern, is the exception worth reading — it reaches TechInsights vice-chair Dan Hutcheson on more than fifteen customers working on N2 and Stifel's Sahej Singh keeping a Buy and a $515 target on a margin argument — and its own headline reads that the stock slipped.

        Recorded evidence tier: 5

12. 2026-09-28T20:55:50.495Z · Entry 9

    The Whisper, No. 9 — 28 September 2026: append the supplied 28 Sep observation for entry 9 and update lag from the supplied register. Existing sourcing history and source links are retained; status is unchanged.

    Prior record for entry 9

    Previous first-seen label18 SEP

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimThe Munich I Regional Court has found Micron Technology to infringe two German utility models held by Yangtze Memory Technologies and granted injunctions covering sales of the infringing 3D NAND products in Germany, per ip fray, with Micron saying it disagrees, has appealed and is challenging the rights' validity, per TechNode citing IT Home. No judgment text is public and no mainstream American outlet has carried it. The Whisper, No. 6.

    Previous tape1,015.80 → 1,096.16, +80.36, +7.91%, the 18 September close on the day of the first sighting to the 22 September close, sworn — stockanalysis.com and Investing.com carry 977.50 (17 Sep), 1,015.80 (18 Sep), 1,043.96 (21 Sep) and 1,096.16 (22 Sep) identically to the cent; the percentage is this desk's arithmetic, 80.36 ÷ 1,015.80. Today unsworn, both printed: 1,074.68, −21.48, −1.96%, previous close 1,096.16, range 1,074.30–1,105.50, volume 6,619,617, Yahoo Finance at 10:20 a.m.; 1,067.01, open 1,100.07, high 1,105.50, low 1,069.76, volume 13,313,292, stockanalysis.com at a 1:13 p.m. page stamp. Volumes where the feeds disagree, both printed: 28,078,850 against 28.17m on 21 September, 28,588,943 against 29.19m on 22 September. Nothing is attributed: Micron reports on 30 September and the memory complex has run for weeks. Updated 25 September: Thursday’s close is sworn at 1,080.53 — Yahoo Finance’s quote page states it as the 24 September close, with open 1,049.75, range 1,044.00–1,081.04 and volume 21,938,990 — and stockanalysis.com’s live change today implies the identical previous close of 1,080.51, reconciling within rounding. That carries the move from the 18 September base to +64.73, +6.37%, this desk’s arithmetic, 64.73 ÷ 1,015.80. Today unsworn, one feed: 1,079.00, open 1,095.83, range 1,074.51–1,108.72, volume 10,532,468, stockanalysis.com at 11:58 a.m. Eastern.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: the Munich I judgment texts, which would fix the product scope; a Munich Higher Regional Court ruling on a stay; Micron's fiscal 2026 annual report and its legal-proceedings note, following the 30 September results; an 8-K if the company judges the effect material sooner; a filing by YMTC of the security German law requires before a first-instance injunction is enforced. Kills it: an appellate stay, or judgment texts showing the enjoined products are not ones Micron sells into Germany.

    Previous lag label5 trading days and running, at 25 September. First sighting Friday 18 September; no mainstream American outlet — not Reuters, Bloomberg, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch or Barron's — had carried it as of 1:41 p.m. Eastern today.

    1. 18 Sep · tier 4 · ip fray

       First sighting, and the only account with the record in it: the 7th Civil Chamber, presiding judge Dr. Oliver Schoen; cases 7 O 12615/25 and 7 O 12614/25 decided, three more adjourned, among them 7 O 12616/25 and 7 O 12593/25; utility models DE 20 2020 006 166 U1, "Staircase structure of a three-dimensional storage device," and DE 20 2021 004 551 U1, "Barrier layers for word line contacts in three-dimensional NAND memory." On what happens next: "Enforcement will likely begin soon unless the appeals court (the Munich Higher Regional Court) stays both injunctions." Stood alone.

    2. 18–23 Sep, undated · tier 4 · IAM

       "YMTC strikes NAND patent blow against Micron with two German injunctions." Logged as a headline from the search index rather than as a read: iam-media.com returns a 403 to this desk and the page was not opened. Its date is not established.

    3. 23 Sep 05:07 · tier 4 · TechNode

       09:07 UTC. Second origin rather than a relay: it cites the Chinese outlet IT Home, not ip fray. "Munich Regional Court I has ruled that Micron infringed two German utility models held by Yangtze Memory Technologies, and issued injunctions." Carries the company response the first report did not.

    4. 23 Sep · tier 2 · Micron via TechNode

       The highest tier in the trail besides the ruling itself, and carried at second hand: Micron "said it disagreed with the decision, filed an appeal and was challenging the validity of the relevant rights." No verbatim company statement has been located.

    5. 23 Sep · tier 4 · DIGITIMES

       "YMTC wins German injunctions against Micron in latest round of NAND patent battle," item a20260923PD226. Headline from the search index; digitimes.com returned a 403 to this desk on four attempts and no page was read.

    6. 23 Sep · tier 4 · TrendForce

       In its news file as "German Court Reportedly Finds Micron Infringed Two YMTC NAND Patents, Grants Injunctions" — reportedly, five days after a specialist outlet printed the chamber, the judge and the case numbers.

    7. 23 Sep 12:12 · tier 5 · aggregator

       Counted, not weighted, and quoted because it states the limits most precisely: "The injunctions are first-instance rulings that cover sales of the infringing products in Germany only," and "No report we found says YMTC has started enforcing, that Micron has asked for a stay, or that one has been granted." Also: without the judgment texts nobody outside the case can say whether the enjoined products are consumer SSD components, embedded NAND, or both.

    8. 24 Sep · tier 4 · JUVE Patent

       Added 24 September. A second origin, not a relay: it does not cite ip fray, and it carries material the first report did not. The patent EP 3 931 868 beside four German utility models — DE 20 2020 006 166.2, DE 20 2021 004 551, DE 20 2018 007 011 and DE 20 2022 003 278 — the pending cases 7 O 12609/25, 7 O 12616/25 and 7 O 12593/25 alongside the two decided, and presiding judge Oliver Schön of the 7th Civil Chamber. It states that the court found two utility models "valid and infringed and granted YMTC injunctions," that Micron has appealed, and — new to this register — that Micron has brought its own infringement claims at the Munich Regional Court and at the Unified Patent Court on EP 3 706 127, EP 3 574 526 and EP 2 745 295.

    9. 24 Sep · tier 4 · Tom's Hardware

       The claim reaches the American technology press, and not the American market press: "China's YMTC wins patent battle against Micron in ongoing 3-year legal war over memory patents — new injunctions could restrict Micron's supply into Germany." Downstream; not counted as an independent surface.

    10. 24 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 7. No judgment text, no stay, no Micron 8-K and no verbatim company statement. No mainstream American outlet carries it. The lag runs on, now four trading days.

    11. 25 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8. Electronics Weekly has joined the trail, and a further specialist write-up records Micron’s appeal of both injunctions; both are downstream and neither is counted as an independent surface. Still no judgment text, no ruling on a stay, no Micron 8-K and no verbatim company statement, and no mainstream American outlet carries it. The lag runs on, now five trading days.

13. 2026-09-28T20:55:58.032Z · Entry 10

    The Whisper, No. 9 — 28 September 2026: append the supplied 28 Sep observation for entry 10 and update lag from the supplied register. Existing sourcing history and source links are retained; status is unchanged.

    Prior record for entry 10

    Previous first-seen label23 SEP

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimMicron has marked its 2-gigabyte GDDR7 chips end of life — the 28Gbps D8FHL part, MT68A512M32DF-28:A, and its 32Gbps sibling — leaving 3-gigabyte modules as its only GDDR7 density and Samsung and SK hynix as the remaining sources of the 2-gigabyte parts used on much of Nvidia's RTX 50 range, per Hardware Busters, The FPS Review, VideoCardz, TechPowerUp and TrendForce, all reading the same page of Micron's own parts catalogue. Micron has published no notice and explained nothing; Nvidia has said nothing. The Whisper, No. 7.

    Previous tape1,096.16 → 1,071.88, −24.28, −2.22%, the 22 September close before the first sighting to the 23 September close, sworn — stockanalysis.com's daily table and Yahoo Finance's quote page carry 1,071.88 identically, Yahoo carries the change as −2.22 percent, and MarketBeat's 23 September alert headlines "Shares Down 2.2%." Desk arithmetic, inputs shown: 1,096.16 − 1,071.88 = 24.28; 24.28 ÷ 1,096.16 = 2.215 percent. Nothing is attributed. Wednesday's session already has a published explanation and it is not this one: Invezz, 23 September 15:02, gives Wells Fargo cutting its target to $1,400 from $1,525 while keeping Overweight, Citi's Atif Malik raising his to $1,300 from $1,150 on "stronger-than-expected DRAM pricing and continued undersupply across both DRAM and NAND markets," and Michael Burry adding to a short. No published account of the session mentions GDDR7. The 23 September close is carried on a third independent read, Yahoo Finance at 1:39 p.m. today, which returns 1,071.88 as the previous close. Today unsworn, one feed: 1,072.12, +0.24, +0.02%, open 1,049.75, range 1,044.00–1,076.49, volume 14,114,423, Yahoo Finance, "As of 1:39:31 PM EDT. Market Open" — Micron opened twenty-two points below the prior close, traded to 1,044.00 and was bought back to roughly unchanged, and none of that is attributed either. A reading set aside and not logged: an 11:24 a.m. table appeared to carry a 24 September close outside its own printed high and low, but on re-reading at 1:37 p.m. that page was serving data stamped 4:51 a.m. pre-market and a Yahoo read a minute later returned a level near 958 against a previous close near 956 that reconciles with no session sworn in here and did not reproduce. The desk does not log an entry against a page it cannot re-read. Updated 25 September: Thursday’s close is sworn at 1,080.53 on the two reads described in entry 9, which carries the move from the 22 September base to −15.63, −1.43%, this desk’s arithmetic, 15.63 ÷ 1,096.16. Nothing is attributed.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: a distributor's catalogue mirroring the EOL flag with a last-time-buy date; a product change notification to customers, the document this kind of decision normally travels on; board partner or distributor pricing showing 2-gigabyte parts withdrawn; Micron's fiscal fourth-quarter results and call on 30 September — four trading days from today, five from the first sighting — where a deliberate shift of graphics memory toward higher-density AI parts belongs in the commentary on mix. Kills it: Micron saying the parts remain in production, a catalogue reading showing them in Production status, or a 2-gigabyte part appearing on a new board.

    Previous lag label2 trading days and running, at 25 September. First sighting Wednesday 23 September; no mainstream American outlet — not Reuters, Bloomberg, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch or Barron's — had carried it as of 1:41 p.m. Eastern today; Tom's Hardware is the furthest it has travelled and that is the technology press.

    1. 23 Sep · tier 5 · leak account

       First sighting, counted and not named: a hardware leak account on X, quoted verbatim by The FPS Review — "the micron gddr7 28gbps 2gb chip d8fhl (MT68A512M32DF-28:A) used on some rtx50 cards, has reached end of life." One sentence, one part number, no explanation, no company. Time not established.

    2. 23 Sep 05:05 · tier 4 · Hardware Busters

       09:05:00 UTC by its own stamp, byline crmaris. Names both parts, MT68A512M32DF-28:A and MT68A512M32DF-32:A, and cites four things: Micron's GDDR7 part catalogue, the leak account, TweakTown and VideoCardz. Did not stand alone, and printed the sentence that matters most in the trail: "Micron has not published a notice or explained the decision."

    3. 23 Sep 08:14 · tier 4 · The FPS Review

       12:14:15 UTC, Peter Brosdahl. Cites the leak account via VideoCardz and places the part across the RTX 50 range from the 5060 to the 5090. Explicitly downstream.

    4. 23 Sep · tier 4 · VideoCardz, TechPowerUp

       "Micron reportedly ends production of 2GB GDDR7 used by GeForce RTX 50" and "Micron's 2 GB GDDR7 Memory Chips Reportedly Reach End of Life." Both logged as headlines from the search index rather than as reads: videocardz.com returned a 402 to this desk and techpowerup.com is disallowed to it by robots. Neither page was opened.

    5. 23–24 Sep · tier 5 · relays

       Counted, not weighted: eTeknix, Wccftech, Kantan, GameGPU, Techtroduce, FPSHub and borecraft, every one a retelling of the same catalogue reading and none an independent surface.

    6. 24 Sep · tier 4 · TrendForce

       In its news file as "Micron Reportedly Ends 2GB GDDR7, Narrowing Supply Options for NVIDIA's RTX 50 Series," citing TechPowerUp, Gazlog, the leak account, Tom's Hardware, VideoCardz and the catalogue, and stating the document claim in its cleanest form: "Micron's product catalog now lists its 28 Gbps D8FHL chip (MT68A512M32DF-28) as EOL, with the 32 Gbps version carrying the same designation." Adds the economics: 3GB modules at $60–$70 a chip against roughly $20 for the 2GB parts.

    7. 24 Sep · tier 4 · Tom's Hardware

       Added 24 September, and the surface that supplies the reason this sits on the AI beat. Etiido Uko reports both the 28 and 32 Gbps variants discontinued and Micron "shifting its focus toward higher-density 3 GB (24 Gb) GDDR7 chips," which carry "higher profit margins" and go into Nvidia's professional RTX PRO Blackwell parts for AI work; the general case, in its words, is "memory suppliers prioritizing AI-facing technologies over their consumer and retail counterparts." It also carries the counterweight this desk prints rather than the squeeze: Samsung and SK hynix already dominate 2GB GDDR7 and Micron was not competitive there, so the exit creates little shortage risk. No Micron or Nvidia comment.

    8. 24 Sep 12:46 · tier 1 · the catalogue, unread

       The desk went to the document and could not open it. micron.com's public GDDR7 part catalogue returns no results; its table carries the right columns — part number, density, parts status, depth, width, operating temperature, speed — and "parts status" is the field holding the EOL, Production and Preview values every report is quoting. The catalogue requires a Micron account. The document exists, it is Micron's own, and no reader outside can check the claim against it. The claim is not upgraded on a page this desk cannot read.

    9. 25 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8. No Micron notice, no product change notification, no distributor catalogue mirroring the flag with a last-time-buy date, and no Nvidia comment. The parts catalogue still requires an account and is still unreadable to this desk and to any other reader outside Micron. The lag runs on, now two trading days. Status unchanged.

14. 2026-09-28T20:56:12.496Z · Entry 11

    The Whisper, No. 9 — 28 September 2026: append the supplied 28 Sep observation for entry 11 and update lag from the supplied register. Existing sourcing history and source links are retained; status is unchanged.

    Prior record for entry 11

    Previous first-seen label23 SEP

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimNew 2027 long-term contract prices for twelve-inch semiconductor silicon wafers will rise fifteen to twenty-five percent for epitaxial wafers and more than forty percent for polished, with some second-tier customers above fifty percent, per the Commercial Times of Taipei, citing an industry survey and institutional analyst estimates. No wafer maker and no customer has confirmed a figure, and there is no document of any kind in the trail. The Whisper, No. 8.

    Previous tapeno reading sworn in, and the desk prints why. The claim's subjects are listed in Taipei — GlobalWafers on the Taipei Exchange under 6488, with Taisil and Wafer Works beside it — and this desk has established no US-listed line for any of them. The two feeds it reads for Taipei disagree by roughly a third and both are stale: stockanalysis.com served 1,000.00 TWD, +29.00, +2.99%, previous close 971.00, volume 1,355,000, on a page stamped 23 September 9:20 a.m. Taipei; Investing.com served 1,480.00 TWD, −35.00, −2.31%, volume 10.79m, on a page labelled "Closed as of July 15, 2026." One is ten weeks stale and says so; the other is two days stale and does not. Both are printed, neither is sworn, and no level is published as current. No options print, no volume anomaly and no prediction-market contract was found either. The fifty-two-week range on both pages runs 333 to 1,600.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: GlobalWafers' third-quarter results and investor conference in late October, and its monthly revenue releases on the tenth of each month; SUMCO's and Shin-Etsu's late-October results and their guidance language on long-term agreements; any foundry or memory maker booking a materially higher wafer cost line in fourth-quarter guidance, which confirms it from the customer's side. Kills it: a wafer maker saying on the record that 2027 agreements are renewing at single-digit or low-double-digit increases; a customer's guidance showing flat wafer costs into 2027; or the October results season passing with none of the companies raising their own pricing outlook.

    Previous lag label2 trading days and running, at 25 September. First sighting Wednesday 23 September; no mainstream American outlet — not Reuters, Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch or Barron's — carried the 2027 contract numbers as of 12:15 p.m. Eastern today. The furthest the claim has travelled into American publishing is Wccftech and TrendForce, which are the technology and research trade, not the market press.

    1. 26 Jun · tier 4 · CTEE, BigGo

       Upstream, and a different claim. The Commercial Times reported wafer prices rising about ten percent across six-, eight- and twelve-inch, the first increase in over three years. A Chinese-language analysis the same day, 12:26 UTC, citing CITIC Securities, SEMI, Bernstein and JW Insights, gave the mechanism: the long-term supply agreements "acted like shackles, making silicon wafer manufacturers the last beneficiaries in the AI industry chain." Ten percent across all sizes in June is not forty percent on polished twelve-inch in 2027.

    2. 15–17 Sep · tier 4 · CTEE

       The supply side, twice: a 15 September item putting the supply gap at at least ten percent from next year, a 17 September item widening it to twenty-four percent by 2028. Neither carried contract prices.

    3. 18 Sep · tier 4 · UBS, as reported

       Recorded because it is being conflated with the claim, not because it supports it. Wafer manufacturers "may need price increases of 40% to 50% just to justify building the capacity the AI industry says it needs" — a threshold required to unlock investment, not a forecast of contract prices. Two different forty-percents are now circulating in the same week.

    4. 23 Sep 03:00 · tier 4 · Commercial Times

       First sighting, page stamp 03:00 Taipei, modified 08:01, byline Li Juan-ping (李娟萍). The sentence, in the original: 十二吋磊晶圓新長約價格估上漢15％～25％，拋光晶圓漲幅則可能達40％以上，部分二線客戶甚至超遒50％ — new long-contract prices for twelve-inch epitaxial wafers estimated up fifteen to twenty-five percent, polished wafers possibly above forty, some second-tier customers above fifty. Three forces named: AI logic, memory capacity expansion, and the renegotiation of long-term contracts. Attributed to an industry survey and institutional analyst estimates; no firm and no person named. Stood alone; cites no earlier report.

    5. 23 Sep 14:10 · tier 4 · Wccftech

       Ramish Zafar, byline stamp "Sep 23, 2026 at 02:10pm EDT," crediting Taiwan's CTEE. Carries the split correctly — "polished wafers are expected to see a higher price jump in the form of a 40% increase compared to 15% to 25% for the standard epitaxial wafers" — and the demand arithmetic beneath it: CoWoS capacity up 70.9 percent next year, GPU and custom AI ASIC demand up 44.9 percent, wafer prices from $92 in 2026 to $122 in 2027 and $166 in 2028, shipments from 11.9 million wafers a quarter to 16.1 million and then 21.7 million. Its headline takes the polished figure as the whole. Explicitly downstream.

    6. 25 Sep · tier 4 · TrendForce

       "12-inch Wafer Price Hikes Loom for 2027 as AI Demand Tightens Supply, with LTAs Reportedly Up 15–40%+," citing the Commercial Times, Star Market Daily, Wccftech and BigGo. A synthesis of the origin and its relays that reaches past Wccftech to a second Chinese-language outlet, which is what carries this entry over the floor. The word in its own headline is reportedly, two days on, and that is the correct word.

15. 2026-10-01T02:25:24.907Z · Entry 1, Entry 2, Entry 3, Entry 4, Entry 5, Entry 6, Entry 9, Entry 10, Entry 11, Entry 12, Entry 13

    The Whisper Nos. 10–11 (29–30 September 2026): reconcile the supplied active register with the hosted record, retaining all earlier entries, corrections and verified citation additions. Add dated observations and entries 12–13 with direct source links. Correct the entry 1 session count; distinguish AMD’s announced but pending World Labs agreement from the AMD pricing rumor; clarify the Alpha Compute term-sheet status and The Bell publication chronology; and leave entry 13’s mainstream-US lag open despite a Canadian relay. No rumor is asserted as confirmed by these editorial changes. Entry 12 is held open because the independent corroboration threshold is not met by relays of one FT report.

    Prior record for entry 1

    Previous first-seen label15 SEP

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimTen banks are lending $22 billion, with a $1 billion revolver beside it, to Crux AI, the Blackstone–Alphabet venture, to buy Google TPUs, secured by the chips and the customer contracts, per Bloomberg's people familiar with the matter. 9fin had it a day earlier at $23 billion. No party has confirmed it. The Whisper, No. 1.

    Previous tapeon Fed day, not attributable. Blackstone 126.70 → 123.45, −2.57%; Alphabet 344.98 → 342.87, −0.61%, September 15 to 16 closes; levels stockanalysis.com, the two percentages also carried by Investing.com's report at 15:44. 22 + 1 = 23; 23 + 5 = 28, against May's "roughly 25." Updated 18 September: Alphabet closed 17 September at 347.33, +1.30%, volume 19,032,520, stockanalysis.com, in a market-wide rally the day after the Fed.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: a closing release from Blackstone, Crux or a lead bank; a rating on the facility or the refinancing bonds; the bonds' offering document; a named bank saying it is not in the group.

    Previous lag label1 trading day from 9fin to Bloomberg; 2 from the unattributed sighting, which the desk does not count as a start.

    1. 18 May · tier 1 · Blackstone release

       The venture announced: $5 billion of initial equity from Blackstone, 500 MW online in 2027, Google supplying TPUs, software and services. No debt mentioned.

    2. May, per 22 May account · tier 3 · Bloomberg

       "Roughly $25 billion with leverage," one person familiar; Blackstone majority owner; Benjamin Treynor Sloss chief executive.

    3. 14 Sep 09:05 · tier 5 · unattributed

       Counted, not named: a crypto-news site wrote that Blackstone was "reportedly targeting investments in the tens of billions… across multiple gigawatts," citing no one.

    4. 15 Sep · tier 4 · 9fin

       "Blackstone looks to raise $23bn debt for Google AI joint venture," sources told 9fin. First attributed sighting; no time shown.

    5. 16 Sep 15:44 · tier 3 · Bloomberg

       First mainstream US headline: $22 billion loan plus $1 billion revolver, ten banks (Goldman, SMBC, Barclays, BNP, Scotiabank named), secured by chips and contracts, possible refinancing in investment-grade bonds. Did not cite 9fin. Time is the stamp on Investing.com's relay.

    6. 16 Sep 16:34 · tier 3 · Reuters

       Relay citing Bloomberg; seven companies did not respond. A later headline reads "source says," unread by the desk, not counted as independent.

    7. 16–17 Sep · tier 5 · aggregators

       Re-checked 18 September. No document appeared. What changed is the language: TipRanks and Gokhshtein published the loan as "secured"; Blockonomi, 17 Sep 12:10 UTC, wrote that Crux "has successfully arranged $22 billion in bank financing" and that the facility "is secured against both the physical TPU hardware and contractual agreements." Nobody has confirmed a dollar of it.

    8. 21 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 4. Still no closing release, no rating, no offering document and no named bank confirming or denying membership of the group. The aggregator layer has thickened — Finimize, briefs.co, AI Weekly and FourWeekMBA now carry the loan in the past tense — and two Yahoo Finance relays, including a Benzinga piece putting GOOGL and BX "in focus," keep it in front of American readers. Nothing document-grade. Status unchanged.

    9. 22 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 5. No closing release on Blackstone's press page, whose most recent items are 13, 10 and 9 September and none of them about Crux AI or the facility; no rating, and a KBRA note on AI-compute financing risk that does not evaluate Crux AI; no offering document; no bank on the record either way. A domain-restricted search of sec.gov returns no filing naming Crux AI. Status unchanged.

    10. 24 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 7. Six sessions after Bloomberg's report — 17, 18, 21, 22, 23 and 24 September — there is still no closing release, no rating, no offering document and no named bank either way. The aggregator layer is unchanged in kind — FourWeekMBA, AI Weekly, Finimize, Dealroom and pulse2 all carry the facility, most of them in the past tense — and one relay again states the accurate position in its own headline: the loan is "reported" and its "status still unclear." Status unchanged.

    11. 23 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 6. No closing release, no rating, no offering document and no named bank either way. The aggregator layer thickened again — Finimize, FourWeekMBA, Dealroom, KuCoin and HuggingNews all carry the facility in the past tense — and one relay, Runtimewire, puts the accurate position in its own headline: the loan is "reported" and its "status still unclear." Status unchanged.

    12. 25 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8. Seven sessions after Bloomberg’s report there is still no closing release, no rating, no offering document and no named bank either way, and no filing naming Crux AI on a domain-restricted search of sec.gov. Status unchanged.

    13. 28 Sep 2026 14:40 UTC — source-link verification · desk check · primary-source link verification

        Source-link check for the existing 18 May Blackstone observation: the linked May 18, 2026 issuer announcement supports the equity commitment, expected capacity and Google's contribution recorded above. It does not confirm the separate loan, revolver, lenders or closing. This is a citation update, not a new first sighting or rumor-status change; the historical observations and supplied September 25 cutoff remain unchanged.

        • Source 1: https://www.blackstone.com/news/press/blackstone-announces-joint-venture-with-google-to-create-new-tpu-cloud/

    14. 28 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 9. Eight sessions after Bloomberg’s report there is still no closing release, no rating, no offering document and no named bank either way, and no filing naming Crux AI on a domain-restricted search of sec.gov. The aggregator layer is unchanged in kind. Status unchanged.

    Prior record for entry 2

    Previous first-seen label14 SEP

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimKioxia is weighing a US listing of American depositary shares to raise at least $10 billion, possibly next year, with Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, per Bloomberg's people familiar; the deliberations are "preliminary." The plan is the company's, stated in May; the size is single-sourced. The Whisper, No. 1.

    Previous tapeTokyo readings one feed, unsworn; no US-listed security yet.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: a public Form F-1 on EDGAR; an exchange application; a Kioxia release naming the exchange; the November results. Amended 24 September: the Form F-6EF of 11 February is on file, was filed by a depositary rather than by Kioxia, and does not settle it; neither does the unsponsored KXIAY programme.

    Previous lag label0 trading days; the first sighting of the size was the mainstream headline.

    1. May · tier 1 · Kioxia

       The company said it was preparing to list ADRs to broaden its investor base, per Reuters' account of 14 September.

    2. 25 Jun 03:27 · tier 4 · TradingKey

       Added 21 September, an earlier surface the desk had missed: Kioxia "intends to issue American Depositary Receipts and list on a U.S. stock exchange by spring 2027," subject to regulatory approval, with exchange, offering size and timeline unsettled. The plan and its approximate date were therefore in print three months before Bloomberg's report; what is single-sourced is the size, not the listing.

    3. 14 Sep 08:58 · tier 3 · Bloomberg

       At least $10 billion, three banks named, size and lineup subject to change; Kioxia did not reply outside business hours. Reuters relayed it; The Star's copy stamped 08:58 Eastern. The sighting was the headline.

    4. 14–15 Sep · tier 4 · SED, Invezz

       Seoul Economic Daily and Invezz relayed Bloomberg; Invezz read the Tokyo shares at ¥51,720 on the 14th and ¥51,350 by the 15th, against a June high of ¥112,750.

    5. 18 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked against EDGAR's full-text index: no Form F-1 for Kioxia. No new sighting since 14 September and no denial. Status unchanged.

    6. 15 Sep · tier 1 · Kioxia

       Added 22 September, and the highest tier this claim has reached. "Notice Regarding Certain Media Reports," on the company's own site: "There have been media reports regarding the listing of the Company's American Depositary Shares on a U.S. stock exchange. These reports are not announcements made by the Company," and "details of the listing such as the schedule, listing market, and listing method have not yet been decided," with the note that preparations may be discontinued. Neither confirms nor denies the size, the banks or the timing. The desk had missed this through three issues; see the audit block.

    7. 11 Feb · tier 1 · BNY Mellon / EDGAR

       Added 24 September, and the document this register said did not exist. Form F-6EF, accession 0001019155-26-000048, filed 11 February 2026, registering 50,000,000 American depositary shares over Kioxia common stock. No exchange is named in it, and Kioxia did not file it: it is signed by The Bank of New York Mellon, 240 Greenwich Street, as depositary, with Kioxia Holdings Corporation named only as "the issuer of deposited securities," neither registrant nor signatory. It predates Bloomberg's report by seven months and says nothing about the size, the banks, the exchange or the timing the claim is about. See the audit block.

    8. 9 Mar · tier 1 · depositary bulletin

       Added 24 September. The Kioxia line that actually trades over the counter, KXIAY, is a different programme under a different bank: an unsponsored depositary receipt facility with J.P. Morgan as depositary, ten ordinary shares to one receipt, CUSIP 49726J108, listed in BNY Mellon's bulletin of new unsponsored programmes dated 9 March 2026. An unsponsored facility is established by a bank without the issuer's participation, so it is evidence about banks and not about Kioxia's intentions.

    9. 21 Sep · desk check

       EDGAR re-checked for The Whisper, No. 4: still no Form F-1. The Japan Times and Yahoo Finance relays of the 14 September report remain the American surface. Status unchanged.

    10. 22 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 5: still no Form F-1 or F-6 for Kioxia, and no IR item since the 15 September notice. A trap recorded for future searches: the F-1 that surfaces on these search terms is SK hynix Inc., CIK 2120882, filed 24 June, Nasdaq Global Select under SKHY, with BofA Securities, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan as global coordinators — a different issuer with a near-identical bank lineup to the three attributed to Kioxia. Status unchanged.

    11. 24 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 7. Still no Form F-1, no exchange application and no company item since the 15 September notice. The F-6EF above was found on this check and is filed in its own place in the trail; it is the highest-tier document on this entry after that notice, and it does not touch the claim as printed.

    12. 25 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8. Still no Form F-1, no exchange application and no company item since the 15 September notice. Status unchanged.

    13. 28 Sep 2026 14:40 UTC — source-link verification · desk check · primary-source link verification

        Source-link check for two existing observations: Source 1 is Kioxia's September 15, 2026 media-response notice, supporting the recorded preparation and uncertainty. Source 2 is the February 11, 2026 F-6 filing, accession 0001019155-26-000048, supporting the depositary filing observation. Neither establishes the reported offering size, bank lineup, exchange or timing. The separate March depositary programme and remaining trail were not checked in this citation update. Status, historical dates, text and the supplied September 25 cutoff remain unchanged.

        • Source 1: https://www.kioxia-holdings.com/en-jp/news/2026/20260915-1.html
        • Source 2: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1201935/000101915526000048/kholdingsf6ef.htm

    14. 28 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 9. Still no Form F-1, no exchange application and no company item since the 15 September notice. Status unchanged.

    Prior record for entry 3

    Previous first-seen label17 SEP

    Previous source-record statusopen

    Previous recorded claimAMD has told its partners that prices on its graphics processors, AI accelerators and chipsets will rise by roughly ten percent in the fourth quarter of 2026, because TSMC has told AMD the same about wafers, per Wccftech citing ChannelGate, a supply-chain channel on WeChat. Neither company has commented. Every English-language sighting traces to that one channel. The Whisper, No. 2.

    Previous tape512.50 → 559.82, +47.32, +9.23%, the 16 September close before the first attributed sighting to the 18 September close, sworn — stockanalysis.com and Investing.com carry both figures identically to the cent; the percentage is this desk's arithmetic, 47.32 ÷ 512.50. Intraday 21 September, one feed and unsworn: 606.68 at 1:24 p.m. on stockanalysis.com, +46.86, +8.37% on the session, range 582.27–615.99, volume 29.5m, which carries the move from the same base to +94.18, +18.38%. The same page put the market capitalisation at $990.39 billion. Volumes where the feeds disagree, both printed: 28.17m against 28.46m on 17 September, 31.17m against 31.87m on 18 September. Amended 21 September with the corrected stamp: the report ran at 8:26 a.m. on 17 September, sixty-four minutes before the open, and AMD opened at 533.60 — both feeds, sworn — a gap of 4.12% on the prior close, 533.60 ÷ 512.50, closing the session up 6.36%. Where the stock traded before 8:26 the desk cannot establish and does not guess; the earlier claim that the advance preceded the report is withdrawn. The advance has also run on through a broad semiconductor rally, so the desk still attributes nothing. Updated 22 September: Monday's close is sworn at 615.52 — stockanalysis.com and stockinvest.us, which wrote that AMD "ended at $615.52," with Yahoo Finance carrying the same as its previous close — which carries the move from the same base to +103.02, +20.10%, this desk's arithmetic, 103.02 ÷ 512.50. Today unsworn, both printed: 618.34 at 12:03 p.m. Eastern on stockanalysis.com, 614.92 at 10:46 a.m. on Yahoo Finance. A caution: Investing.com's AMD historical table was stale at 18 September when checked today, and its quote page showed a 15:39 intraday print of 615.71 that is not a close; it is not used for Monday.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: a partner or OEM price list showing fourth-quarter increases in that range; AMD's third-quarter results and call on 3 November, where a ten percent rise reaches the gross-margin line; TSMC's October call on 2027 wafer pricing; an on-the-record statement. Kills it: AMD saying no such notice went to partners, or fourth-quarter price lists arriving unchanged.

    Previous lag label1 trading day, corrected 21 September from running. First attributed sighting 17 September 8:26 a.m.; first mainstream US headline 18 September 5:22 a.m. on Yahoo Finance. The first independently authored American market story came on 21 September, two trading days out; the desk counts the earlier one.

    1. 21 Jul · tier 3 · Nikkei

       The upstream claim, via Tom's Hardware: TSMC to raise advanced-node baseline prices five to ten percent from the start of 2027, with "another 10% to 15% premium on top of the standard increase" for incremental HPC capacity, citing people with knowledge of the matter. Named no customer.

    2. 17 Sep · tier 5 · channel

       ChannelGate, a WeChat supply-chain account, relayed by a leak account on X. Counted, not named. Origin of the AMD-specific leg.

    3. 17 Sep 08:26 · tier 4 · Wccftech

       First attributed sighting; stamp corrected 21 September from 12:26 p.m., which was the page metadata's UTC time, to 8:26 a.m. Eastern per the article's own byline. "TSMC has notified its customers about the price hikes, leading to AMD notifying its partners about the same. The price hike is roughly 10% and is planned to be implemented in the fourth quarter of 2026." Cited ChannelGate; did not stand alone; said a ten percent Ryzen increase "should be treated as a 'possibility' rather than a confirmed development." Wccftech gives ChannelGate no descriptor; Club386, the same day, identifies it as the WeChat arm of a Chinese leak site.

    4. 17–18 Sep · tier 4 · relays

       Counted, not weighted: six English-language sites, among them ThinkComputers, Club386, Notebookcheck, PC Guide, XenoSpectrum and Technetbook. All downstream of the same item or the same channel.

    5. 18 Sep 05:22 · tier 3 · Yahoo Finance

       First mainstream US headline. Amended 21 September: logged in The Whisper, No. 2, as a Stocktwits relay, it was published on Yahoo Finance's markets pages as "AMD Stock Rises Premarket: Report Flags Chip Price Hike Linked To TSMC Costs," naming both Wccftech and ChannelGate; AMD up 1.4 percent premarket, a third consecutive advance, the three-session gain above twelve percent. The lag closed here.

    6. 18 Sep · tier 4 · TrendForce

       Carried in its own news file as AMD "preparing a 10% price hike for GPUs, AI chips, and chipsets in Q4 2026, attributed to rising manufacturing costs at TSMC." Downstream of the same origin; not counted as a second surface.

    7. 19 Sep · tier 2 · TSMC via Digital Citizen

       The first named-company material in the trail, and the highest tier this claim has reached. A TSMC spokesperson, asked about the report: "Our pricing strategy is strategic, not opportunistic. We will continue to work closely with customers and sell our value to them." Neither a confirmation nor a denial. The same piece set the leak's Q4 2026 timing against TSMC's July guidance of 2027 and allowed that the two "may describe one negotiation at different stages or two separate cost actions."

    8. 21 Sep 09:37 · tier 4 · 24/7 Wall St.

       First American market story written independently of the technology press, also carried on Yahoo Finance: "AMD Rises 5% as Report Flags 10% Chip Price Increase; NVIDIA and Taiwan Semiconductor Tick Up." AMD 586.66, Nvidia 223.72, TSM 440.92. Calls the claim "unconfirmed," does not name ChannelGate, and adds that "a denial or narrower scope would remove the framing that's lifting AMD stock this morning."

    9. 21 Sep · tier 4 · PCWorld

       Added 22 September. Quotes the origin channel directly, through a leak account on X: "AMD will increase chip price about 10% in Q4 / It is result from TSMC's price increase." No AMD comment. Not an independent surface; it is the same WeChat account, one relay closer to the source than Wccftech was.

    10. 22 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 5. No new sighting today, no AMD statement, no denial, and no partner or OEM price list. The claim is forking in the relay layer: one branch has Ryzen spared, the other has Ryzen following, and both cite the same channel. Status unchanged.

    11. 23 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 6. TweakTown has joined the relay layer, alongside Digital Trends, XenoSpectrum, ThinkComputers and Startup Fortune, and the Ryzen fork persists across them; every one is downstream of the same WeChat channel. No AMD statement, no denial and no partner or OEM price list. Status unchanged.

    12. 24 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 7. Digital Trends, Startup Fortune and Compsmag have joined the relay layer and the Ryzen fork persists across it; every branch still cites the same WeChat channel. No AMD statement, no denial and no partner or OEM price list. Status unchanged.

    13. 25 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8, the sixth session since the first attributed sighting. No AMD statement, no denial and no partner or OEM price list. Recorded beside this entry today: an unrelated and independently sourced claim, printed as entry 11, that the silicon wafers upstream of TSMC are themselves being repriced for 2027. The desk logs the two as separate claims and does not treat either as evidence for the other. Status unchanged.

    14. 28 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 9, the seventh session since the first attributed sighting. No AMD statement, no denial and no partner or OEM price list. Recorded beside this entry today and not as evidence for it: DigiTimes reported on 24 September that TSMC will raise its own wafer foundry prices by 3 to 6 percent from January 2027 with order visibility to 2030, relayed the same morning at 9:02 Taipei by the Economic Daily News and carried in American markets coverage by Benzinga. One origin, several relays, no document and no second surface — it does not clear the floor and is counted in the issue’s “seen, not printed.” Its quantity and its date both differ from this claim’s. Status unchanged.

    Prior record for entry 4

    Previous first-seen label18 SEP

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimSolidigm, SK Hynix's US NAND subsidiary, is weighing its first American NAND plant, with upstate New York the leading candidate site, per Reuters' three people familiar with the matter. SK Hynix says it is reviewing options and that nothing is confirmed. The Whisper, No. 2.

    Previous tapethe desk swore in no reading for this entry. Corrected 21 September — this line previously said there is no US-listed security. SK hynix trades on Nasdaq as SKHY, American depositary shares, since 10 July 2026; Benzinga's 18 September piece used that ticker and was right. No reading has been sworn in even so, and none is printed.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: a New York State incentive award or economic-development board document; a site or construction permit; an SK Hynix board resolution; a Solidigm announcement naming the site.

    Previous lag label0 trading days; the wire report was itself the first mainstream US headline.

    1. 18 Sep 04:41 · tier 4 · DigiTimes

       Its own item, Taipei 16:41: Solidigm "is considering building its first NAND manufacturing plant in the US, with upstate New York emerging as a leading candidate." Paywalled beyond the lede; no sources shown.

    2. 18 Sep 05:08 · tier 3 · Reuters

       First mainstream US headline, as carried by the Korea JoongAng Daily at 18:08 Seoul. Three people familiar with the matter; one said no agreement had been reached and key details remain under discussion. Solidigm did not respond outside business hours.

    3. 18 Sep 05:08 · tier 2 · SK Hynix

       On the record, confirming neither: "subsidiary Solidigm is reviewing various options to strengthen its business competitiveness, but no specific plans have been confirmed."

    4. 18 Sep · tier 4 · SED, relays

       Added 21 September. Seoul Economic Daily carried it the same day as "SK hynix Weighs First U.S. NAND Plant as AI Demand Surges"; Investing.com and MarketScreener relayed Reuters; Benzinga wrote up the Friday share move directly. All downstream of the Reuters report.

    5. 21 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 4. No New York State incentive award, no site or construction permit, no board resolution, and no change to SK Hynix's on-the-record line. The claim has spread across the market layer, not the document layer. Status unchanged.

    6. 18 Sep · tier 2 · Solidigm

       Added 22 September. Solidigm itself, on the record in the Reuters syndication the register had only recorded as "did not respond": "No decision regarding any specific course of action has been made." A 20 September follow-up adds that no factory has been approved, no site selected and no construction timetable exists, with Solidigm declining to "comment on market rumors."

    7. 22 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 5. No Empire State Development incentive award and no Green CHIPS document naming Solidigm; no announcement from the governor's office; no site or construction permit; no board resolution. Status unchanged.

    8. 25 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8. No Empire State Development incentive award, no site or construction permit, no board resolution and no change to either company’s on-the-record line. Status unchanged.

    9. 28 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 9. No Empire State Development incentive award, no site or construction permit, no board resolution and no change to either company’s on-the-record line. Status unchanged.

    Prior record for entry 5

    Previous first-seen label15 SEP

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimSamsung Electronics has begun running wafers for Tesla's next-generation AI5 processor at its foundry in Taylor, Texas, ahead of a start scheduled for November, per Seoul Economic Daily's semiconductor industry sources. Neither company has said it, and no American wire has reported it. The Whisper, No. 3.

    Previous tapeTesla 358.97 → 366.20, +2.01%, 14 to 17 September closes, sworn — 358.97 on stockanalysis.com and Investing.com, 366.20 on stockanalysis.com and Google Finance, whose Friday quote of 362.60 less 3.60 implies it; Investing.com carries 366.69 for the 17th and is printed, not sworn. On the claim's own session, 15 September, Tesla fell 0.67% to 356.58 on 30,168,264 shares against Monday's 32,068,734. Thursday alone was 8.12 points of the 7.23-point move, in a session the Nasdaq Composite rose 1.69% the day after the Fed. Samsung Electronics: −4.05% Monday, −0.2% Tuesday to 248,500 won, "only modestly higher" Wednesday per Invezz; 261,000 won, +3.37%, at Friday's Seoul close, one feed.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: Samsung's third-quarter results in late October; Tesla's results and 10-Q; a Samsung release or Taylor site announcement; a Yonhap report carrying a company confirmation. Kills it: a statement from either company that Taylor has not begun AI5 wafers, or a Samsung disclosure putting the start in November as scheduled.

    Previous lag label9 trading days and running, at 28 September. No mainstream American headline exists; the count stays open until one does.

    1. 28 Jul 2025 · tier 1 · contract

       A $16.5 billion multi-year supply agreement, about 22 trillion won, disclosed by Elon Musk after Tesla had asked that the counterparty stay unnamed; Bloomberg reported it.

    2. 22 Oct 2025 · tier 2 · Musk, CNBC

       Musk on the record: AI5 to be made by Samsung in Texas and TSMC in Arizona. This, and not the start, is what the American press has.

    3. 5 Nov 2025 · tier 4 · TrendForce

       Musk signals AI5 mass production slipping to 2027, "casting uncertainty over Samsung."

    4. 24 Apr · tier 1 · Samsung

       Equipment-installation ceremony at the Taylor plant, as referenced by Seoul Economic Daily.

    5. 13 Jul · tier 4 · TrendForce / Yonhap

       AI5 tape-out complete, production expected on Samsung's 2nm process in Texas; "the disclosure marks the first time Samsung Foundry's production timeline for the Tesla AI5 chip has been revealed in concrete terms." Taylor ramp put in 2027. Korea Times and Electrek the same day.

    6. 15 Sep 17:21 · tier 4 · Seoul Economic Daily

       First sighting. Samsung "has begun prototype production at its Taylor, Texas, foundry to supply artificial intelligence chips to Tesla"; it "plans to complete mass-production verification by the end of this year and begin full supply next year." Page stamp 17:21, updated 23:35, Seoul time, which puts it near 4:21 a.m. Eastern. The headline said mass production over a body that said prototype.

    7. 16 Sep 00:28 · tier 2 · KB Securities via ChosunBiz

       Kim Dong-won, named, on Samsung's 2nm gate-all-around yield improving from below 50 percent, carried by Invezz under "Samsung stock is ignoring a $16.5 billion Tesla catalyst." About the plant's capability, not the start.

    8. 16 Sep 07:00 KST · tier 4 · Seoul Economic Daily

       The same reporting re-headlined "Samsung Starts Trial Production of Tesla AI Chips in Texas," ahead of the originally scheduled November startup.

    9. 17 Sep 11:51 · tier 4 · DigiTimes

       Second independent surface, by its own Taipei stamp: trial production, 2nm wafer production and yield verification ahead of full-scale operations. Names no source and does not cite Seoul.

    10. 16–18 Sep · tier 5 · aggregators

        Counted, not named as sources: nine sites, among them one whose headline says the node is "silencing yield doubters," a claim in none of the underlying reporting.

    11. 21 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 4. Still no mainstream American headline and no company statement either way; the only movement is in the enthusiast layer, where Not a Tesla App and similar sites now carry the trial start as settled fact. The lag continues to run.

    12. 22 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 5 against CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, Barron's, Reuters, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal. None carries the September wafer-start claim; Yahoo Finance's Tesla AI5 items stop at the tape-out and dual-foundry stories, and the nearest American piece is Electrek's 13 July tape-out report, which is a different claim. No Samsung or Tesla statement. The lag runs on.

    13. 23 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 6 against the same American outlets. None carries the September wafer-start claim; Electrek's 13 July tape-out piece remains the nearest American surface and is a different claim, and the enthusiast layer continues to carry the trial start as settled fact. No Samsung or Tesla statement. The lag runs on, now six trading days.

    14. 24 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 7 against CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, Barron's, Reuters and Bloomberg. None carries the September wafer-start claim. The enthusiast layer has widened again — Drive Tesla Canada, Not a Tesla App, The Electric Viking, Basenor and BigGo all carry the trial start as settled fact, all downstream of Seoul Economic Daily and DigiTimes — and Electrek's 13 July tape-out piece remains the nearest American surface and is a different claim. No company statement. The lag runs on, now seven trading days.

    15. 25 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8 against CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, Barron’s, Reuters and Bloomberg. None carries the September wafer-start claim; the enthusiast layer continues to carry the trial start as settled fact, all of it downstream of Seoul Economic Daily and DigiTimes. No company statement. The lag runs on, now eight trading days.

    16. 28 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 9 against CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, Barron’s, Reuters and Bloomberg. None carries the September wafer-start claim; Electrek’s 13 July tape-out piece remains the nearest American surface and is a different claim, and the enthusiast layer continues to carry the trial start as settled fact. No company statement. The lag runs on, now nine trading days — the longest open count on this register.

    Prior record for entry 6

    Previous first-seen label14 SEP

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimTSMC's 2nm capacity is expected to rise from 90,000 wafers a month at end-2026 to 110,000 by mid-2027, its 3nm from more than 180,000 to 210,000, and CoWoS packaging from roughly 130,000 a month to 260,000 by end-2028, per TrendForce citing Taiwan's Economic Daily News. TSMC has not published these figures. The Whisper, No. 3.

    Previous tapethe claim concerns capacity two to eight quarters out and no single session's move is attributable to it; the readings below are printed as context and nothing is attributed. Added 28 September. TSM's 25 September close is sworn at 450.61 — stockanalysis.com's daily table and an independent market note carrying "TSMC stock at USD 450.61 on September 25, 2026". The 24 September close of 451.15, stockanalysis.com, reconciles against a second note describing a 0.12 percent loss into the following session: 451.15 − 450.61 = 0.54, and 0.54 ÷ 451.15 = 0.12 percent, this desk's arithmetic. The 11 September close of 433.24, the session before the first sighting, and the 14 September close of 418.01 are one feed only, printed and not sworn. From that unsworn base to Friday's sworn close the move is +17.37, +4.01%, 17.37 ÷ 433.24, across two weeks of a semiconductor tape that has run for everyone. Today unsworn, one feed: 447.14, −3.47, −0.77%, previous close 450.61, open 448.39, range 443.11–449.60, volume 3,084,181, Yahoo Finance at 11:41:27 a.m. Eastern — the stock opened lower on the morning after the American headline and traded there.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: TSMC's third-quarter call in October, its capex guidance, and its monthly revenue releases on the tenth of each month.

    Previous lag label9 trading days, closed 28 September. First sighting Monday 14 September; first mainstream American headline Sunday 27 September at 11:07 p.m. Eastern, after Friday's close and before Monday's open. The trading days between are 15, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25 September. The headline that closed it carries a 2nm figure a third larger than the one first printed; the CoWoS leg of the claim has still not been carried by any mainstream American outlet.

    1. 14 Sep · tier 4 · TrendForce / EDN

       First sighting. The capacity numbers above, attributed to Economic Daily News; a 22 percent lift at 2nm, 17 percent at 3nm and a doubling of CoWoS on this desk's arithmetic from the published figures.

    2. 15 Sep 11:30 · tier 4 · DigiTimes

       Second independent surface, by its own Taipei stamp: 3nm, 2nm and CoWoS all tight through the third quarter, Nvidia and Apple dominating advanced process and packaging, and Amazon's Annapurna unit expanding AI chip tape-outs and given more 3nm capacity. Supply-chain sources. Body paywalled.

    3. 21 Sep 07:37 · tier 1 · TSMC via Reuters

       Added 21 September. Ground was broken on an advanced-packaging industrial park at Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan, anchored by TSMC, reported by Reuters under a Taipei dateline of 21 September (some US syndications carry a 20 September date) and carried by Benzinga at 7:37 a.m. Eastern, with operations expected in the fourth quarter of 2029. Document-grade, and evidence about direction rather than about the claim's numbers: 2029 sits a year beyond the end of the claim's window, and no wafer or CoWoS figure in the claim is addressed.

    4. 21 Sep 09:59 · tier 4 · DigiTimes

       Weekly roundup, by its own stamp: semiconductor equipment makers facing lead times of up to forty months on certain Japanese components, and local component deliveries stretching about fifty percent. The physical constraint any such ramp meets. Not a second surface for the capacity figures.

    5. 22 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 5. No new sighting of the capacity figures and no TSMC statement on them; the company's only reference point remains the July call's 2026 capex guidance of $60–64 billion. The one TSMC item TrendForce carried today is adjacent and does not confirm the numbers. The date to mark: TSMC's September monthly revenue release, Thursday 8 October, 13:30 Taipei, per the company's own financial calendar. Status unchanged.

    6. 23 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 6 against TrendForce's current news file, whose 23 September items run to DRAM spot prices, LPDDR6 validation, a glass-substrate roundup and a NAND patent ruling, none of which touches the capacity figures. No new sighting and no TSMC statement on them. Status unchanged.

    7. 24 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 7 against TrendForce's current news file, whose 24 September items run to Chinese memory capacity, a Meta device launch, a GDDR7 end-of-life report, an optical-transceiver listing and a Qualcomm node statement, none of which touches the capacity figures. No new sighting and no TSMC statement on them. The date to mark remains TSMC's September monthly revenue release, Thursday 8 October, 13:30 Taipei. Status unchanged.

    8. 25 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8 against TrendForce’s current news file, whose 25 September items run to twelve-inch wafer contract pricing and a rare-earths piece, neither of which touches the capacity figures. No new sighting and no TSMC statement on them. The date to mark remains Thursday 8 October, 13:30 Taipei. Status unchanged.

    9. 27 Sep 14:06 · tier 4 · Economic Daily News

       Added 28 September, and the sighting this issue is built on: the origin outlet revising its own number. Page stamp 28 September 02:06 Taipei, byline Yin Hui-chung (尹慧中), read in the original by this desk. 大廠追加訂單 台積電2奈米擴產進度超前 年底月產能上看12萬片 — major customers have added orders, TSMC's 2nm expansion is ahead of schedule, year-end monthly capacity looking at 120,000 wafers. It states that the market had expected about 90,000 to 100,000 at year-end. Five customers named as raising 2nm-family orders by 10 to 20 percent: Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm, MediaTek. 3nm put near 180,000 a month in the fourth quarter of 2026 and 200,000 to 210,000 in 2027, which is consistent with the 14 September figures. Sourcing language 業界傳出 and 消息人士透露 — the industry says, sources disclose. No firm named, no person named, no document.

       Recorded evidence tier: 4

    10. 27 Sep 23:07 · tier 4 · Yahoo Finance

        First mainstream US headline, nine hours after the revision and nine trading days after the first sighting. Investing.com's report carried on Yahoo Finance's technology pages, byline Ayushman Ojha: "TSMC 2nm wafer capacity to exceed earlier estimates, EDN reports." Credits EDN by name; carries the 120,000 against prior forecasts of 90,000 to 100,000 and the 10-to-20-percent order increase; adds TSMC senior vice-president Hou Yung-ching on first-year 2nm output running 45 percent above 3nm's first year in 2023 and capacity compounding about 70 percent a year through 2028 — company remarks about growth rates, not about the 120,000. The lag closes here on the 2nm leg. The CoWoS leg still has no American headline. Tiered 4 by what the source is; the lag is marked by where the claim reached, which is a different field.

        Recorded evidence tier: 4

    11. 28 Sep · tier 5 · aggregators

        Counted, not named: TipRanks, GuruFocus via TradingView, CoinCentral, Blockonomi, KuCoin, Parameter and EconoTimes carried the 120,000 by mid-morning; every one credits EDN and none adds a source. Invezz, 28 September 00:10 Eastern, is the exception worth reading — it reaches TechInsights vice-chair Dan Hutcheson on more than fifteen customers working on N2 and Stifel's Sahej Singh keeping a Buy and a $515 target on a margin argument — and its own headline reads that the stock slipped.

        Recorded evidence tier: 5

    12. 28 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 9. TSMC has published none of these figures and has made no statement on them; the company's own reference points remain the July call's capex guidance and the monthly revenue releases. No options print, no volume anomaly and no prediction-market contract on the claim was found. Status unchanged: a revision is a sighting, not a document. The date to mark remains Thursday 8 October, 13:30 Taipei.

    Prior record for entry 9

    Previous first-seen label18 SEP

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimThe Munich I Regional Court has found Micron Technology to infringe two German utility models held by Yangtze Memory Technologies and granted injunctions covering sales of the infringing 3D NAND products in Germany, per ip fray, with Micron saying it disagrees, has appealed and is challenging the rights' validity, per TechNode citing IT Home. No judgment text is public and no mainstream American outlet has carried it. The Whisper, No. 6.

    Previous tape1,015.80 → 1,096.16, +80.36, +7.91%, the 18 September close on the day of the first sighting to the 22 September close, sworn — stockanalysis.com and Investing.com carry 977.50 (17 Sep), 1,015.80 (18 Sep), 1,043.96 (21 Sep) and 1,096.16 (22 Sep) identically to the cent; the percentage is this desk's arithmetic, 80.36 ÷ 1,015.80. Today unsworn, both printed: 1,074.68, −21.48, −1.96%, previous close 1,096.16, range 1,074.30–1,105.50, volume 6,619,617, Yahoo Finance at 10:20 a.m.; 1,067.01, open 1,100.07, high 1,105.50, low 1,069.76, volume 13,313,292, stockanalysis.com at a 1:13 p.m. page stamp. Volumes where the feeds disagree, both printed: 28,078,850 against 28.17m on 21 September, 28,588,943 against 29.19m on 22 September. Nothing is attributed: Micron reports on 30 September and the memory complex has run for weeks. Updated 25 September: Thursday’s close is sworn at 1,080.53 — Yahoo Finance’s quote page states it as the 24 September close, with open 1,049.75, range 1,044.00–1,081.04 and volume 21,938,990 — and stockanalysis.com’s live change today implies the identical previous close of 1,080.51, reconciling within rounding. That carries the move from the 18 September base to +64.73, +6.37%, this desk’s arithmetic, 64.73 ÷ 1,015.80. Today unsworn, one feed: 1,079.00, open 1,095.83, range 1,074.51–1,108.72, volume 10,532,468, stockanalysis.com at 11:58 a.m. Eastern.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: the Munich I judgment texts, which would fix the product scope; a Munich Higher Regional Court ruling on a stay; Micron's fiscal 2026 annual report and its legal-proceedings note, following the 30 September results; an 8-K if the company judges the effect material sooner; a filing by YMTC of the security German law requires before a first-instance injunction is enforced. Kills it: an appellate stay, or judgment texts showing the enjoined products are not ones Micron sells into Germany.

    Previous lag label6 trading days and running, at 28 September. First sighting Friday 18 September; no mainstream American outlet — not Reuters, Bloomberg, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch or Barron's — had carried it as of 12:20 p.m. Eastern today.

    1. 18 Sep · tier 4 · ip fray

       First sighting, and the only account with the record in it: the 7th Civil Chamber, presiding judge Dr. Oliver Schoen; cases 7 O 12615/25 and 7 O 12614/25 decided, three more adjourned, among them 7 O 12616/25 and 7 O 12593/25; utility models DE 20 2020 006 166 U1, "Staircase structure of a three-dimensional storage device," and DE 20 2021 004 551 U1, "Barrier layers for word line contacts in three-dimensional NAND memory." On what happens next: "Enforcement will likely begin soon unless the appeals court (the Munich Higher Regional Court) stays both injunctions." Stood alone.

    2. 18–23 Sep, undated · tier 4 · IAM

       "YMTC strikes NAND patent blow against Micron with two German injunctions." Logged as a headline from the search index rather than as a read: iam-media.com returns a 403 to this desk and the page was not opened. Its date is not established.

    3. 23 Sep 05:07 · tier 4 · TechNode

       09:07 UTC. Second origin rather than a relay: it cites the Chinese outlet IT Home, not ip fray. "Munich Regional Court I has ruled that Micron infringed two German utility models held by Yangtze Memory Technologies, and issued injunctions." Carries the company response the first report did not.

    4. 23 Sep · tier 2 · Micron via TechNode

       The highest tier in the trail besides the ruling itself, and carried at second hand: Micron "said it disagreed with the decision, filed an appeal and was challenging the validity of the relevant rights." No verbatim company statement has been located.

    5. 23 Sep · tier 4 · DIGITIMES

       "YMTC wins German injunctions against Micron in latest round of NAND patent battle," item a20260923PD226. Headline from the search index; digitimes.com returned a 403 to this desk on four attempts and no page was read.

    6. 23 Sep · tier 4 · TrendForce

       In its news file as "German Court Reportedly Finds Micron Infringed Two YMTC NAND Patents, Grants Injunctions" — reportedly, five days after a specialist outlet printed the chamber, the judge and the case numbers.

    7. 23 Sep 12:12 · tier 5 · aggregator

       Counted, not weighted, and quoted because it states the limits most precisely: "The injunctions are first-instance rulings that cover sales of the infringing products in Germany only," and "No report we found says YMTC has started enforcing, that Micron has asked for a stay, or that one has been granted." Also: without the judgment texts nobody outside the case can say whether the enjoined products are consumer SSD components, embedded NAND, or both.

    8. 24 Sep · tier 4 · JUVE Patent

       Added 24 September. A second origin, not a relay: it does not cite ip fray, and it carries material the first report did not. The patent EP 3 931 868 beside four German utility models — DE 20 2020 006 166.2, DE 20 2021 004 551, DE 20 2018 007 011 and DE 20 2022 003 278 — the pending cases 7 O 12609/25, 7 O 12616/25 and 7 O 12593/25 alongside the two decided, and presiding judge Oliver Schön of the 7th Civil Chamber. It states that the court found two utility models "valid and infringed and granted YMTC injunctions," that Micron has appealed, and — new to this register — that Micron has brought its own infringement claims at the Munich Regional Court and at the Unified Patent Court on EP 3 706 127, EP 3 574 526 and EP 2 745 295.

    9. 24 Sep · tier 4 · Tom's Hardware

       The claim reaches the American technology press, and not the American market press: "China's YMTC wins patent battle against Micron in ongoing 3-year legal war over memory patents — new injunctions could restrict Micron's supply into Germany." Downstream; not counted as an independent surface.

    10. 24 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 7. No judgment text, no stay, no Micron 8-K and no verbatim company statement. No mainstream American outlet carries it. The lag runs on, now four trading days.

    11. 25 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8. Electronics Weekly has joined the trail, and a further specialist write-up records Micron’s appeal of both injunctions; both are downstream and neither is counted as an independent surface. Still no judgment text, no ruling on a stay, no Micron 8-K and no verbatim company statement, and no mainstream American outlet carries it. The lag runs on, now five trading days.

    12. 28 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 9. Guru3D and a forum write-up of Micron’s appeal of both injunctions have joined the trail; both are downstream and neither is counted as an independent surface. Still no judgment text, no ruling on a stay, no Micron 8-K and no verbatim company statement, and no mainstream American outlet — not Reuters, Bloomberg, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch or Barron’s — carries it. Micron’s fiscal fourth-quarter results on Wednesday 30 September are the first occasion on which someone will be in a position to ask. The lag runs on, now six trading days.

    Prior record for entry 10

    Previous first-seen label23 SEP

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimMicron has marked its 2-gigabyte GDDR7 chips end of life — the 28Gbps D8FHL part, MT68A512M32DF-28:A, and its 32Gbps sibling — leaving 3-gigabyte modules as its only GDDR7 density and Samsung and SK hynix as the remaining sources of the 2-gigabyte parts used on much of Nvidia's RTX 50 range, per Hardware Busters, The FPS Review, VideoCardz, TechPowerUp and TrendForce, all reading the same page of Micron's own parts catalogue. Micron has published no notice and explained nothing; Nvidia has said nothing. The Whisper, No. 7.

    Previous tape1,096.16 → 1,071.88, −24.28, −2.22%, the 22 September close before the first sighting to the 23 September close, sworn — stockanalysis.com's daily table and Yahoo Finance's quote page carry 1,071.88 identically, Yahoo carries the change as −2.22 percent, and MarketBeat's 23 September alert headlines "Shares Down 2.2%." Desk arithmetic, inputs shown: 1,096.16 − 1,071.88 = 24.28; 24.28 ÷ 1,096.16 = 2.215 percent. Nothing is attributed. Wednesday's session already has a published explanation and it is not this one: Invezz, 23 September 15:02, gives Wells Fargo cutting its target to $1,400 from $1,525 while keeping Overweight, Citi's Atif Malik raising his to $1,300 from $1,150 on "stronger-than-expected DRAM pricing and continued undersupply across both DRAM and NAND markets," and Michael Burry adding to a short. No published account of the session mentions GDDR7. The 23 September close is carried on a third independent read, Yahoo Finance at 1:39 p.m. today, which returns 1,071.88 as the previous close. Today unsworn, one feed: 1,072.12, +0.24, +0.02%, open 1,049.75, range 1,044.00–1,076.49, volume 14,114,423, Yahoo Finance, "As of 1:39:31 PM EDT. Market Open" — Micron opened twenty-two points below the prior close, traded to 1,044.00 and was bought back to roughly unchanged, and none of that is attributed either. A reading set aside and not logged: an 11:24 a.m. table appeared to carry a 24 September close outside its own printed high and low, but on re-reading at 1:37 p.m. that page was serving data stamped 4:51 a.m. pre-market and a Yahoo read a minute later returned a level near 958 against a previous close near 956 that reconciles with no session sworn in here and did not reproduce. The desk does not log an entry against a page it cannot re-read. Updated 25 September: Thursday’s close is sworn at 1,080.53 on the two reads described in entry 9, which carries the move from the 22 September base to −15.63, −1.43%, this desk’s arithmetic, 15.63 ÷ 1,096.16. Nothing is attributed.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: a distributor's catalogue mirroring the EOL flag with a last-time-buy date; a product change notification to customers, the document this kind of decision normally travels on; board partner or distributor pricing showing 2-gigabyte parts withdrawn; Micron's fiscal fourth-quarter results and call on 30 September — four trading days from today, five from the first sighting — where a deliberate shift of graphics memory toward higher-density AI parts belongs in the commentary on mix. Kills it: Micron saying the parts remain in production, a catalogue reading showing them in Production status, or a 2-gigabyte part appearing on a new board.

    Previous lag label3 trading days and running, at 28 September. First sighting Wednesday 23 September; no mainstream American outlet — not Reuters, Bloomberg, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch or Barron's — had carried it as of 12:20 p.m. Eastern today; Tom's Hardware is the furthest it has travelled and that is the technology press.

    1. 23 Sep · tier 5 · leak account

       First sighting, counted and not named: a hardware leak account on X, quoted verbatim by The FPS Review — "the micron gddr7 28gbps 2gb chip d8fhl (MT68A512M32DF-28:A) used on some rtx50 cards, has reached end of life." One sentence, one part number, no explanation, no company. Time not established.

    2. 23 Sep 05:05 · tier 4 · Hardware Busters

       09:05:00 UTC by its own stamp, byline crmaris. Names both parts, MT68A512M32DF-28:A and MT68A512M32DF-32:A, and cites four things: Micron's GDDR7 part catalogue, the leak account, TweakTown and VideoCardz. Did not stand alone, and printed the sentence that matters most in the trail: "Micron has not published a notice or explained the decision."

    3. 23 Sep 08:14 · tier 4 · The FPS Review

       12:14:15 UTC, Peter Brosdahl. Cites the leak account via VideoCardz and places the part across the RTX 50 range from the 5060 to the 5090. Explicitly downstream.

    4. 23 Sep · tier 4 · VideoCardz, TechPowerUp

       "Micron reportedly ends production of 2GB GDDR7 used by GeForce RTX 50" and "Micron's 2 GB GDDR7 Memory Chips Reportedly Reach End of Life." Both logged as headlines from the search index rather than as reads: videocardz.com returned a 402 to this desk and techpowerup.com is disallowed to it by robots. Neither page was opened.

    5. 23–24 Sep · tier 5 · relays

       Counted, not weighted: eTeknix, Wccftech, Kantan, GameGPU, Techtroduce, FPSHub and borecraft, every one a retelling of the same catalogue reading and none an independent surface.

    6. 24 Sep · tier 4 · TrendForce

       In its news file as "Micron Reportedly Ends 2GB GDDR7, Narrowing Supply Options for NVIDIA's RTX 50 Series," citing TechPowerUp, Gazlog, the leak account, Tom's Hardware, VideoCardz and the catalogue, and stating the document claim in its cleanest form: "Micron's product catalog now lists its 28 Gbps D8FHL chip (MT68A512M32DF-28) as EOL, with the 32 Gbps version carrying the same designation." Adds the economics: 3GB modules at $60–$70 a chip against roughly $20 for the 2GB parts.

    7. 24 Sep · tier 4 · Tom's Hardware

       Added 24 September, and the surface that supplies the reason this sits on the AI beat. Etiido Uko reports both the 28 and 32 Gbps variants discontinued and Micron "shifting its focus toward higher-density 3 GB (24 Gb) GDDR7 chips," which carry "higher profit margins" and go into Nvidia's professional RTX PRO Blackwell parts for AI work; the general case, in its words, is "memory suppliers prioritizing AI-facing technologies over their consumer and retail counterparts." It also carries the counterweight this desk prints rather than the squeeze: Samsung and SK hynix already dominate 2GB GDDR7 and Micron was not competitive there, so the exit creates little shortage risk. No Micron or Nvidia comment.

    8. 24 Sep 12:46 · tier 1 · the catalogue, unread

       The desk went to the document and could not open it. micron.com's public GDDR7 part catalogue returns no results; its table carries the right columns — part number, density, parts status, depth, width, operating temperature, speed — and "parts status" is the field holding the EOL, Production and Preview values every report is quoting. The catalogue requires a Micron account. The document exists, it is Micron's own, and no reader outside can check the claim against it. The claim is not upgraded on a page this desk cannot read.

    9. 25 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8. No Micron notice, no product change notification, no distributor catalogue mirroring the flag with a last-time-buy date, and no Nvidia comment. The parts catalogue still requires an account and is still unreadable to this desk and to any other reader outside Micron. The lag runs on, now two trading days. Status unchanged.

    10. 28 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 9. No Micron notice, no product change notification, no distributor catalogue mirroring the end-of-life flag with a last-time-buy date, and no Nvidia comment. The parts catalogue still requires an account and is still unreadable to this desk and to any other reader outside Micron. Micron’s fiscal fourth-quarter results fall on Wednesday 30 September, two sessions from today. The lag runs on, now three trading days. Status unchanged.

    Prior record for entry 11

    Previous first-seen label23 SEP

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimNew 2027 long-term contract prices for twelve-inch semiconductor silicon wafers will rise fifteen to twenty-five percent for epitaxial wafers and more than forty percent for polished, with some second-tier customers above fifty percent, per the Commercial Times of Taipei, citing an industry survey and institutional analyst estimates. No wafer maker and no customer has confirmed a figure, and there is no document of any kind in the trail. The Whisper, No. 8.

    Previous tapeno reading sworn in, and the desk prints why. The claim's subjects are listed in Taipei — GlobalWafers on the Taipei Exchange under 6488, with Taisil and Wafer Works beside it — and this desk has established no US-listed line for any of them. The two feeds it reads for Taipei disagree by roughly a third and both are stale: stockanalysis.com served 1,000.00 TWD, +29.00, +2.99%, previous close 971.00, volume 1,355,000, on a page stamped 23 September 9:20 a.m. Taipei; Investing.com served 1,480.00 TWD, −35.00, −2.31%, volume 10.79m, on a page labelled "Closed as of July 15, 2026." One is ten weeks stale and says so; the other is two days stale and does not. Both are printed, neither is sworn, and no level is published as current. No options print, no volume anomaly and no prediction-market contract was found either. The fifty-two-week range on both pages runs 333 to 1,600.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: GlobalWafers' third-quarter results and investor conference in late October, and its monthly revenue releases on the tenth of each month; SUMCO's and Shin-Etsu's late-October results and their guidance language on long-term agreements; any foundry or memory maker booking a materially higher wafer cost line in fourth-quarter guidance, which confirms it from the customer's side. Kills it: a wafer maker saying on the record that 2027 agreements are renewing at single-digit or low-double-digit increases; a customer's guidance showing flat wafer costs into 2027; or the October results season passing with none of the companies raising their own pricing outlook.

    Previous lag label3 trading days and running, at 28 September. First sighting Wednesday 23 September; no mainstream American outlet — not Reuters, Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch or Barron's — carried the 2027 contract numbers as of 12:20 p.m. Eastern today. The furthest the claim has travelled into American publishing is Wccftech and TrendForce, which are the technology and research trade, not the market press.

    1. 26 Jun · tier 4 · CTEE, BigGo

       Upstream, and a different claim. The Commercial Times reported wafer prices rising about ten percent across six-, eight- and twelve-inch, the first increase in over three years. A Chinese-language analysis the same day, 12:26 UTC, citing CITIC Securities, SEMI, Bernstein and JW Insights, gave the mechanism: the long-term supply agreements "acted like shackles, making silicon wafer manufacturers the last beneficiaries in the AI industry chain." Ten percent across all sizes in June is not forty percent on polished twelve-inch in 2027.

    2. 15–17 Sep · tier 4 · CTEE

       The supply side, twice: a 15 September item putting the supply gap at at least ten percent from next year, a 17 September item widening it to twenty-four percent by 2028. Neither carried contract prices.

    3. 18 Sep · tier 4 · UBS, as reported

       Recorded because it is being conflated with the claim, not because it supports it. Wafer manufacturers "may need price increases of 40% to 50% just to justify building the capacity the AI industry says it needs" — a threshold required to unlock investment, not a forecast of contract prices. Two different forty-percents are now circulating in the same week.

    4. 23 Sep 03:00 · tier 4 · Commercial Times

       First sighting, page stamp 03:00 Taipei, modified 08:01, byline Li Juan-ping (李娟萍). The sentence, in the original: 十二吋磊晶圓新長約價格估上漢15％～25％，拋光晶圓漲幅則可能達40％以上，部分二線客戶甚至超遒50％ — new long-contract prices for twelve-inch epitaxial wafers estimated up fifteen to twenty-five percent, polished wafers possibly above forty, some second-tier customers above fifty. Three forces named: AI logic, memory capacity expansion, and the renegotiation of long-term contracts. Attributed to an industry survey and institutional analyst estimates; no firm and no person named. Stood alone; cites no earlier report.

    5. 23 Sep 14:10 · tier 4 · Wccftech

       Ramish Zafar, byline stamp "Sep 23, 2026 at 02:10pm EDT," crediting Taiwan's CTEE. Carries the split correctly — "polished wafers are expected to see a higher price jump in the form of a 40% increase compared to 15% to 25% for the standard epitaxial wafers" — and the demand arithmetic beneath it: CoWoS capacity up 70.9 percent next year, GPU and custom AI ASIC demand up 44.9 percent, wafer prices from $92 in 2026 to $122 in 2027 and $166 in 2028, shipments from 11.9 million wafers a quarter to 16.1 million and then 21.7 million. Its headline takes the polished figure as the whole. Explicitly downstream.

    6. 25 Sep · tier 4 · TrendForce

       "12-inch Wafer Price Hikes Loom for 2027 as AI Demand Tightens Supply, with LTAs Reportedly Up 15–40%+," citing the Commercial Times, Star Market Daily, Wccftech and BigGo. A synthesis of the origin and its relays that reaches past Wccftech to a second Chinese-language outlet, which is what carries this entry over the floor. The word in its own headline is reportedly, two days on, and that is the correct word.

    7. 28 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 9. No wafer maker and no customer has confirmed a figure, no document has appeared, and the claim has travelled no further into American publishing than Wccftech and TrendForce. Recorded beside this entry and not as evidence for it: DigiTimes reported on 24 September that TSMC will raise its own foundry prices 3 to 6 percent from January 2027, relayed by the Economic Daily News and by Benzinga — one origin, no second surface, below the floor. Three to six percent from a foundry and above forty percent on the silicon it buys are two claims about one cost stack at very different magnitudes, and this desk prints neither as fact. The lag runs on, now three trading days. Status unchanged.

    Previous source and date metadata

    Previous supplied content as of2026-09-25

    Previous source-reported countstracked: 11 · open: 9 · confirmed: 2 · denied: 0 · expired: 0 · medianLagDays: 0

    Previous source and date notes

    This is the owner-supplied register as of 25 September 2026, not a fresh verification of the claims or market observations. Publication does not independently establish that a rumor is true.

    The supplied 24 September run note ends mid-sentence after “with the lags on 5, 6 and 9”. It is preserved as supplied; the missing remainder has not been reconstructed.

    The source names outlets, documents and domains but supplies no direct citation URLs. Citation lists are therefore empty. No article, filing or document URL has been inferred from a name or an accession number.

    The open tally includes both open and corroborated entries. The open status filter is narrower: it selects only entries whose status is open.

    The supplied tally reports a median lag of 0 days. A first-sighting-to-mainstream-headline median cannot be derived reliably: entry 7 has an undated first sighting and its zero measures document-to-wire time instead. The derived median is therefore unavailable; the reported figure is retained separately.

    Trail order and date labels are preserved as supplied, including the 24 September check before the 23 September check in entry 1. No missing observation time, date or year has been inferred.

    Previous supplied correction history

    When the desk gets a trail wrong — a sighting misdated, a tier misjudged, a status moved too early — the correction is recorded here, dated, and the entry is amended below with the change marked.

    18 September. A note on a published number rather than a correction to one. The tally band's open tile counts every rumor that has not been settled by a document, which includes those at corroborated; it has read that way since this register was built and it is left reading that way.

    19 September. Two issues were published for Friday. The desk's scheduled run posted No. 2 on Friday afternoon, adding entries 3 and 4. A second issue, reported on Friday afternoon while that run was still working and published on Saturday, is numbered No. 3 and adds entries 5, 6 and 7. Neither issue restates the other and no entry has been renumbered. With seven rumors tracked and one confirmed, open is six and the median lag of resolved rumors is zero.

    21 September — entry 3 amended. The Whisper, No. 2, reported that no mainstream American outlet had carried the AMD price-increase claim as of 12:44 p.m. on Friday 18 September, and left entry 3's lag running. It had. The 5:22 a.m. Friday relay that No. 2 logged as a Stocktwits item was published on Yahoo Finance's markets pages, under the headline "AMD Stock Rises Premarket: Report Flags Chip Price Hike Linked To TSMC Costs," and Yahoo Finance is one of the outlets this desk uses to mark the end of a lag. The desk read the item and misfiled its publisher. That line is re-tiered and marked as the first mainstream US headline below, and entry 3's lag is corrected from running to one trading day. Corrected at full size at the top of The Whisper, No. 4.

    21 September — entry 3's first sighting re-stamped. The Whisper, No. 2, stamped Wccftech's piece at 12:26 p.m. Eastern on 17 September. That is the UTC time carried in the page's metadata. The article's own byline reads "Sarfraz Khan · Sep 17, 2026 at 08:26am EDT," and the correct stamp is 8:26 a.m. Eastern, sixty-four minutes before that session's open. The trail below is amended. The lag is unaffected at one trading day, but No. 2's argument that AMD's advance "began in the premarket, hours before the report existed" rested on the wrong time and is withdrawn: AMD opened that morning at 533.60 against 512.50, a gap of 4.12 percent on two feeds. Where the stock traded before 8:26 the desk cannot establish, and it no longer claims the move came first.

    21 September — entries 4 and 7 corrected: SK hynix is US-listed. Both entries stated that no US-listed security exists for SK hynix, and the 21 September note that first appeared here treated the question as open. It is not. SK hynix Inc. American Depositary Shares have traded on Nasdaq as SKHY since 10 July 2026, on a Form F-1 filed 24 June and amended 30 June and 6 July (CIK 0002120882, file 333-296987); Nasdaq's own security page carries the line, and the older OTC line HXSCL is a separate security whose prices will not reconcile with it. Benzinga's ticker was right and this register was wrong. Both tape lines are amended. No figure published here depended on the error, because no reading was ever sworn in for either entry — which is how it survived three issues.

    22 September — entry 2 amended: a company statement this register had missed. Entry 2's trail ran from Bloomberg's 14 September report to two desk checks that found no Form F-1, and recorded no company response. There was one. On 15 September, the day after the report, Kioxia published a "Notice Regarding Certain Media Reports" stating that such reports "are not announcements made by the Company" and that "details of the listing such as the schedule, listing market, and listing method have not yet been decided." That is a tier-1 document and it sat unlogged through Nos. 2, 3 and 4. It is added to the trail below. It does not move the status: it confirms that a listing preparation exists, which the company itself disclosed in May, and declines to adopt the size, the exchange, the timing or the banks — which is what the claim as printed was about. Recorded at full size in The Whisper, No. 5.

    23 September — a note on the run, not a correction. The Whisper, No. 6, was delivered after its 12:30 p.m. slot: the sweep ran long and the issue's last observations are stamped between 1:13 and 1:19 p.m. rather than before the hour. Its figures and its lag counts are stamped to those minutes and are accurate to them. No entry below is amended by this issue; entry 9 is added and entries 1, 3, 5 and 6 have a 23 September desk check appended, with the lags on 5 and 6 advanced by one session each.

    24 September — entry 2 corrected: a Form F-6 this register said did not exist, and a second facility besides. Entry 2's desk check of 22 September reported "still no Form F-1 or F-6 for Kioxia." The F-1 half holds; the F-6 half does not. A Form F-6EF sits on EDGAR under accession 0001019155-26-000048, filed 11 February 2026, registering 50,000,000 American depositary shares over Kioxia common stock and naming no exchange. Kioxia did not file it: it is signed by The Bank of New York Mellon, as Depositary, and Kioxia Holdings Corporation appears in it only as "the issuer of deposited securities," neither registrant nor signatory. Nor is it the facility that trades: the over-the-counter line KXIAY is a separate unsponsored programme with J.P. Morgan as depositary, announced 9 March 2026, ratio 10:1, CUSIP 49726J108. Two depositary banks have built receipts over Kioxia's shares and the company signed neither, which is why the status does not move: an unsponsored facility is a bank's decision and an F-6 registers receipts, not an offering. The claim tracked here — size, banks, an exchange — still needs an F-1 and an exchange application, and neither exists. The trail below is amended. The desk kept running the EDGAR search that returns SK hynix, the trap it had itself recorded on 22 September, and concluded from it that nothing was there. Corrected at full size at the top of The Whisper, No. 7.

    24 September — a note on the run, not a correction. The Whisper, No. 7, was delivered after its 12:30 p.m. slot: the sweep ran long and the issue's observations are stamped between 11:11 a.m. and 1:41 p.m. rather than before the hour, and are accurate to those minutes. Entry 10 is added and entries 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 and 9 have a 24 September desk check appended, with the lags on 5, 6 and 9

    25 September — a note on the run, not a correction. The Whisper, No. 8, was delivered after its 12:30 p.m. slot; its observations are stamped between 11:10 a.m. and 12:20 p.m. and are accurate to those minutes. The desk’s principal asked mid-run that the sweep be widened beyond the AI supply chain to technology, biotechnology and financials; it was, and nothing outside the usual beat cleared the floor, which is recorded in the issue’s “seen, not printed” counts. Entry 11 is added and entries 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9 and 10 have a 25 September desk check appended, with the lags on 5, 6, 9 and 10 advanced by one session each.

16. 2026-10-02T17:19:09.434Z · Entry 1, Entry 2, Entry 3, Entry 4, Entry 5, Entry 6, Entry 9, Entry 10, Entry 11, Entry 12, Entry 13, Entry 14, Entry 15, Entry 16

    Add Whisper entries 14–16 and 1–2 October desk checks. Preserve earlier public corrections. Distinguish EDN’s Texas specifics from Reuters’ narrower report, Toshiba’s capacity statement from Nikkei’s unconfirmed figures, and Solaria’s Puertollano facility from any unconfirmed Alibaba data-center site.

    Prior record for entry 1

    Previous first-seen label15 SEP

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimTen banks are lending $22 billion, with a $1 billion revolver beside it, to Crux AI, the Blackstone–Alphabet venture, to buy Google TPUs, secured by the chips and the customer contracts, per Bloomberg's people familiar with the matter. 9fin had it a day earlier at $23 billion. No party has confirmed it. The Whisper, No. 1.

    Previous tapeon Fed day, not attributable. Blackstone 126.70 → 123.45, −2.57%; Alphabet 344.98 → 342.87, −0.61%, September 15 to 16 closes; levels stockanalysis.com, the two percentages also carried by Investing.com's report at 15:44. 22 + 1 = 23; 23 + 5 = 28, against May's "roughly 25." Updated 18 September: Alphabet closed 17 September at 347.33, +1.30%, volume 19,032,520, stockanalysis.com, in a market-wide rally the day after the Fed.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: a closing release from Blackstone, Crux or a lead bank; a rating on the facility or the refinancing bonds; the bonds' offering document; a named bank saying it is not in the group.

    Previous lag label1 trading day from 9fin to Bloomberg; 2 from the unattributed sighting, which the desk does not count as a start.

    1. 18 May · tier 1 · Blackstone release

       The venture announced: $5 billion of initial equity from Blackstone, 500 MW online in 2027, Google supplying TPUs, software and services. No debt mentioned.

    2. May, per 22 May account · tier 3 · Bloomberg

       "Roughly $25 billion with leverage," one person familiar; Blackstone majority owner; Benjamin Treynor Sloss chief executive.

    3. 14 Sep 09:05 · tier 5 · unattributed

       Counted, not named: a crypto-news site wrote that Blackstone was "reportedly targeting investments in the tens of billions… across multiple gigawatts," citing no one.

    4. 15 Sep · tier 4 · 9fin

       "Blackstone looks to raise $23bn debt for Google AI joint venture," sources told 9fin. First attributed sighting; no time shown.

    5. 16 Sep 15:44 · tier 3 · Bloomberg

       First mainstream US headline: $22 billion loan plus $1 billion revolver, ten banks (Goldman, SMBC, Barclays, BNP, Scotiabank named), secured by chips and contracts, possible refinancing in investment-grade bonds. Did not cite 9fin. Time is the stamp on Investing.com's relay.

    6. 16 Sep 16:34 · tier 3 · Reuters

       Relay citing Bloomberg; seven companies did not respond. A later headline reads "source says," unread by the desk, not counted as independent.

    7. 16–17 Sep · tier 5 · aggregators

       Re-checked 18 September. No document appeared. What changed is the language: TipRanks and Gokhshtein published the loan as "secured"; Blockonomi, 17 Sep 12:10 UTC, wrote that Crux "has successfully arranged $22 billion in bank financing" and that the facility "is secured against both the physical TPU hardware and contractual agreements." Nobody has confirmed a dollar of it.

    8. 21 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 4. Still no closing release, no rating, no offering document and no named bank confirming or denying membership of the group. The aggregator layer has thickened — Finimize, briefs.co, AI Weekly and FourWeekMBA now carry the loan in the past tense — and two Yahoo Finance relays, including a Benzinga piece putting GOOGL and BX "in focus," keep it in front of American readers. Nothing document-grade. Status unchanged.

    9. 22 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 5. No closing release on Blackstone's press page, whose most recent items are 13, 10 and 9 September and none of them about Crux AI or the facility; no rating, and a KBRA note on AI-compute financing risk that does not evaluate Crux AI; no offering document; no bank on the record either way. A domain-restricted search of sec.gov returns no filing naming Crux AI. Status unchanged.

    10. 24 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 7. Six sessions after Bloomberg's report — 17, 18, 21, 22, 23 and 24 September — there is still no closing release, no rating, no offering document and no named bank either way. The aggregator layer is unchanged in kind — FourWeekMBA, AI Weekly, Finimize, Dealroom and pulse2 all carry the facility, most of them in the past tense — and one relay again states the accurate position in its own headline: the loan is "reported" and its "status still unclear." Status unchanged.

    11. 23 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 6. No closing release, no rating, no offering document and no named bank either way. The aggregator layer thickened again — Finimize, FourWeekMBA, Dealroom, KuCoin and HuggingNews all carry the facility in the past tense — and one relay, Runtimewire, puts the accurate position in its own headline: the loan is "reported" and its "status still unclear." Status unchanged.

    12. 25 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8. Seven sessions after Bloomberg’s report there is still no closing release, no rating, no offering document and no named bank either way, and no filing naming Crux AI on a domain-restricted search of sec.gov. Status unchanged.

    13. 28 Sep 2026 14:40 UTC — source-link verification · desk check · primary-source link verification

        Source-link check for the existing 18 May Blackstone observation: the linked May 18, 2026 issuer announcement supports the equity commitment, expected capacity and Google's contribution recorded above. It does not confirm the separate loan, revolver, lenders or closing. This is a citation update, not a new first sighting or rumor-status change; the historical observations and supplied September 25 cutoff remain unchanged.

        • Source 1: https://www.blackstone.com/news/press/blackstone-announces-joint-venture-with-google-to-create-new-tpu-cloud/

    14. 28 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 9. Eight sessions after Bloomberg’s report there is still no closing release, no rating, no offering document and no named bank either way, and no filing naming Crux AI on a domain-restricted search of sec.gov. The aggregator layer is unchanged in kind. Status unchanged.

    15. 30 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 11. Ten trading sessions after Bloomberg’s report there is still no closing release, no rating, no offering document and no named bank either way, and no filing naming Crux AI on a domain-restricted search of sec.gov. The aggregator layer is unchanged in kind. Status unchanged.

    Prior record for entry 2

    Previous first-seen label14 SEP

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimKioxia is weighing a US listing of American depositary shares to raise at least $10 billion, possibly next year, with Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, per Bloomberg's people familiar; the deliberations are "preliminary." The plan is the company's, stated in May; the size is single-sourced. The Whisper, No. 1.

    Previous tapeTokyo readings one feed, unsworn; no US-listed security yet.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: a public Form F-1 on EDGAR; an exchange application; a Kioxia release naming the exchange; the November results. Amended 24 September: the Form F-6EF of 11 February is on file, was filed by a depositary rather than by Kioxia, and does not settle it; neither does the unsponsored KXIAY programme.

    Previous lag label0 trading days; the first sighting of the size was the mainstream headline.

    1. May · tier 1 · Kioxia

       The company said it was preparing to list ADRs to broaden its investor base, per Reuters' account of 14 September.

    2. 25 Jun 03:27 · tier 4 · TradingKey

       Added 21 September, an earlier surface the desk had missed: Kioxia "intends to issue American Depositary Receipts and list on a U.S. stock exchange by spring 2027," subject to regulatory approval, with exchange, offering size and timeline unsettled. The plan and its approximate date were therefore in print three months before Bloomberg's report; what is single-sourced is the size, not the listing.

    3. 14 Sep 08:58 · tier 3 · Bloomberg

       At least $10 billion, three banks named, size and lineup subject to change; Kioxia did not reply outside business hours. Reuters relayed it; The Star's copy stamped 08:58 Eastern. The sighting was the headline.

    4. 14–15 Sep · tier 4 · SED, Invezz

       Seoul Economic Daily and Invezz relayed Bloomberg; Invezz read the Tokyo shares at ¥51,720 on the 14th and ¥51,350 by the 15th, against a June high of ¥112,750.

    5. 18 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked against EDGAR's full-text index: no Form F-1 for Kioxia. No new sighting since 14 September and no denial. Status unchanged.

    6. 15 Sep · tier 1 · Kioxia

       Added 22 September, and the highest tier this claim has reached. "Notice Regarding Certain Media Reports," on the company's own site: "There have been media reports regarding the listing of the Company's American Depositary Shares on a U.S. stock exchange. These reports are not announcements made by the Company," and "details of the listing such as the schedule, listing market, and listing method have not yet been decided," with the note that preparations may be discontinued. Neither confirms nor denies the size, the banks or the timing. The desk had missed this through three issues; see the audit block.

    7. 11 Feb · tier 1 · BNY Mellon / EDGAR

       Added 24 September, and the document this register said did not exist. Form F-6EF, accession 0001019155-26-000048, filed 11 February 2026, registering 50,000,000 American depositary shares over Kioxia common stock. No exchange is named in it, and Kioxia did not file it: it is signed by The Bank of New York Mellon, 240 Greenwich Street, as depositary, with Kioxia Holdings Corporation named only as "the issuer of deposited securities," neither registrant nor signatory. It predates Bloomberg's report by seven months and says nothing about the size, the banks, the exchange or the timing the claim is about. See the audit block.

    8. 9 Mar · tier 1 · depositary bulletin

       Added 24 September. The Kioxia line that actually trades over the counter, KXIAY, is a different programme under a different bank: an unsponsored depositary receipt facility with J.P. Morgan as depositary, ten ordinary shares to one receipt, CUSIP 49726J108, listed in BNY Mellon's bulletin of new unsponsored programmes dated 9 March 2026. An unsponsored facility is established by a bank without the issuer's participation, so it is evidence about banks and not about Kioxia's intentions.

    9. 21 Sep · desk check

       EDGAR re-checked for The Whisper, No. 4: still no Form F-1. The Japan Times and Yahoo Finance relays of the 14 September report remain the American surface. Status unchanged.

    10. 22 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 5: still no Form F-1 or F-6 for Kioxia, and no IR item since the 15 September notice. A trap recorded for future searches: the F-1 that surfaces on these search terms is SK hynix Inc., CIK 2120882, filed 24 June, Nasdaq Global Select under SKHY, with BofA Securities, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan as global coordinators — a different issuer with a near-identical bank lineup to the three attributed to Kioxia. Status unchanged.

    11. 24 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 7. Still no Form F-1, no exchange application and no company item since the 15 September notice. The F-6EF above was found on this check and is filed in its own place in the trail; it is the highest-tier document on this entry after that notice, and it does not touch the claim as printed.

    12. 25 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8. Still no Form F-1, no exchange application and no company item since the 15 September notice. Status unchanged.

    13. 28 Sep 2026 14:40 UTC — source-link verification · desk check · primary-source link verification

        Source-link check for two existing observations: Source 1 is Kioxia's September 15, 2026 media-response notice, supporting the recorded preparation and uncertainty. Source 2 is the February 11, 2026 F-6 filing, accession 0001019155-26-000048, supporting the depositary filing observation. Neither establishes the reported offering size, bank lineup, exchange or timing. The separate March depositary programme and remaining trail were not checked in this citation update. Status, historical dates, text and the supplied September 25 cutoff remain unchanged.

        • Source 1: https://www.kioxia-holdings.com/en-jp/news/2026/20260915-1.html
        • Source 2: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1201935/000101915526000048/kholdingsf6ef.htm

    14. 28 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 9. Still no Form F-1, no exchange application and no company item since the 15 September notice. Status unchanged.

    15. 29 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 10. Still no Form F-1, no exchange application and no company item since the 15 September notice. The F-1 that surfaces on these search terms remains SK hynix’s, CIK 2120882, the trap this register recorded on 22 September. Status unchanged.

    16. 30 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 11. Still no Form F-1, no exchange application and no company item since the 15 September notice. Status unchanged.

    Prior record for entry 3

    Previous first-seen label17 SEP

    Previous source-record statusopen

    Previous recorded claimAMD has told its partners that prices on its graphics processors, AI accelerators and chipsets will rise by roughly ten percent in the fourth quarter of 2026, because TSMC has told AMD the same about wafers, per Wccftech citing ChannelGate, a supply-chain channel on WeChat. Neither company has commented. Every English-language sighting traces to that one channel. The Whisper, No. 2.

    Previous tape512.50 → 559.82, +47.32, +9.23%, the 16 September close before the first attributed sighting to the 18 September close, sworn — stockanalysis.com and Investing.com carry both figures identically to the cent; the percentage is this desk's arithmetic, 47.32 ÷ 512.50. Intraday 21 September, one feed and unsworn: 606.68 at 1:24 p.m. on stockanalysis.com, +46.86, +8.37% on the session, range 582.27–615.99, volume 29.5m, which carries the move from the same base to +94.18, +18.38%. The same page put the market capitalisation at $990.39 billion. Volumes where the feeds disagree, both printed: 28.17m against 28.46m on 17 September, 31.17m against 31.87m on 18 September. Amended 21 September with the corrected stamp: the report ran at 8:26 a.m. on 17 September, sixty-four minutes before the open, and AMD opened at 533.60 — both feeds, sworn — a gap of 4.12% on the prior close, 533.60 ÷ 512.50, closing the session up 6.36%. Where the stock traded before 8:26 the desk cannot establish and does not guess; the earlier claim that the advance preceded the report is withdrawn. The advance has also run on through a broad semiconductor rally, so the desk still attributes nothing. Updated 22 September: Monday's close is sworn at 615.52 — stockanalysis.com and stockinvest.us, which wrote that AMD "ended at $615.52," with Yahoo Finance carrying the same as its previous close — which carries the move from the same base to +103.02, +20.10%, this desk's arithmetic, 103.02 ÷ 512.50. Today unsworn, both printed: 618.34 at 12:03 p.m. Eastern on stockanalysis.com, 614.92 at 10:46 a.m. on Yahoo Finance. A caution: Investing.com's AMD historical table was stale at 18 September when checked today, and its quote page showed a 15:39 intraday print of 615.71 that is not a close; it is not used for Monday.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: a partner or OEM price list showing fourth-quarter increases in that range; AMD's third-quarter results and call on 3 November, where a ten percent rise reaches the gross-margin line; TSMC's October call on 2027 wafer pricing; an on-the-record statement. Kills it: AMD saying no such notice went to partners, or fourth-quarter price lists arriving unchanged.

    Previous lag label1 trading day, corrected 21 September from running. First attributed sighting 17 September 8:26 a.m.; first mainstream US headline 18 September 5:22 a.m. on Yahoo Finance. The first independently authored American market story came on 21 September, two trading days out; the desk counts the earlier one.

    1. 21 Jul · tier 3 · Nikkei

       The upstream claim, via Tom's Hardware: TSMC to raise advanced-node baseline prices five to ten percent from the start of 2027, with "another 10% to 15% premium on top of the standard increase" for incremental HPC capacity, citing people with knowledge of the matter. Named no customer.

    2. 17 Sep · tier 5 · channel

       ChannelGate, a WeChat supply-chain account, relayed by a leak account on X. Counted, not named. Origin of the AMD-specific leg.

    3. 17 Sep 08:26 · tier 4 · Wccftech

       First attributed sighting; stamp corrected 21 September from 12:26 p.m., which was the page metadata's UTC time, to 8:26 a.m. Eastern per the article's own byline. "TSMC has notified its customers about the price hikes, leading to AMD notifying its partners about the same. The price hike is roughly 10% and is planned to be implemented in the fourth quarter of 2026." Cited ChannelGate; did not stand alone; said a ten percent Ryzen increase "should be treated as a 'possibility' rather than a confirmed development." Wccftech gives ChannelGate no descriptor; Club386, the same day, identifies it as the WeChat arm of a Chinese leak site.

    4. 17–18 Sep · tier 4 · relays

       Counted, not weighted: six English-language sites, among them ThinkComputers, Club386, Notebookcheck, PC Guide, XenoSpectrum and Technetbook. All downstream of the same item or the same channel.

    5. 18 Sep 05:22 · tier 3 · Yahoo Finance

       First mainstream US headline. Amended 21 September: logged in The Whisper, No. 2, as a Stocktwits relay, it was published on Yahoo Finance's markets pages as "AMD Stock Rises Premarket: Report Flags Chip Price Hike Linked To TSMC Costs," naming both Wccftech and ChannelGate; AMD up 1.4 percent premarket, a third consecutive advance, the three-session gain above twelve percent. The lag closed here.

    6. 18 Sep · tier 4 · TrendForce

       Carried in its own news file as AMD "preparing a 10% price hike for GPUs, AI chips, and chipsets in Q4 2026, attributed to rising manufacturing costs at TSMC." Downstream of the same origin; not counted as a second surface.

    7. 19 Sep · tier 2 · TSMC via Digital Citizen

       The first named-company material in the trail, and the highest tier this claim has reached. A TSMC spokesperson, asked about the report: "Our pricing strategy is strategic, not opportunistic. We will continue to work closely with customers and sell our value to them." Neither a confirmation nor a denial. The same piece set the leak's Q4 2026 timing against TSMC's July guidance of 2027 and allowed that the two "may describe one negotiation at different stages or two separate cost actions."

    8. 21 Sep 09:37 · tier 4 · 24/7 Wall St.

       First American market story written independently of the technology press, also carried on Yahoo Finance: "AMD Rises 5% as Report Flags 10% Chip Price Increase; NVIDIA and Taiwan Semiconductor Tick Up." AMD 586.66, Nvidia 223.72, TSM 440.92. Calls the claim "unconfirmed," does not name ChannelGate, and adds that "a denial or narrower scope would remove the framing that's lifting AMD stock this morning."

    9. 21 Sep · tier 4 · PCWorld

       Added 22 September. Quotes the origin channel directly, through a leak account on X: "AMD will increase chip price about 10% in Q4 / It is result from TSMC's price increase." No AMD comment. Not an independent surface; it is the same WeChat account, one relay closer to the source than Wccftech was.

    10. 22 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 5. No new sighting today, no AMD statement, no denial, and no partner or OEM price list. The claim is forking in the relay layer: one branch has Ryzen spared, the other has Ryzen following, and both cite the same channel. Status unchanged.

    11. 23 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 6. TweakTown has joined the relay layer, alongside Digital Trends, XenoSpectrum, ThinkComputers and Startup Fortune, and the Ryzen fork persists across them; every one is downstream of the same WeChat channel. No AMD statement, no denial and no partner or OEM price list. Status unchanged.

    12. 24 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 7. Digital Trends, Startup Fortune and Compsmag have joined the relay layer and the Ryzen fork persists across it; every branch still cites the same WeChat channel. No AMD statement, no denial and no partner or OEM price list. Status unchanged.

    13. 25 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8, the sixth session since the first attributed sighting. No AMD statement, no denial and no partner or OEM price list. Recorded beside this entry today: an unrelated and independently sourced claim, printed as entry 11, that the silicon wafers upstream of TSMC are themselves being repriced for 2027. The desk logs the two as separate claims and does not treat either as evidence for the other. Status unchanged.

    14. 28 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 9, the seventh session since the first attributed sighting. No AMD statement, no denial and no partner or OEM price list. Recorded beside this entry today and not as evidence for it: DigiTimes reported on 24 September that TSMC will raise its own wafer foundry prices by 3 to 6 percent from January 2027 with order visibility to 2030, relayed the same morning at 9:02 Taipei by the Economic Daily News and carried in American markets coverage by Benzinga. One origin, several relays, no document and no second surface — it does not clear the floor and is counted in the issue’s “seen, not printed.” Its quantity and its date both differ from this claim’s. Status unchanged.

    15. 29 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 10, the eighth session since the first attributed sighting. No AMD statement, no denial and no partner or OEM price list. The relay layer is unchanged and the Ryzen fork persists across it. AMD’s third-quarter results on 3 November remain the first occasion on which a ten percent rise would reach a published margin. Status unchanged. Separate documented context, not evidence for this price claim: AMD announced a definitive all-stock agreement to acquire World Labs for approximately $8.2 billion on 28 September; completion remained subject to approvals.

        • Source 1: https://ir.amd.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1299/amd-to-acquire-world-labs-to-advance-the-future-of-ai-compute

    16. 30 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 11, the ninth session since the first attributed sighting. No AMD statement, no denial and no partner or OEM price list. AMD’s third-quarter results on 3 November remain the first occasion on which a ten percent rise would reach a published margin. Status unchanged.

    Prior record for entry 4

    Previous first-seen label18 SEP

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimSolidigm, SK Hynix's US NAND subsidiary, is weighing its first American NAND plant, with upstate New York the leading candidate site, per Reuters' three people familiar with the matter. SK Hynix says it is reviewing options and that nothing is confirmed. The Whisper, No. 2.

    Previous tapethe desk swore in no reading for this entry. Corrected 21 September — this line previously said there is no US-listed security. SK hynix trades on Nasdaq as SKHY, American depositary shares, since 10 July 2026; Benzinga's 18 September piece used that ticker and was right. No reading has been sworn in even so, and none is printed.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: a New York State incentive award or economic-development board document; a site or construction permit; an SK Hynix board resolution; a Solidigm announcement naming the site.

    Previous lag label0 trading days; the wire report was itself the first mainstream US headline.

    1. 18 Sep 04:41 · tier 4 · DigiTimes

       Its own item, Taipei 16:41: Solidigm "is considering building its first NAND manufacturing plant in the US, with upstate New York emerging as a leading candidate." Paywalled beyond the lede; no sources shown.

    2. 18 Sep 05:08 · tier 3 · Reuters

       First mainstream US headline, as carried by the Korea JoongAng Daily at 18:08 Seoul. Three people familiar with the matter; one said no agreement had been reached and key details remain under discussion. Solidigm did not respond outside business hours.

    3. 18 Sep 05:08 · tier 2 · SK Hynix

       On the record, confirming neither: "subsidiary Solidigm is reviewing various options to strengthen its business competitiveness, but no specific plans have been confirmed."

    4. 18 Sep · tier 4 · SED, relays

       Added 21 September. Seoul Economic Daily carried it the same day as "SK hynix Weighs First U.S. NAND Plant as AI Demand Surges"; Investing.com and MarketScreener relayed Reuters; Benzinga wrote up the Friday share move directly. All downstream of the Reuters report.

    5. 21 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 4. No New York State incentive award, no site or construction permit, no board resolution, and no change to SK Hynix's on-the-record line. The claim has spread across the market layer, not the document layer. Status unchanged.

    6. 18 Sep · tier 2 · Solidigm

       Added 22 September. Solidigm itself, on the record in the Reuters syndication the register had only recorded as "did not respond": "No decision regarding any specific course of action has been made." A 20 September follow-up adds that no factory has been approved, no site selected and no construction timetable exists, with Solidigm declining to "comment on market rumors."

    7. 22 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 5. No Empire State Development incentive award and no Green CHIPS document naming Solidigm; no announcement from the governor's office; no site or construction permit; no board resolution. Status unchanged.

    8. 25 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8. No Empire State Development incentive award, no site or construction permit, no board resolution and no change to either company’s on-the-record line. Status unchanged.

    9. 28 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 9. No Empire State Development incentive award, no site or construction permit, no board resolution and no change to either company’s on-the-record line. Status unchanged.

    10. 29 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 10. No Empire State Development incentive award, no site or construction permit, no board resolution and no change to either company’s on-the-record line. Status unchanged.

    11. 30 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 11. No Empire State Development incentive award, no site or construction permit, no board resolution and no change to either company’s on-the-record line. Status unchanged.

    Prior record for entry 5

    Previous first-seen label15 SEP

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimSamsung Electronics has begun running wafers for Tesla's next-generation AI5 processor at its foundry in Taylor, Texas, ahead of a start scheduled for November, per Seoul Economic Daily's semiconductor industry sources. Neither company has said it, and no American wire has reported it. The Whisper, No. 3.

    Previous tapeTesla 358.97 → 366.20, +2.01%, 14 to 17 September closes, sworn — 358.97 on stockanalysis.com and Investing.com, 366.20 on stockanalysis.com and Google Finance, whose Friday quote of 362.60 less 3.60 implies it; Investing.com carries 366.69 for the 17th and is printed, not sworn. On the claim's own session, 15 September, Tesla fell 0.67% to 356.58 on 30,168,264 shares against Monday's 32,068,734. Thursday alone was 8.12 points of the 7.23-point move, in a session the Nasdaq Composite rose 1.69% the day after the Fed. Samsung Electronics: −4.05% Monday, −0.2% Tuesday to 248,500 won, "only modestly higher" Wednesday per Invezz; 261,000 won, +3.37%, at Friday's Seoul close, one feed.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: Samsung's third-quarter results in late October; Tesla's results and 10-Q; a Samsung release or Taylor site announcement; a Yonhap report carrying a company confirmation. Kills it: a statement from either company that Taylor has not begun AI5 wafers, or a Samsung disclosure putting the start in November as scheduled.

    Previous lag label11 trading days and running, at 30 September. No mainstream American headline exists; the count stays open until one does.

    1. 28 Jul 2025 · tier 1 · contract

       A $16.5 billion multi-year supply agreement, about 22 trillion won, disclosed by Elon Musk after Tesla had asked that the counterparty stay unnamed; Bloomberg reported it.

    2. 22 Oct 2025 · tier 2 · Musk, CNBC

       Musk on the record: AI5 to be made by Samsung in Texas and TSMC in Arizona. This, and not the start, is what the American press has.

    3. 5 Nov 2025 · tier 4 · TrendForce

       Musk signals AI5 mass production slipping to 2027, "casting uncertainty over Samsung."

    4. 24 Apr · tier 1 · Samsung

       Equipment-installation ceremony at the Taylor plant, as referenced by Seoul Economic Daily.

    5. 13 Jul · tier 4 · TrendForce / Yonhap

       AI5 tape-out complete, production expected on Samsung's 2nm process in Texas; "the disclosure marks the first time Samsung Foundry's production timeline for the Tesla AI5 chip has been revealed in concrete terms." Taylor ramp put in 2027. Korea Times and Electrek the same day.

    6. 15 Sep 17:21 · tier 4 · Seoul Economic Daily

       First sighting. Samsung "has begun prototype production at its Taylor, Texas, foundry to supply artificial intelligence chips to Tesla"; it "plans to complete mass-production verification by the end of this year and begin full supply next year." Page stamp 17:21, updated 23:35, Seoul time, which puts it near 4:21 a.m. Eastern. The headline said mass production over a body that said prototype.

    7. 16 Sep 00:28 · tier 2 · KB Securities via ChosunBiz

       Kim Dong-won, named, on Samsung's 2nm gate-all-around yield improving from below 50 percent, carried by Invezz under "Samsung stock is ignoring a $16.5 billion Tesla catalyst." About the plant's capability, not the start.

    8. 16 Sep 07:00 KST · tier 4 · Seoul Economic Daily

       The same reporting re-headlined "Samsung Starts Trial Production of Tesla AI Chips in Texas," ahead of the originally scheduled November startup.

    9. 17 Sep 11:51 · tier 4 · DigiTimes

       Second independent surface, by its own Taipei stamp: trial production, 2nm wafer production and yield verification ahead of full-scale operations. Names no source and does not cite Seoul.

    10. 16–18 Sep · tier 5 · aggregators

        Counted, not named as sources: nine sites, among them one whose headline says the node is "silencing yield doubters," a claim in none of the underlying reporting.

    11. 21 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 4. Still no mainstream American headline and no company statement either way; the only movement is in the enthusiast layer, where Not a Tesla App and similar sites now carry the trial start as settled fact. The lag continues to run.

    12. 22 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 5 against CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, Barron's, Reuters, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal. None carries the September wafer-start claim; Yahoo Finance's Tesla AI5 items stop at the tape-out and dual-foundry stories, and the nearest American piece is Electrek's 13 July tape-out report, which is a different claim. No Samsung or Tesla statement. The lag runs on.

    13. 23 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 6 against the same American outlets. None carries the September wafer-start claim; Electrek's 13 July tape-out piece remains the nearest American surface and is a different claim, and the enthusiast layer continues to carry the trial start as settled fact. No Samsung or Tesla statement. The lag runs on, now six trading days.

    14. 24 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 7 against CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, Barron's, Reuters and Bloomberg. None carries the September wafer-start claim. The enthusiast layer has widened again — Drive Tesla Canada, Not a Tesla App, The Electric Viking, Basenor and BigGo all carry the trial start as settled fact, all downstream of Seoul Economic Daily and DigiTimes — and Electrek's 13 July tape-out piece remains the nearest American surface and is a different claim. No company statement. The lag runs on, now seven trading days.

    15. 25 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8 against CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, Barron’s, Reuters and Bloomberg. None carries the September wafer-start claim; the enthusiast layer continues to carry the trial start as settled fact, all of it downstream of Seoul Economic Daily and DigiTimes. No company statement. The lag runs on, now eight trading days.

    16. 28 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 9 against CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, Barron’s, Reuters and Bloomberg. None carries the September wafer-start claim; Electrek’s 13 July tape-out piece remains the nearest American surface and is a different claim, and the enthusiast layer continues to carry the trial start as settled fact. No company statement. The lag runs on, now nine trading days — the longest open count on this register.

    17. 29 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 10 against CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, Barron’s, Reuters and Bloomberg. None carries the September wafer-start claim; Electrek’s 13 July tape-out piece remains the nearest American surface and is a different claim, and the enthusiast layer continues to carry the trial start as settled fact. No company statement. The lag runs on, now ten trading days — fourteen calendar days, and the longest open count on this register.

    18. 30 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 11 against CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, Barron’s, Reuters and Bloomberg. None carries the September wafer-start claim; Electrek’s 13 July tape-out piece remains the nearest American surface and is a different claim, and the enthusiast layer — Drive Tesla Canada, Not a Tesla App, autoevolution, Basenor — continues to carry the trial start as settled fact. No company statement. The lag runs on, now eleven trading days, and it is worth recording beside entry 13, printed today: both claims concern the same Taylor fab and the same Korean press, and this one the American market has never printed at all.

    Prior record for entry 6

    Previous first-seen label14 SEP

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimTSMC's 2nm capacity is expected to rise from 90,000 wafers a month at end-2026 to 110,000 by mid-2027, its 3nm from more than 180,000 to 210,000, and CoWoS packaging from roughly 130,000 a month to 260,000 by end-2028, per TrendForce citing Taiwan's Economic Daily News. TSMC has not published these figures. The Whisper, No. 3.

    Previous tapethe claim concerns capacity two to eight quarters out and no single session's move is attributable to it; the readings below are printed as context and nothing is attributed. Added 28 September. TSM's 25 September close is sworn at 450.61 — stockanalysis.com's daily table and an independent market note carrying "TSMC stock at USD 450.61 on September 25, 2026". The 24 September close of 451.15, stockanalysis.com, reconciles against a second note describing a 0.12 percent loss into the following session: 451.15 − 450.61 = 0.54, and 0.54 ÷ 451.15 = 0.12 percent, this desk's arithmetic. The 11 September close of 433.24, the session before the first sighting, and the 14 September close of 418.01 are one feed only, printed and not sworn. From that unsworn base to Friday's sworn close the move is +17.37, +4.01%, 17.37 ÷ 433.24, across two weeks of a semiconductor tape that has run for everyone. Today unsworn, one feed: 447.14, −3.47, −0.77%, previous close 450.61, open 448.39, range 443.11–449.60, volume 3,084,181, Yahoo Finance at 11:41:27 a.m. Eastern — the stock opened lower on the morning after the American headline and traded there.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: TSMC's third-quarter call in October, its capex guidance, and its monthly revenue releases on the tenth of each month.

    Previous lag label9 trading days, closed 28 September. First sighting Monday 14 September; first mainstream American headline Sunday 27 September at 11:07 p.m. Eastern, after Friday's close and before Monday's open. The trading days between are 15, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25 September. The headline that closed it carries a 2nm figure a third larger than the one first printed; the CoWoS leg of the claim has still not been carried by any mainstream American outlet.

    1. 14 Sep · tier 4 · TrendForce / EDN

       First sighting. The capacity numbers above, attributed to Economic Daily News; a 22 percent lift at 2nm, 17 percent at 3nm and a doubling of CoWoS on this desk's arithmetic from the published figures.

    2. 15 Sep 11:30 · tier 4 · DigiTimes

       Second independent surface, by its own Taipei stamp: 3nm, 2nm and CoWoS all tight through the third quarter, Nvidia and Apple dominating advanced process and packaging, and Amazon's Annapurna unit expanding AI chip tape-outs and given more 3nm capacity. Supply-chain sources. Body paywalled.

    3. 21 Sep 07:37 · tier 1 · TSMC via Reuters

       Added 21 September. Ground was broken on an advanced-packaging industrial park at Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan, anchored by TSMC, reported by Reuters under a Taipei dateline of 21 September (some US syndications carry a 20 September date) and carried by Benzinga at 7:37 a.m. Eastern, with operations expected in the fourth quarter of 2029. Document-grade, and evidence about direction rather than about the claim's numbers: 2029 sits a year beyond the end of the claim's window, and no wafer or CoWoS figure in the claim is addressed.

    4. 21 Sep 09:59 · tier 4 · DigiTimes

       Weekly roundup, by its own stamp: semiconductor equipment makers facing lead times of up to forty months on certain Japanese components, and local component deliveries stretching about fifty percent. The physical constraint any such ramp meets. Not a second surface for the capacity figures.

    5. 22 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 5. No new sighting of the capacity figures and no TSMC statement on them; the company's only reference point remains the July call's 2026 capex guidance of $60–64 billion. The one TSMC item TrendForce carried today is adjacent and does not confirm the numbers. The date to mark: TSMC's September monthly revenue release, Thursday 8 October, 13:30 Taipei, per the company's own financial calendar. Status unchanged.

    6. 23 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 6 against TrendForce's current news file, whose 23 September items run to DRAM spot prices, LPDDR6 validation, a glass-substrate roundup and a NAND patent ruling, none of which touches the capacity figures. No new sighting and no TSMC statement on them. Status unchanged.

    7. 24 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 7 against TrendForce's current news file, whose 24 September items run to Chinese memory capacity, a Meta device launch, a GDDR7 end-of-life report, an optical-transceiver listing and a Qualcomm node statement, none of which touches the capacity figures. No new sighting and no TSMC statement on them. The date to mark remains TSMC's September monthly revenue release, Thursday 8 October, 13:30 Taipei. Status unchanged.

    8. 25 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8 against TrendForce’s current news file, whose 25 September items run to twelve-inch wafer contract pricing and a rare-earths piece, neither of which touches the capacity figures. No new sighting and no TSMC statement on them. The date to mark remains Thursday 8 October, 13:30 Taipei. Status unchanged.

    9. 27 Sep 14:06 · tier 4 · Economic Daily News

       Added 28 September, and the sighting this issue is built on: the origin outlet revising its own number. Page stamp 28 September 02:06 Taipei, byline Yin Hui-chung (尹慧中), read in the original by this desk. 大廠追加訂單 台積電2奈米擴產進度超前 年底月產能上看12萬片 — major customers have added orders, TSMC's 2nm expansion is ahead of schedule, year-end monthly capacity looking at 120,000 wafers. It states that the market had expected about 90,000 to 100,000 at year-end. Five customers named as raising 2nm-family orders by 10 to 20 percent: Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm, MediaTek. 3nm put near 180,000 a month in the fourth quarter of 2026 and 200,000 to 210,000 in 2027, which is consistent with the 14 September figures. Sourcing language 業界傳出 and 消息人士透露 — the industry says, sources disclose. No firm named, no person named, no document.

       Recorded evidence tier: 4

    10. 27 Sep 23:07 · tier 4 · Yahoo Finance

        First mainstream US headline, nine hours after the revision and nine trading days after the first sighting. Investing.com's report carried on Yahoo Finance's technology pages, byline Ayushman Ojha: "TSMC 2nm wafer capacity to exceed earlier estimates, EDN reports." Credits EDN by name; carries the 120,000 against prior forecasts of 90,000 to 100,000 and the 10-to-20-percent order increase; adds TSMC senior vice-president Hou Yung-ching on first-year 2nm output running 45 percent above 3nm's first year in 2023 and capacity compounding about 70 percent a year through 2028 — company remarks about growth rates, not about the 120,000. The lag closes here on the 2nm leg. The CoWoS leg still has no American headline. Tiered 4 by what the source is; the lag is marked by where the claim reached, which is a different field.

        Recorded evidence tier: 4

    11. 28 Sep · tier 5 · aggregators

        Counted, not named: TipRanks, GuruFocus via TradingView, CoinCentral, Blockonomi, KuCoin, Parameter and EconoTimes carried the 120,000 by mid-morning; every one credits EDN and none adds a source. Invezz, 28 September 00:10 Eastern, is the exception worth reading — it reaches TechInsights vice-chair Dan Hutcheson on more than fifteen customers working on N2 and Stifel's Sahej Singh keeping a Buy and a $515 target on a margin argument — and its own headline reads that the stock slipped.

        Recorded evidence tier: 5

    12. 28 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 9. TSMC has published none of these figures and has made no statement on them; the company's own reference points remain the July call's capex guidance and the monthly revenue releases. No options print, no volume anomaly and no prediction-market contract on the claim was found. Status unchanged: a revision is a sighting, not a document. The date to mark remains Thursday 8 October, 13:30 Taipei.

    13. 29 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 10. TSMC has published none of these figures and has made no statement on them. The CoWoS leg of the claim still has no American headline. The date to mark remains Thursday 8 October, 13:30 Taipei. Status unchanged.

    14. 30 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 11. TSMC has published none of these figures and has made no statement on them. The CoWoS leg of the claim still has no American headline. The date to mark remains Thursday 8 October, 13:30 Taipei. Status unchanged.

    Prior record for entry 9

    Previous first-seen label18 SEP

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimThe Munich I Regional Court has found Micron Technology to infringe two German utility models held by Yangtze Memory Technologies and granted injunctions covering sales of the infringing 3D NAND products in Germany, per ip fray, with Micron saying it disagrees, has appealed and is challenging the rights' validity, per TechNode citing IT Home. No judgment text is public and no mainstream American outlet has carried it. The Whisper, No. 6.

    Previous tape1,015.80 → 1,096.16, +80.36, +7.91%, the 18 September close on the day of the first sighting to the 22 September close, sworn — stockanalysis.com and Investing.com carry 977.50 (17 Sep), 1,015.80 (18 Sep), 1,043.96 (21 Sep) and 1,096.16 (22 Sep) identically to the cent; the percentage is this desk's arithmetic, 80.36 ÷ 1,015.80. Today unsworn, both printed: 1,074.68, −21.48, −1.96%, previous close 1,096.16, range 1,074.30–1,105.50, volume 6,619,617, Yahoo Finance at 10:20 a.m.; 1,067.01, open 1,100.07, high 1,105.50, low 1,069.76, volume 13,313,292, stockanalysis.com at a 1:13 p.m. page stamp. Volumes where the feeds disagree, both printed: 28,078,850 against 28.17m on 21 September, 28,588,943 against 29.19m on 22 September. Nothing is attributed: Micron reports on 30 September and the memory complex has run for weeks. Updated 25 September: Thursday’s close is sworn at 1,080.53 — Yahoo Finance’s quote page states it as the 24 September close, with open 1,049.75, range 1,044.00–1,081.04 and volume 21,938,990 — and stockanalysis.com’s live change today implies the identical previous close of 1,080.51, reconciling within rounding. That carries the move from the 18 September base to +64.73, +6.37%, this desk’s arithmetic, 64.73 ÷ 1,015.80. Today unsworn, one feed: 1,079.00, open 1,095.83, range 1,074.51–1,108.72, volume 10,532,468, stockanalysis.com at 11:58 a.m. Eastern.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: the Munich I judgment texts, which would fix the product scope; a Munich Higher Regional Court ruling on a stay; Micron's fiscal 2026 annual report and its legal-proceedings note, following the 30 September results; an 8-K if the company judges the effect material sooner; a filing by YMTC of the security German law requires before a first-instance injunction is enforced. Kills it: an appellate stay, or judgment texts showing the enjoined products are not ones Micron sells into Germany.

    Previous lag label8 trading days and running, at 30 September. First sighting Friday 18 September; no mainstream American outlet — not Reuters, Bloomberg, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch or Barron's — had carried it as of 12:20 p.m. Eastern on 30 September.

    1. 18 Sep · tier 4 · ip fray

       First sighting, and the only account with the record in it: the 7th Civil Chamber, presiding judge Dr. Oliver Schoen; cases 7 O 12615/25 and 7 O 12614/25 decided, three more adjourned, among them 7 O 12616/25 and 7 O 12593/25; utility models DE 20 2020 006 166 U1, "Staircase structure of a three-dimensional storage device," and DE 20 2021 004 551 U1, "Barrier layers for word line contacts in three-dimensional NAND memory." On what happens next: "Enforcement will likely begin soon unless the appeals court (the Munich Higher Regional Court) stays both injunctions." Stood alone.

    2. 18–23 Sep, undated · tier 4 · IAM

       "YMTC strikes NAND patent blow against Micron with two German injunctions." Logged as a headline from the search index rather than as a read: iam-media.com returns a 403 to this desk and the page was not opened. Its date is not established.

    3. 23 Sep 05:07 · tier 4 · TechNode

       09:07 UTC. Second origin rather than a relay: it cites the Chinese outlet IT Home, not ip fray. "Munich Regional Court I has ruled that Micron infringed two German utility models held by Yangtze Memory Technologies, and issued injunctions." Carries the company response the first report did not.

    4. 23 Sep · tier 2 · Micron via TechNode

       The highest tier in the trail besides the ruling itself, and carried at second hand: Micron "said it disagreed with the decision, filed an appeal and was challenging the validity of the relevant rights." No verbatim company statement has been located.

    5. 23 Sep · tier 4 · DIGITIMES

       "YMTC wins German injunctions against Micron in latest round of NAND patent battle," item a20260923PD226. Headline from the search index; digitimes.com returned a 403 to this desk on four attempts and no page was read.

    6. 23 Sep · tier 4 · TrendForce

       In its news file as "German Court Reportedly Finds Micron Infringed Two YMTC NAND Patents, Grants Injunctions" — reportedly, five days after a specialist outlet printed the chamber, the judge and the case numbers.

    7. 23 Sep 12:12 · tier 5 · aggregator

       Counted, not weighted, and quoted because it states the limits most precisely: "The injunctions are first-instance rulings that cover sales of the infringing products in Germany only," and "No report we found says YMTC has started enforcing, that Micron has asked for a stay, or that one has been granted." Also: without the judgment texts nobody outside the case can say whether the enjoined products are consumer SSD components, embedded NAND, or both.

    8. 24 Sep · tier 4 · JUVE Patent

       Added 24 September. A second origin, not a relay: it does not cite ip fray, and it carries material the first report did not. The patent EP 3 931 868 beside four German utility models — DE 20 2020 006 166.2, DE 20 2021 004 551, DE 20 2018 007 011 and DE 20 2022 003 278 — the pending cases 7 O 12609/25, 7 O 12616/25 and 7 O 12593/25 alongside the two decided, and presiding judge Oliver Schön of the 7th Civil Chamber. It states that the court found two utility models "valid and infringed and granted YMTC injunctions," that Micron has appealed, and — new to this register — that Micron has brought its own infringement claims at the Munich Regional Court and at the Unified Patent Court on EP 3 706 127, EP 3 574 526 and EP 2 745 295.

    9. 24 Sep · tier 4 · Tom's Hardware

       The claim reaches the American technology press, and not the American market press: "China's YMTC wins patent battle against Micron in ongoing 3-year legal war over memory patents — new injunctions could restrict Micron's supply into Germany." Downstream; not counted as an independent surface.

    10. 24 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 7. No judgment text, no stay, no Micron 8-K and no verbatim company statement. No mainstream American outlet carries it. The lag runs on, now four trading days.

    11. 25 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8. Electronics Weekly has joined the trail, and a further specialist write-up records Micron’s appeal of both injunctions; both are downstream and neither is counted as an independent surface. Still no judgment text, no ruling on a stay, no Micron 8-K and no verbatim company statement, and no mainstream American outlet carries it. The lag runs on, now five trading days.

    12. 28 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 9. Guru3D and a forum write-up of Micron’s appeal of both injunctions have joined the trail; both are downstream and neither is counted as an independent surface. Still no judgment text, no ruling on a stay, no Micron 8-K and no verbatim company statement, and no mainstream American outlet — not Reuters, Bloomberg, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch or Barron’s — carries it. Micron’s fiscal fourth-quarter results on Wednesday 30 September are the first occasion on which someone will be in a position to ask. The lag runs on, now six trading days.

    13. 29 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 10. Still no judgment text, no ruling on a stay, no Micron 8-K and no verbatim company statement, and no mainstream American outlet — not Reuters, Bloomberg, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch or Barron’s — carries it. Micron’s fiscal fourth-quarter results fall tomorrow, Wednesday 30 September, and the legal-proceedings commentary is the first occasion on which anyone will be in a position to ask. The lag runs on, now seven trading days.

    14. 30 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 11. Still no judgment text, no ruling on a stay, no Micron 8-K and no verbatim company statement, and no mainstream American outlet — not Reuters, Bloomberg, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch or Barron’s — carries it. Micron’s fiscal fourth-quarter results fall after this issue’s slot, tonight, and the legal-proceedings commentary is the first occasion on which anyone will be in a position to ask. The lag runs on, now eight trading days.

    Prior record for entry 10

    Previous first-seen label23 SEP

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimMicron has marked its 2-gigabyte GDDR7 chips end of life — the 28Gbps D8FHL part, MT68A512M32DF-28:A, and its 32Gbps sibling — leaving 3-gigabyte modules as its only GDDR7 density and Samsung and SK hynix as the remaining sources of the 2-gigabyte parts used on much of Nvidia's RTX 50 range, per Hardware Busters, The FPS Review, VideoCardz, TechPowerUp and TrendForce, all reading the same page of Micron's own parts catalogue. Micron has published no notice and explained nothing; Nvidia has said nothing. The Whisper, No. 7.

    Previous tape1,096.16 → 1,071.88, −24.28, −2.22%, the 22 September close before the first sighting to the 23 September close, sworn — stockanalysis.com's daily table and Yahoo Finance's quote page carry 1,071.88 identically, Yahoo carries the change as −2.22 percent, and MarketBeat's 23 September alert headlines "Shares Down 2.2%." Desk arithmetic, inputs shown: 1,096.16 − 1,071.88 = 24.28; 24.28 ÷ 1,096.16 = 2.215 percent. Nothing is attributed. Wednesday's session already has a published explanation and it is not this one: Invezz, 23 September 15:02, gives Wells Fargo cutting its target to $1,400 from $1,525 while keeping Overweight, Citi's Atif Malik raising his to $1,300 from $1,150 on "stronger-than-expected DRAM pricing and continued undersupply across both DRAM and NAND markets," and Michael Burry adding to a short. No published account of the session mentions GDDR7. The 23 September close is carried on a third independent read, Yahoo Finance at 1:39 p.m. today, which returns 1,071.88 as the previous close. Today unsworn, one feed: 1,072.12, +0.24, +0.02%, open 1,049.75, range 1,044.00–1,076.49, volume 14,114,423, Yahoo Finance, "As of 1:39:31 PM EDT. Market Open" — Micron opened twenty-two points below the prior close, traded to 1,044.00 and was bought back to roughly unchanged, and none of that is attributed either. A reading set aside and not logged: an 11:24 a.m. table appeared to carry a 24 September close outside its own printed high and low, but on re-reading at 1:37 p.m. that page was serving data stamped 4:51 a.m. pre-market and a Yahoo read a minute later returned a level near 958 against a previous close near 956 that reconciles with no session sworn in here and did not reproduce. The desk does not log an entry against a page it cannot re-read. Updated 25 September: Thursday’s close is sworn at 1,080.53 on the two reads described in entry 9, which carries the move from the 22 September base to −15.63, −1.43%, this desk’s arithmetic, 15.63 ÷ 1,096.16. Nothing is attributed.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: a distributor's catalogue mirroring the EOL flag with a last-time-buy date; a product change notification to customers, the document this kind of decision normally travels on; board partner or distributor pricing showing 2-gigabyte parts withdrawn; Micron's fiscal fourth-quarter results and call on 30 September — four trading days from today, five from the first sighting — where a deliberate shift of graphics memory toward higher-density AI parts belongs in the commentary on mix. Kills it: Micron saying the parts remain in production, a catalogue reading showing them in Production status, or a 2-gigabyte part appearing on a new board.

    Previous lag label5 trading days and running, at 30 September. First sighting Wednesday 23 September; no mainstream American outlet — not Reuters, Bloomberg, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch or Barron's — had carried it as of 12:20 p.m. Eastern on 30 September; Tom's Hardware is the furthest it has travelled and that is the technology press.

    1. 23 Sep · tier 5 · leak account

       First sighting, counted and not named: a hardware leak account on X, quoted verbatim by The FPS Review — "the micron gddr7 28gbps 2gb chip d8fhl (MT68A512M32DF-28:A) used on some rtx50 cards, has reached end of life." One sentence, one part number, no explanation, no company. Time not established.

    2. 23 Sep 05:05 · tier 4 · Hardware Busters

       09:05:00 UTC by its own stamp, byline crmaris. Names both parts, MT68A512M32DF-28:A and MT68A512M32DF-32:A, and cites four things: Micron's GDDR7 part catalogue, the leak account, TweakTown and VideoCardz. Did not stand alone, and printed the sentence that matters most in the trail: "Micron has not published a notice or explained the decision."

    3. 23 Sep 08:14 · tier 4 · The FPS Review

       12:14:15 UTC, Peter Brosdahl. Cites the leak account via VideoCardz and places the part across the RTX 50 range from the 5060 to the 5090. Explicitly downstream.

    4. 23 Sep · tier 4 · VideoCardz, TechPowerUp

       "Micron reportedly ends production of 2GB GDDR7 used by GeForce RTX 50" and "Micron's 2 GB GDDR7 Memory Chips Reportedly Reach End of Life." Both logged as headlines from the search index rather than as reads: videocardz.com returned a 402 to this desk and techpowerup.com is disallowed to it by robots. Neither page was opened.

    5. 23–24 Sep · tier 5 · relays

       Counted, not weighted: eTeknix, Wccftech, Kantan, GameGPU, Techtroduce, FPSHub and borecraft, every one a retelling of the same catalogue reading and none an independent surface.

    6. 24 Sep · tier 4 · TrendForce

       In its news file as "Micron Reportedly Ends 2GB GDDR7, Narrowing Supply Options for NVIDIA's RTX 50 Series," citing TechPowerUp, Gazlog, the leak account, Tom's Hardware, VideoCardz and the catalogue, and stating the document claim in its cleanest form: "Micron's product catalog now lists its 28 Gbps D8FHL chip (MT68A512M32DF-28) as EOL, with the 32 Gbps version carrying the same designation." Adds the economics: 3GB modules at $60–$70 a chip against roughly $20 for the 2GB parts.

    7. 24 Sep · tier 4 · Tom's Hardware

       Added 24 September, and the surface that supplies the reason this sits on the AI beat. Etiido Uko reports both the 28 and 32 Gbps variants discontinued and Micron "shifting its focus toward higher-density 3 GB (24 Gb) GDDR7 chips," which carry "higher profit margins" and go into Nvidia's professional RTX PRO Blackwell parts for AI work; the general case, in its words, is "memory suppliers prioritizing AI-facing technologies over their consumer and retail counterparts." It also carries the counterweight this desk prints rather than the squeeze: Samsung and SK hynix already dominate 2GB GDDR7 and Micron was not competitive there, so the exit creates little shortage risk. No Micron or Nvidia comment.

    8. 24 Sep 12:46 · tier 1 · the catalogue, unread

       The desk went to the document and could not open it. micron.com's public GDDR7 part catalogue returns no results; its table carries the right columns — part number, density, parts status, depth, width, operating temperature, speed — and "parts status" is the field holding the EOL, Production and Preview values every report is quoting. The catalogue requires a Micron account. The document exists, it is Micron's own, and no reader outside can check the claim against it. The claim is not upgraded on a page this desk cannot read.

    9. 25 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8. No Micron notice, no product change notification, no distributor catalogue mirroring the flag with a last-time-buy date, and no Nvidia comment. The parts catalogue still requires an account and is still unreadable to this desk and to any other reader outside Micron. The lag runs on, now two trading days. Status unchanged.

    10. 28 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 9. No Micron notice, no product change notification, no distributor catalogue mirroring the end-of-life flag with a last-time-buy date, and no Nvidia comment. The parts catalogue still requires an account and is still unreadable to this desk and to any other reader outside Micron. Micron’s fiscal fourth-quarter results fall on Wednesday 30 September, two sessions from today. The lag runs on, now three trading days. Status unchanged.

    11. 29 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 10. No Micron notice, no product change notification, no distributor catalogue mirroring the end-of-life flag with a last-time-buy date, and no Nvidia comment. The parts catalogue still requires an account and is still unreadable to this desk and to any other reader outside Micron. Micron reports tomorrow, Wednesday 30 September. The lag runs on, now four trading days. Status unchanged.

    12. 30 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 11. No Micron notice, no product change notification, no distributor catalogue mirroring the end-of-life flag with a last-time-buy date, and no Nvidia comment. The parts catalogue still requires an account and is still unreadable to this desk and to any other reader outside Micron. Micron reports after the close tonight, and the commentary on graphics-memory mix is where a deliberate shift toward higher-density AI parts would appear. The lag runs on, now five trading days. Status unchanged.

    Prior record for entry 11

    Previous first-seen label23 SEP

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimNew 2027 long-term contract prices for twelve-inch semiconductor silicon wafers will rise fifteen to twenty-five percent for epitaxial wafers and more than forty percent for polished, with some second-tier customers above fifty percent, per the Commercial Times of Taipei, citing an industry survey and institutional analyst estimates. No wafer maker and no customer has confirmed a figure, and there is no document of any kind in the trail. The Whisper, No. 8.

    Previous tapeno reading sworn in, and the desk prints why. The claim's subjects are listed in Taipei — GlobalWafers on the Taipei Exchange under 6488, with Taisil and Wafer Works beside it — and this desk has established no US-listed line for any of them. The two feeds it reads for Taipei disagree by roughly a third and both are stale: stockanalysis.com served 1,000.00 TWD, +29.00, +2.99%, previous close 971.00, volume 1,355,000, on a page stamped 23 September 9:20 a.m. Taipei; Investing.com served 1,480.00 TWD, −35.00, −2.31%, volume 10.79m, on a page labelled "Closed as of July 15, 2026." One is ten weeks stale and says so; the other is two days stale and does not. Both are printed, neither is sworn, and no level is published as current. No options print, no volume anomaly and no prediction-market contract was found either. The fifty-two-week range on both pages runs 333 to 1,600.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: GlobalWafers' third-quarter results and investor conference in late October, and its monthly revenue releases on the tenth of each month; SUMCO's and Shin-Etsu's late-October results and their guidance language on long-term agreements; any foundry or memory maker booking a materially higher wafer cost line in fourth-quarter guidance, which confirms it from the customer's side. Kills it: a wafer maker saying on the record that 2027 agreements are renewing at single-digit or low-double-digit increases; a customer's guidance showing flat wafer costs into 2027; or the October results season passing with none of the companies raising their own pricing outlook.

    Previous lag label5 trading days and running, at 30 September. First sighting Wednesday 23 September; no mainstream American outlet — not Reuters, Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch or Barron's — carried the 2027 contract numbers as of 12:20 p.m. Eastern on 30 September. The furthest the claim has travelled into American publishing is Wccftech and TrendForce, which are the technology and research trade, not the market press.

    1. 26 Jun · tier 4 · CTEE, BigGo

       Upstream, and a different claim. The Commercial Times reported wafer prices rising about ten percent across six-, eight- and twelve-inch, the first increase in over three years. A Chinese-language analysis the same day, 12:26 UTC, citing CITIC Securities, SEMI, Bernstein and JW Insights, gave the mechanism: the long-term supply agreements "acted like shackles, making silicon wafer manufacturers the last beneficiaries in the AI industry chain." Ten percent across all sizes in June is not forty percent on polished twelve-inch in 2027.

    2. 15–17 Sep · tier 4 · CTEE

       The supply side, twice: a 15 September item putting the supply gap at at least ten percent from next year, a 17 September item widening it to twenty-four percent by 2028. Neither carried contract prices.

    3. 18 Sep · tier 4 · UBS, as reported

       Recorded because it is being conflated with the claim, not because it supports it. Wafer manufacturers "may need price increases of 40% to 50% just to justify building the capacity the AI industry says it needs" — a threshold required to unlock investment, not a forecast of contract prices. Two different forty-percents are now circulating in the same week.

    4. 23 Sep 03:00 · tier 4 · Commercial Times

       First sighting, page stamp 03:00 Taipei, modified 08:01, byline Li Juan-ping (李娟萍). The sentence, in the original: 十二吋磊晶圓新長約價格估上漢15％～25％，拋光晶圓漲幅則可能達40％以上，部分二線客戶甚至超遒50％ — new long-contract prices for twelve-inch epitaxial wafers estimated up fifteen to twenty-five percent, polished wafers possibly above forty, some second-tier customers above fifty. Three forces named: AI logic, memory capacity expansion, and the renegotiation of long-term contracts. Attributed to an industry survey and institutional analyst estimates; no firm and no person named. Stood alone; cites no earlier report.

    5. 23 Sep 14:10 · tier 4 · Wccftech

       Ramish Zafar, byline stamp "Sep 23, 2026 at 02:10pm EDT," crediting Taiwan's CTEE. Carries the split correctly — "polished wafers are expected to see a higher price jump in the form of a 40% increase compared to 15% to 25% for the standard epitaxial wafers" — and the demand arithmetic beneath it: CoWoS capacity up 70.9 percent next year, GPU and custom AI ASIC demand up 44.9 percent, wafer prices from $92 in 2026 to $122 in 2027 and $166 in 2028, shipments from 11.9 million wafers a quarter to 16.1 million and then 21.7 million. Its headline takes the polished figure as the whole. Explicitly downstream.

    6. 25 Sep · tier 4 · TrendForce

       "12-inch Wafer Price Hikes Loom for 2027 as AI Demand Tightens Supply, with LTAs Reportedly Up 15–40%+," citing the Commercial Times, Star Market Daily, Wccftech and BigGo. A synthesis of the origin and its relays that reaches past Wccftech to a second Chinese-language outlet, which is what carries this entry over the floor. The word in its own headline is reportedly, two days on, and that is the correct word.

    7. 28 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 9. No wafer maker and no customer has confirmed a figure, no document has appeared, and the claim has travelled no further into American publishing than Wccftech and TrendForce. Recorded beside this entry and not as evidence for it: DigiTimes reported on 24 September that TSMC will raise its own foundry prices 3 to 6 percent from January 2027, relayed by the Economic Daily News and by Benzinga — one origin, no second surface, below the floor. Three to six percent from a foundry and above forty percent on the silicon it buys are two claims about one cost stack at very different magnitudes, and this desk prints neither as fact. The lag runs on, now three trading days. Status unchanged.

    8. 29 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 10. No wafer maker and no customer has confirmed a figure, no document has appeared, and the claim has travelled no further into American publishing than Wccftech and TrendForce. The lag runs on, now four trading days. Status unchanged.

    9. 30 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 11. No wafer maker and no customer has confirmed a figure, no document has appeared, and the claim has travelled no further into American publishing than Wccftech and TrendForce. The lag runs on, now five trading days. Status unchanged.

    Prior record for entry 12

    Previous first-seen label29 SEP

    Previous source-record statusopen

    Previous recorded claimNvidia has been in talks with insurers about structures that would reduce the financing risk carried by loans made against its own chips, including insurance on lending to smaller “neocloud” operators that would pay a lender if the borrower defaulted and the pledged chips could not be resold for enough to cover the debt, per the Financial Times citing people familiar with the matter. The FT states the discussions “remain at an early stage and may not result in agreements.” Howden Re, the broker named, declined to comment; no Nvidia statement has been located. The Whisper, No. 10.

    Previous tape228.86, Nvidia’s 28 September close, sworn — Yahoo Finance’s quote page carries it as the 28 September close, up 3.79 on 225.07, 1.68 percent on 141.3 million shares, read at 11:44 a.m. Eastern today; stockanalysis.com’s live reading of 230.08 less a change of 1.22 implies the identical previous close, read at 11:47 a.m. Today unsworn, one feed: 230.08, +1.22, +0.53%, stockanalysis.com at 11:47 a.m., which is the move from the last close before the claim existed — this desk’s arithmetic, 1.22 ÷ 228.86. Premarket, one feed: 230.87, +0.88%, Benzinga at 6:32 a.m. Yahoo’s quote page was still serving Monday’s close on both reads this morning and is not used for today. Nothing is attributed: Monday’s larger move has the buyback behind it, no options print tied to the claim was found, no volume anomaly separable from the buyback, and no prediction-market contract on the question exists.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSearched 29 September and recorded as a negative with a result rather than an assertion: EDGAR’s full-text index for “residual value insurance” across 1 June to 29 September returns Porsche, Volkswagen and Nissan auto-lease vehicles with Assured Guaranty, Bank of America and MassMutual, and no filer in artificial intelligence or compute. Polymarket carries fourteen live Nvidia contracts and none on the financing question. Settles it: a placement disclosed by a carrier or a broker; a neocloud borrower’s credit agreement or registration statement naming residual-value or default insurance over pledged Nvidia hardware; a syndicated risk transfer a rating agency has to describe; Nvidia’s next 10-Q and its guarantees and contingencies note, after third-quarter results on 17 November; an on-the-record statement from Howden Re or a carrier. Kills it: Nvidia saying no such structures are under discussion, or the FT’s own follow-up that the talks ended without an agreement.

    Previous lag label0 trading days. First sighting 12:51 a.m. and first mainstream American headline 6:29 a.m. on the same session. Recorded separately, because they are the numbers the issue turns on: 109 completed trading sessions from Alpha Compute’s 22 April release through the 28 September close before the 29 September premarket wire, and 22 trading days from the insurance trade describing the market on Wednesday 26 August to a wire naming the chipmaker in it — 27 and 28 August, 31 August, 1 to 4 September, 8 to 11 September, 14 to 18 September, 21 to 25 September and 28 September, with Monday 7 September excluded as a US market holiday.

    1. 22 Apr · tier 1 · Alpha Compute / EDGAR

       Added 29 September on an extended sweep, and the document that puts the exposure on the public record. Form 6-K filed 29 April, accession 0001171843-26-002823, CIK 1095435, carrying a press release dated 22 April: a $31.9 million non-recourse senior secured loan facility collateralised by Nvidia B300 graphics processors from an unnamed institutional lender, in which the collateral is “strictly limited to the underlying Nvidia GPU assets and the facility’s build-out” and the lender’s remedies on default are “exclusively restricted to the pledged hardware.” The same language returns in the company’s 424B3 of 22 May. It names no insurer and does not address the claim; it documents the GPU-collateral exposure but identifies no insurer and does not settle this claim. EDGAR’s full-text index returns these two filings for the phrase “GPUs as collateral” across 2026 and nothing else. The linked exhibit says the binding term sheet was executed while definitive loan documentation remained in process.

       • Source 1: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1095435/000117184326002823/exh_991.htm

    2. 26 Aug · tier 4 · The Insurer

       Upstream, and a different claim: “GPU residual value: Insurance paper used to tackle AI financing risk,” URL-dated 26 August and read through Slipcase’s syndication, where it is dated 27 August; theinsurer.com is disallowed to this desk by robots and the page was not opened. Sets out residual value insurance, warranty-backed guarantees and derivatives as the three approaches, and quotes American Compute’s founder Bernie Margulies: “If the data says it’s going to be 70%, don’t underwrite 70%, underwrite 30%.” Names no chipmaker. Logged as context, not as a surface.

    3. Aug, undated · tier 1 · Nvidia

       Company material, per Benzinga’s account of 29 September: a consortium with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR to mobilise more than $500 billion for AI infrastructure, $36 billion of six-year cloud-service commitments, and guarantees of up to $105 billion on an Ohio data centre project. Jensen Huang in August: “We began by building chips; today, we are helping create a new class of productive, investable infrastructure: AI factories.” No mention of insurance.

    4. 28 Sep 11:34 · tier 1 · Nvidia

       A $150 billion increase in the share repurchase authorisation, taking the total to $235 billion and described by the company as the largest such increase in history; Yahoo Finance, bylines Michael B. Kelley and Julie Hyman. A document, and the published explanation for Monday’s session. It does not touch the claim and is logged so that the tape is not misread.

    5. 29 Sep 00:51 · tier 3 · FT via Investing.com

       First sighting the desk can stamp: “Nvidia turns to insurers to spread risk of AI build-out - FT.” Carries the substance — insurance on loans to smaller neocloud companies, protection for lenders where the collateral will not cover the debt; Huang’s argument that chips are “an ‘investable asset class’ similar to other expensive, long-lived technology assets”; Nvidia having explored syndicating the risk on to hedge funds and other alternative investors; Howden Re named and declining to comment.

       • Source 1: https://www.ft.com/content/d6a9f5df-08d0-4f80-ad2d-5d8a17e2cc82
       • Source 2: https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/nvidia-turns-to-insurers-to-spread-risk-of-ai-buildout--ft-4921570

    6. 29 Sep 01:24 · tier 3 · Yahoo Finance UK

       The same Investing.com copy, 5:24 UTC. A relay, not an independent surface.

    7. 29 Sep 06:29 · tier 3 · Yahoo Finance

       First mainstream US headline, on the technology file, byline Fiona Craig: “Nvidia Holds Talks With Insurers Over AI Infrastructure Financing Risk, FT Reports.” Adds one detail the earlier relay did not: Nvidia has given at least one insurer information on chip depreciation and on the value of computing capacity. Read on Yahoo and in the ADVFN syndication of the same copy. The lag closes here.

       • Source 1: https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/nvidia-holds-talks-insurers-over-102924736.html

    8. 29 Sep 06:32 · tier 4 · Benzinga

       Byline Shomik Sen Bhattacharjee. The first piece to set the claim beside the $500 billion consortium and the Ohio guarantees, and the first to print a level: NVDA at 230.87 in the premarket, up 0.88 percent, one feed and unsworn.

    9. 29 Sep · tier 5 · aggregators

       Counted, not weighted: Dealroom, BigGo, Serrari, Startup Fortune, allweatherfinance, Memesita, finwire and a crypto-news site that bundled the insurance story into the buyback headline. Not one adds a source, and several state as settled what the FT hedged.

    10. 30 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 11. No carrier or broker placement, no neocloud credit agreement naming residual-value or default cover over pledged Nvidia hardware, and no rating-agency description. Howden Re’s declination stands. The relay layer has thickened — TheNextWeb, GuruFocus, Dealroom, Fudzilla, Serrari and Startup Fortune among others, none adding a source. Status unchanged.

    • Source 1: https://www.ft.com/content/d6a9f5df-08d0-4f80-ad2d-5d8a17e2cc82
    • Source 2: https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/nvidia-turns-to-insurers-to-spread-risk-of-ai-buildout--ft-4921570
    • Source 3: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1095435/000117184326002823/exh_991.htm
    • Source 4: https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/nvidia-holds-talks-insurers-over-102924736.html
    Prior record for entry 13

    Previous first-seen label10 SEP

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimThe Bell reported that pricing disagreements had stalled talks over a possible Samsung 2-nanometre manufacturing contract for Qualcomm application processors, with production under such an arrangement potentially moving to 2027. The report cited an unnamed person familiar with Samsung’s foundry business; neither company has confirmed the reported price disagreement. A later Qualcomm executive interview confirms process evaluation, not a production contract. The Whisper, No. 11.

    Previous tape176.88 → 181.97, +5.09, +2.88%, the 10 September close before the first sighting to the 11 September close, sworn — stockanalysis.com’s daily history and Yahoo Finance’s history page carry both identically to the cent; the percentage is this desk’s arithmetic, 5.09 ÷ 176.88. Carried on to Monday’s sworn close of 187.48, the move from the same base is +10.60, +5.99%. Recorded separately and attributed to nothing: the 25 September close is sworn at 201.97 and the 28 September close at 187.48, a fall of −14.49, −7.17%, 14.49 ÷ 201.97 — a session with published explanations that mention no foundry contract, among them a broad semiconductor decline, the ten-year at 5.218 percent and the chief executive’s pre-arranged share sales. The 29 September close of 184.10 is stockanalysis.com only, printed and not sworn; today, one feed and unsworn, 185.00, +0.49%, stockanalysis.com at 11:56 a.m. Eastern. Volumes where the feeds disagree, both printed: 15,597,657 against 15,597,700 on 10 September; 11,556,632 against 11,546,600 on 11 September; 16,680,120 against 16,614,256 on 28 September. A caution: Yahoo Finance’s QCOM quote page at 11:54 a.m. today was serving the 25 September close as its latest reading; it labels that date, so it is a stale page and not a decoy, and the history page was used instead.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: Qualcomm’s fiscal fourth-quarter results and call in early November, where a foundry second-source decision reaches the cost commentary; Samsung Electronics’ third-quarter results in late October and its foundry-segment disclosure; a Samsung Foundry customer announcement naming Qualcomm; a die or package teardown of a shipping Snapdragon part identifying the fab. Kills it: either company saying on the record that no contract was postponed, or a 2nm Snapdragon part appearing on a Samsung line this year.

    Previous lag labelThe desk first stamped the English relay on 10 September at 9:47 p.m. Eastern, after the close; Yahoo Finance Canada carried syndicated copy on 11 September at 8:08 a.m. Eastern, before the open — one trading day to that Canadian mainstream relay. Under this register’s stated mainstream-US-headline rule, a qualifying US headline had not been established by the 30 September desk check, so that lag remains open. The Bell’s original carries a 9 September Korea-time publication stamp; the desk stamp is not the first publication.

    1. Jul, per 11 Sep · tier 4 · TrendForce

       Context, and the reason a foundry would hold its price: Samsung raised advanced-node prices in July by 10 to 15 percent on 4nm orders from Chinese and American customers, 5 to 10 percent in Taiwan, and 10 to 15 percent on 5nm, per TrendForce’s account. Names no customer and is not a surface for this claim.

    2. 10 Sep 21:47 · tier 4 · The Bell via Investing.com

       First sighting the desk can stamp, updated 22:54, byline Roushni Nair. “Qualcomm is pushing for lower prices and Samsung is resisting”; manufacturing the processors within 2026 is “becoming difficult because chip production needs to line up with smartphone launch schedules”; talks may move to next-generation parts instead. Samsung is said to regard the volume under discussion as too small to justify a concession, having signed Tesla and Broadcom. Both companies were asked for comment and neither replied. The stamp falls after Thursday’s close and before Friday’s open. Chronology clarification: The Bell original shows 9 September 2026 at 15:10 Korea time and a public/free release on 11 September at 07:00 Korea time; this 10 September stamp is the desk’s first English relay sighting, not first publication.

       • Source 1: https://www.thebell.co.kr/front/newsview.asp?key=202609091437016680105190
       • Source 2: https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/samsung-qualcomm-delay-2nm-chip-deal-as-price-talks-drag-the-bell-4897170

    3. 11 Sep 08:08 · tier 4 · Yahoo Finance (CA)

       First mainstream headline, and the desk prints the qualification rather than burying it: the page read was Yahoo Finance’s Canadian edition, carrying GuruFocus copy, byline Nauman Khan, under “Qualcomm Chip Deal With Samsung Hits a Major Pricing Snag.” “Qualcomm is seeking more competitive manufacturing costs, while Samsung appears less willing to reduce pricing.” Puts the slip at 2027; states that neither company has issued a public statement; adds Samsung’s multi-year Broadcom AI-chip agreement valued at over $200 billion through 2030. The lag closes here.

       • Source 1: https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/qualcomm-chip-deal-samsung-hits-120833823.html

    4. 11 Sep · tier 4 · TrendForce

       The item that carries this claim over the floor, because it does not rest on The Bell alone: “Samsung-Qualcomm 2nm Deal May Slip to 2027; Foundry Resists Lower Pricing as Process Stabilizes,” naming Maeil Business Newspaper, Munhwa Ilbo and Money Today beside The Bell. It also names Reuters among its sources; the desk searched for a Reuters item carrying the stall, did not find one, and does not count one. Adds on its own account: Samsung 2nm gate-all-around yield “over 70%, up sharply from below 50% at the beginning of 2026”; foundry share 5.9 percent in the second quarter; the Taylor fab reported fully booked for 2nm before it opens.

       • Source 1: https://www.trendforce.com/news/2026/09/11/news-samsung-qualcomm-2nm-deal-may-slip-to-2027-foundry-resists-lower-pricing-as-process-stabilizes

    5. 14 Sep · tier 4 · DigiTimes

       “Samsung, Qualcomm deepen 2nm talks as pricing and yield hurdles persist,” item a20260914VL208. Logged as a headline from the search index and not as a read: digitimes.com returned a 403 to this desk and the page was not opened. On its headline alone it is a second origin rather than a relay, and it introduces yield as the second variable the Korean reporting did not lead with.

    6. 25 Sep · market signal

       MarketBeat’s instant alert: 140,153 Qualcomm call contracts purchased against an average daily volume of 108,956, about 29 percent above normal, with the stock at $204.11 intraday, up $9.85. Recorded as testimony, attributed to nothing.

    7. 27 Sep (interview 23 Sep) · tier 2 · Qualcomm via iNews24

       Qualcomm senior vice-president Chris Patrick said the company was doing in-depth work evaluating Samsung Foundry’s 2nm process for possible future products, but had no specific product or application plan to announce. This does not confirm or deny The Bell’s reported price disagreement or a production contract.

       Recorded evidence tier: 2

       • Source 1: https://www.inews24.com/view/2009066

    8. 28 Sep · tier 5 · aggregator

       Counted, not named, and not an independent surface — its two named sources, TrendForce and DigiTimes, are already in this trail. Restates the claim in a harder form on the day of a seven percent session: negotiations stalled on “pricing structure and yield issues,” a partnership unlikely before 2027, every announced 2nm product still contracted to TSMC. A 28 September options item headlined at 99,880 contracts and 963,020 open interest is logged as a headline from the search index; the page requires JavaScript and was not read.

    9. 30 Sep · tier 4 · technology press

       The yield figure forks. A technology outlet puts Samsung Foundry 2nm yield at 60 percent, with a power-draw disadvantage against Snapdragon parts; TrendForce had “over 70%” on 11 September, and DigiTimes had 60 percent for the Exynos 2600 in November 2025. Three numbers, two directions, one process. Recorded as a difference rather than an error — different dates, possibly different products — and noted because a claim whose mechanism is that the buyer will not pay what the seller’s yield now justifies cannot be settled while the yield is reported three ways.

    10. 30 Sep · desk check

        EDGAR full-text search for 8-K filings naming both “Samsung” and “2nm” across September 2026 returns zero filings; recorded as a negative with a result. The only documents near this story are Forms 4 for the chief executive’s 10b5-1 sales of 10,000 shares on 21 September and 10,000 on 25 September, which are about share sales and not about a wafer price. Highest tier reached: four.

    • Source 1: https://www.thebell.co.kr/front/newsview.asp?key=202609091437016680105190
    • Source 2: https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/samsung-qualcomm-delay-2nm-chip-deal-as-price-talks-drag-the-bell-4897170
    • Source 3: https://www.trendforce.com/news/2026/09/11/news-samsung-qualcomm-2nm-deal-may-slip-to-2027-foundry-resists-lower-pricing-as-process-stabilizes
    • Source 4: https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/qualcomm-chip-deal-samsung-hits-120833823.html
    • Source 5: https://www.inews24.com/view/2009066
    Previous source and date metadata

    Previous supplied content as of2026-09-30

    Previous source-reported countstracked: 13 · open: 11 · confirmed: 2 · denied: 0 · expired: 0 · medianLagDays: 0

    Previous source and date notes

    This is the owner-supplied register as of 25 September 2026, not a fresh verification of the claims or market observations. Publication does not independently establish that a rumor is true.

    The supplied 24 September run note ends mid-sentence after “with the lags on 5, 6 and 9”. It is preserved as supplied; the missing remainder has not been reconstructed.

    The source names outlets, documents and domains but supplies no direct citation URLs. Citation lists are therefore empty. No article, filing or document URL has been inferred from a name or an accession number.

    The open tally includes both open and corroborated entries. The open status filter is narrower: it selects only entries whose status is open.

    The supplied tally reports a median lag of 0 days. A first-sighting-to-mainstream-headline median cannot be derived reliably: entry 7 has an undated first sighting and its zero measures document-to-wire time instead. The derived median is therefore unavailable; the reported figure is retained separately.

    Trail order and date labels are preserved as supplied, including the 24 September check before the 23 September check in entry 1. No missing observation time, date or year has been inferred.

    These import notes describe the original September 25 owner-supplied package. Later dated editorial updates and selected direct source links have been added; the original statement that its citation lists were empty is historical, not a description of the current register. Unlinked historical desk checks remain attributed to the supplied artifact rather than independently verified by hosting.

    Previous supplied correction history

    When the desk gets a trail wrong — a sighting misdated, a tier misjudged, a status moved too early — the correction is recorded here, dated, and the entry is amended below with the change marked.

    18 September. A note on a published number rather than a correction to one. The tally band's open tile counts every rumor that has not been settled by a document, which includes those at corroborated; it has read that way since this register was built and it is left reading that way.

    19 September. Two issues were published for Friday. The desk's scheduled run posted No. 2 on Friday afternoon, adding entries 3 and 4. A second issue, reported on Friday afternoon while that run was still working and published on Saturday, is numbered No. 3 and adds entries 5, 6 and 7. Neither issue restates the other and no entry has been renumbered. With seven rumors tracked and one confirmed, open is six and the median lag of resolved rumors is zero.

    21 September — entry 3 amended. The Whisper, No. 2, reported that no mainstream American outlet had carried the AMD price-increase claim as of 12:44 p.m. on Friday 18 September, and left entry 3's lag running. It had. The 5:22 a.m. Friday relay that No. 2 logged as a Stocktwits item was published on Yahoo Finance's markets pages, under the headline "AMD Stock Rises Premarket: Report Flags Chip Price Hike Linked To TSMC Costs," and Yahoo Finance is one of the outlets this desk uses to mark the end of a lag. The desk read the item and misfiled its publisher. That line is re-tiered and marked as the first mainstream US headline below, and entry 3's lag is corrected from running to one trading day. Corrected at full size at the top of The Whisper, No. 4.

    21 September — entry 3's first sighting re-stamped. The Whisper, No. 2, stamped Wccftech's piece at 12:26 p.m. Eastern on 17 September. That is the UTC time carried in the page's metadata. The article's own byline reads "Sarfraz Khan · Sep 17, 2026 at 08:26am EDT," and the correct stamp is 8:26 a.m. Eastern, sixty-four minutes before that session's open. The trail below is amended. The lag is unaffected at one trading day, but No. 2's argument that AMD's advance "began in the premarket, hours before the report existed" rested on the wrong time and is withdrawn: AMD opened that morning at 533.60 against 512.50, a gap of 4.12 percent on two feeds. Where the stock traded before 8:26 the desk cannot establish, and it no longer claims the move came first.

    21 September — entries 4 and 7 corrected: SK hynix is US-listed. Both entries stated that no US-listed security exists for SK hynix, and the 21 September note that first appeared here treated the question as open. It is not. SK hynix Inc. American Depositary Shares have traded on Nasdaq as SKHY since 10 July 2026, on a Form F-1 filed 24 June and amended 30 June and 6 July (CIK 0002120882, file 333-296987); Nasdaq's own security page carries the line, and the older OTC line HXSCL is a separate security whose prices will not reconcile with it. Benzinga's ticker was right and this register was wrong. Both tape lines are amended. No figure published here depended on the error, because no reading was ever sworn in for either entry — which is how it survived three issues.

    22 September — entry 2 amended: a company statement this register had missed. Entry 2's trail ran from Bloomberg's 14 September report to two desk checks that found no Form F-1, and recorded no company response. There was one. On 15 September, the day after the report, Kioxia published a "Notice Regarding Certain Media Reports" stating that such reports "are not announcements made by the Company" and that "details of the listing such as the schedule, listing market, and listing method have not yet been decided." That is a tier-1 document and it sat unlogged through Nos. 2, 3 and 4. It is added to the trail below. It does not move the status: it confirms that a listing preparation exists, which the company itself disclosed in May, and declines to adopt the size, the exchange, the timing or the banks — which is what the claim as printed was about. Recorded at full size in The Whisper, No. 5.

    23 September — a note on the run, not a correction. The Whisper, No. 6, was delivered after its 12:30 p.m. slot: the sweep ran long and the issue's last observations are stamped between 1:13 and 1:19 p.m. rather than before the hour. Its figures and its lag counts are stamped to those minutes and are accurate to them. No entry below is amended by this issue; entry 9 is added and entries 1, 3, 5 and 6 have a 23 September desk check appended, with the lags on 5 and 6 advanced by one session each.

    24 September — entry 2 corrected: a Form F-6 this register said did not exist, and a second facility besides. Entry 2's desk check of 22 September reported "still no Form F-1 or F-6 for Kioxia." The F-1 half holds; the F-6 half does not. A Form F-6EF sits on EDGAR under accession 0001019155-26-000048, filed 11 February 2026, registering 50,000,000 American depositary shares over Kioxia common stock and naming no exchange. Kioxia did not file it: it is signed by The Bank of New York Mellon, as Depositary, and Kioxia Holdings Corporation appears in it only as "the issuer of deposited securities," neither registrant nor signatory. Nor is it the facility that trades: the over-the-counter line KXIAY is a separate unsponsored programme with J.P. Morgan as depositary, announced 9 March 2026, ratio 10:1, CUSIP 49726J108. Two depositary banks have built receipts over Kioxia's shares and the company signed neither, which is why the status does not move: an unsponsored facility is a bank's decision and an F-6 registers receipts, not an offering. The claim tracked here — size, banks, an exchange — still needs an F-1 and an exchange application, and neither exists. The trail below is amended. The desk kept running the EDGAR search that returns SK hynix, the trap it had itself recorded on 22 September, and concluded from it that nothing was there. Corrected at full size at the top of The Whisper, No. 7.

    24 September — a note on the run, not a correction. The Whisper, No. 7, was delivered after its 12:30 p.m. slot: the sweep ran long and the issue's observations are stamped between 11:11 a.m. and 1:41 p.m. rather than before the hour, and are accurate to those minutes. Entry 10 is added and entries 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 and 9 have a 24 September desk check appended, with the lags on 5, 6 and 9

    25 September — a note on the run, not a correction. The Whisper, No. 8, was delivered after its 12:30 p.m. slot; its observations are stamped between 11:10 a.m. and 12:20 p.m. and are accurate to those minutes. The desk’s principal asked mid-run that the sweep be widened beyond the AI supply chain to technology, biotechnology and financials; it was, and nothing outside the usual beat cleared the floor, which is recorded in the issue’s “seen, not printed” counts. Entry 11 is added and entries 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9 and 10 have a 25 September desk check appended, with the lags on 5, 6, 9 and 10 advanced by one session each.

    28 September — a note on the run, not a correction. The Whisper, No. 9, was built between 11:10 a.m. and 12:20 p.m. Eastern and its observations are stamped to those minutes. No new claim cleared the floor today and no entry is added: the register stays at eleven. Entry 6 is the issue’s feature and its lag is filled at nine trading days, closed by a Yahoo Finance headline published at 11:07 p.m. Eastern on Sunday 27 September — after Friday’s close and before Monday’s open — carrying a 2nm figure a third larger than the one this register has tracked since 14 September. The revision is a sighting and not a document, so the status does not move. Entries 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10 and 11 have a 28 September desk check appended, with the lags on 5, 9, 10 and 11 advanced by one session each. Reproduced here from the already-published 28 September update note.

    29 September — The Whisper, No. 10, was built between 11:11 a.m. and 12:40 p.m. Eastern and delivered after its 12:30 slot. Entry 12 was added. The active artifact trails include 29 September desk checks for entries 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10 and 11; the lags on 5, 9, 10 and 11 advanced. Its run note also names entry 1, but no 29 September check appears in that active entry, so none has been reconstructed from the HTML comment.

    29 September — a second pass, and a withdrawal. After No. 10 was first assembled, the desk’s principal asked whether the sweep had been thorough. It had not. The extended pass added EDGAR’s full-text index, Polymarket, Data Center Dynamics and the biotechnology trade press, and it produced the 22 April Alpha Compute filing now at the head of entry 12’s trail, together with two documented negatives. The issue was rebuilt around it and republished before it went to Substack. Withdrawn in the same pass: the first build’s “seen, not printed” count of twenty-two items in six categories, which was reconstructed rather than tallied and rested on no social sweep. It is replaced by a shorter section the desk can reproduce. Also recorded, because it should have been carried into entry 3’s check: AMD announced a definitive agreement to acquire World Labs in an approximately $8.2 billion all-stock transaction, subject to closing conditions on 28 September, which is a document and not a rumor and therefore does not enter this register. The AMD primary release is linked in entry 3’s 29 September context observation.

    30 September — The Whisper, No. 11, was built between 11:10 a.m. and 12:55 p.m. Eastern and delivered after its 12:30 slot. Entry 13 was added; active trails add 30 September checks to entries 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11 and 12. The lags on 5, 9, 10 and 11 advanced. The Yahoo Finance Canada relay is distinguished from a qualifying mainstream-US headline in entry 13; its US-headline lag remains unclosed under this register’s stated rule. No decoy was logged in the supplied sweep.

    30 September — editorial evidence check for entry 12. The supplied active artifact labels the early-stage Nvidia insurance talks corroborated. The linked material establishes an FT report and syndications, but no separate independent report, signed insurance agreement, or qualifying market signal. The hosted status is held open pending that evidence; this is a status-methodology correction, not a denial of the FT report.

17. 2026-10-16T17:37:02.726Z · Entry 1, Entry 2, Entry 3, Entry 5, Entry 6, Entry 9, Entry 10, Entry 11, Entry 13, Entry 14, Entry 15, Entry 17, Entry 18, Entry 19

    October 16 staged import, part 1: append new observations through The Whisper No. 23 and entries 17–19. Preserve all prior source trails and corrections. Entry 14 is confirmed only for Texas evaluation, with official transcript evidence; entry 3 remains open. Later stages will add 20–26 using the dedicated expiry control for 20. Counts describe this intermediate saved register, not the final source tally.

    Prior record for entry 1

    Previous first-seen label15 SEP

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimTen banks are lending $22 billion, with a $1 billion revolver beside it, to Crux AI, the Blackstone–Alphabet venture, to buy Google TPUs, secured by the chips and the customer contracts, per Bloomberg's people familiar with the matter. 9fin had it a day earlier at $23 billion. No party has confirmed it. The Whisper, No. 1.

    Previous tapeon Fed day, not attributable. Blackstone 126.70 → 123.45, −2.57%; Alphabet 344.98 → 342.87, −0.61%, September 15 to 16 closes; levels stockanalysis.com, the two percentages also carried by Investing.com's report at 15:44. 22 + 1 = 23; 23 + 5 = 28, against May's "roughly 25." Updated 18 September: Alphabet closed 17 September at 347.33, +1.30%, volume 19,032,520, stockanalysis.com, in a market-wide rally the day after the Fed.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: a closing release from Blackstone, Crux or a lead bank; a rating on the facility or the refinancing bonds; the bonds' offering document; a named bank saying it is not in the group.

    Previous lag label1 trading day from 9fin to Bloomberg; 2 from the unattributed sighting, which the desk does not count as a start.

    1. 18 May · tier 1 · Blackstone release

       The venture announced: $5 billion of initial equity from Blackstone, 500 MW online in 2027, Google supplying TPUs, software and services. No debt mentioned.

    2. May, per 22 May account · tier 3 · Bloomberg

       "Roughly $25 billion with leverage," one person familiar; Blackstone majority owner; Benjamin Treynor Sloss chief executive.

    3. 14 Sep 09:05 · tier 5 · unattributed

       Counted, not named: a crypto-news site wrote that Blackstone was "reportedly targeting investments in the tens of billions… across multiple gigawatts," citing no one.

    4. 15 Sep · tier 4 · 9fin

       "Blackstone looks to raise $23bn debt for Google AI joint venture," sources told 9fin. First attributed sighting; no time shown.

    5. 16 Sep 15:44 · tier 3 · Bloomberg

       First mainstream US headline: $22 billion loan plus $1 billion revolver, ten banks (Goldman, SMBC, Barclays, BNP, Scotiabank named), secured by chips and contracts, possible refinancing in investment-grade bonds. Did not cite 9fin. Time is the stamp on Investing.com's relay.

    6. 16 Sep 16:34 · tier 3 · Reuters

       Relay citing Bloomberg; seven companies did not respond. A later headline reads "source says," unread by the desk, not counted as independent.

    7. 16–17 Sep · tier 5 · aggregators

       Re-checked 18 September. No document appeared. What changed is the language: TipRanks and Gokhshtein published the loan as "secured"; Blockonomi, 17 Sep 12:10 UTC, wrote that Crux "has successfully arranged $22 billion in bank financing" and that the facility "is secured against both the physical TPU hardware and contractual agreements." Nobody has confirmed a dollar of it.

    8. 21 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 4. Still no closing release, no rating, no offering document and no named bank confirming or denying membership of the group. The aggregator layer has thickened — Finimize, briefs.co, AI Weekly and FourWeekMBA now carry the loan in the past tense — and two Yahoo Finance relays, including a Benzinga piece putting GOOGL and BX "in focus," keep it in front of American readers. Nothing document-grade. Status unchanged.

    9. 22 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 5. No closing release on Blackstone's press page, whose most recent items are 13, 10 and 9 September and none of them about Crux AI or the facility; no rating, and a KBRA note on AI-compute financing risk that does not evaluate Crux AI; no offering document; no bank on the record either way. A domain-restricted search of sec.gov returns no filing naming Crux AI. Status unchanged.

    10. 24 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 7. Six sessions after Bloomberg's report — 17, 18, 21, 22, 23 and 24 September — there is still no closing release, no rating, no offering document and no named bank either way. The aggregator layer is unchanged in kind — FourWeekMBA, AI Weekly, Finimize, Dealroom and pulse2 all carry the facility, most of them in the past tense — and one relay again states the accurate position in its own headline: the loan is "reported" and its "status still unclear." Status unchanged.

    11. 23 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 6. No closing release, no rating, no offering document and no named bank either way. The aggregator layer thickened again — Finimize, FourWeekMBA, Dealroom, KuCoin and HuggingNews all carry the facility in the past tense — and one relay, Runtimewire, puts the accurate position in its own headline: the loan is "reported" and its "status still unclear." Status unchanged.

    12. 25 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8. Seven sessions after Bloomberg’s report there is still no closing release, no rating, no offering document and no named bank either way, and no filing naming Crux AI on a domain-restricted search of sec.gov. Status unchanged.

    13. 28 Sep 2026 14:40 UTC — source-link verification · desk check · primary-source link verification

        Source-link check for the existing 18 May Blackstone observation: the linked May 18, 2026 issuer announcement supports the equity commitment, expected capacity and Google's contribution recorded above. It does not confirm the separate loan, revolver, lenders or closing. This is a citation update, not a new first sighting or rumor-status change; the historical observations and supplied September 25 cutoff remain unchanged.

        • Source 1: https://www.blackstone.com/news/press/blackstone-announces-joint-venture-with-google-to-create-new-tpu-cloud/

    14. 28 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 9. Eight sessions after Bloomberg’s report there is still no closing release, no rating, no offering document and no named bank either way, and no filing naming Crux AI on a domain-restricted search of sec.gov. The aggregator layer is unchanged in kind. Status unchanged.

    15. 30 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 11. Ten trading sessions after Bloomberg’s report there is still no closing release, no rating, no offering document and no named bank either way, and no filing naming Crux AI on a domain-restricted search of sec.gov. The aggregator layer is unchanged in kind. Status unchanged.

    16. 1 Oct 2026 · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 12. Ten sessions after Bloomberg’s report there is still no closing release, no rating, no offering document and no named bank either way, and no filing naming Crux AI on a domain-restricted search of sec.gov. The aggregator layer is unchanged in kind.

    17. 2 Oct 2026 · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 13. Eleven sessions after Bloomberg’s report there is still no closing release, no rating, no offering document and no named bank either way, and no filing naming Crux AI on a domain-restricted search of sec.gov. The aggregator layer is unchanged in kind.

    Prior record for entry 2

    Previous first-seen label14 SEP

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimKioxia is weighing a US listing of American depositary shares to raise at least $10 billion, possibly next year, with Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, per Bloomberg's people familiar; the deliberations are "preliminary." The plan is the company's, stated in May; the size is single-sourced. The Whisper, No. 1.

    Previous tapeTokyo readings one feed, unsworn; no US-listed security yet.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: a public Form F-1 on EDGAR; an exchange application; a Kioxia release naming the exchange; the November results. Amended 24 September: the Form F-6EF of 11 February is on file, was filed by a depositary rather than by Kioxia, and does not settle it; neither does the unsponsored KXIAY programme.

    Previous lag label0 trading days; the first sighting of the size was the mainstream headline.

    1. May · tier 1 · Kioxia

       The company said it was preparing to list ADRs to broaden its investor base, per Reuters' account of 14 September.

    2. 25 Jun 03:27 · tier 4 · TradingKey

       Added 21 September, an earlier surface the desk had missed: Kioxia "intends to issue American Depositary Receipts and list on a U.S. stock exchange by spring 2027," subject to regulatory approval, with exchange, offering size and timeline unsettled. The plan and its approximate date were therefore in print three months before Bloomberg's report; what is single-sourced is the size, not the listing.

    3. 14 Sep 08:58 · tier 3 · Bloomberg

       At least $10 billion, three banks named, size and lineup subject to change; Kioxia did not reply outside business hours. Reuters relayed it; The Star's copy stamped 08:58 Eastern. The sighting was the headline.

    4. 14–15 Sep · tier 4 · SED, Invezz

       Seoul Economic Daily and Invezz relayed Bloomberg; Invezz read the Tokyo shares at ¥51,720 on the 14th and ¥51,350 by the 15th, against a June high of ¥112,750.

    5. 18 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked against EDGAR's full-text index: no Form F-1 for Kioxia. No new sighting since 14 September and no denial. Status unchanged.

    6. 15 Sep · tier 1 · Kioxia

       Added 22 September, and the highest tier this claim has reached. "Notice Regarding Certain Media Reports," on the company's own site: "There have been media reports regarding the listing of the Company's American Depositary Shares on a U.S. stock exchange. These reports are not announcements made by the Company," and "details of the listing such as the schedule, listing market, and listing method have not yet been decided," with the note that preparations may be discontinued. Neither confirms nor denies the size, the banks or the timing. The desk had missed this through three issues; see the audit block.

    7. 11 Feb · tier 1 · BNY Mellon / EDGAR

       Added 24 September, and the document this register said did not exist. Form F-6EF, accession 0001019155-26-000048, filed 11 February 2026, registering 50,000,000 American depositary shares over Kioxia common stock. No exchange is named in it, and Kioxia did not file it: it is signed by The Bank of New York Mellon, 240 Greenwich Street, as depositary, with Kioxia Holdings Corporation named only as "the issuer of deposited securities," neither registrant nor signatory. It predates Bloomberg's report by seven months and says nothing about the size, the banks, the exchange or the timing the claim is about. See the audit block.

    8. 9 Mar · tier 1 · depositary bulletin

       Added 24 September. The Kioxia line that actually trades over the counter, KXIAY, is a different programme under a different bank: an unsponsored depositary receipt facility with J.P. Morgan as depositary, ten ordinary shares to one receipt, CUSIP 49726J108, listed in BNY Mellon's bulletin of new unsponsored programmes dated 9 March 2026. An unsponsored facility is established by a bank without the issuer's participation, so it is evidence about banks and not about Kioxia's intentions.

    9. 21 Sep · desk check

       EDGAR re-checked for The Whisper, No. 4: still no Form F-1. The Japan Times and Yahoo Finance relays of the 14 September report remain the American surface. Status unchanged.

    10. 22 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 5: still no Form F-1 or F-6 for Kioxia, and no IR item since the 15 September notice. A trap recorded for future searches: the F-1 that surfaces on these search terms is SK hynix Inc., CIK 2120882, filed 24 June, Nasdaq Global Select under SKHY, with BofA Securities, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan as global coordinators — a different issuer with a near-identical bank lineup to the three attributed to Kioxia. Status unchanged.

    11. 24 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 7. Still no Form F-1, no exchange application and no company item since the 15 September notice. The F-6EF above was found on this check and is filed in its own place in the trail; it is the highest-tier document on this entry after that notice, and it does not touch the claim as printed.

    12. 25 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8. Still no Form F-1, no exchange application and no company item since the 15 September notice. Status unchanged.

    13. 28 Sep 2026 14:40 UTC — source-link verification · desk check · primary-source link verification

        Source-link check for two existing observations: Source 1 is Kioxia's September 15, 2026 media-response notice, supporting the recorded preparation and uncertainty. Source 2 is the February 11, 2026 F-6 filing, accession 0001019155-26-000048, supporting the depositary filing observation. Neither establishes the reported offering size, bank lineup, exchange or timing. The separate March depositary programme and remaining trail were not checked in this citation update. Status, historical dates, text and the supplied September 25 cutoff remain unchanged.

        • Source 1: https://www.kioxia-holdings.com/en-jp/news/2026/20260915-1.html
        • Source 2: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1201935/000101915526000048/kholdingsf6ef.htm

    14. 28 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 9. Still no Form F-1, no exchange application and no company item since the 15 September notice. Status unchanged.

    15. 29 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 10. Still no Form F-1, no exchange application and no company item since the 15 September notice. The F-1 that surfaces on these search terms remains SK hynix’s, CIK 2120882, the trap this register recorded on 22 September. Status unchanged.

    16. 30 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 11. Still no Form F-1, no exchange application and no company item since the 15 September notice. Status unchanged.

    17. 1 Oct 2026 · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 12. Still no Form F-1, no exchange application and no company item since the 15 September notice. The search returns a leveraged Kioxia exchange-traded fund registration and a Western Digital annual report, neither of them an offering by Kioxia.

    18. 2 Oct 2026 · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 13. Still no Form F-1, no exchange application and no company item since the 15 September notice.

    Prior record for entry 3

    Previous first-seen label17 SEP

    Previous source-record statusopen

    Previous recorded claimAMD has told its partners that prices on its graphics processors, AI accelerators and chipsets will rise by roughly ten percent in the fourth quarter of 2026, because TSMC has told AMD the same about wafers, per Wccftech citing ChannelGate, a supply-chain channel on WeChat. Neither company has commented. Every English-language sighting traces to that one channel. The Whisper, No. 2.

    Previous tape512.50 → 559.82, +47.32, +9.23%, the 16 September close before the first attributed sighting to the 18 September close, sworn — stockanalysis.com and Investing.com carry both figures identically to the cent; the percentage is this desk's arithmetic, 47.32 ÷ 512.50. Intraday 21 September, one feed and unsworn: 606.68 at 1:24 p.m. on stockanalysis.com, +46.86, +8.37% on the session, range 582.27–615.99, volume 29.5m, which carries the move from the same base to +94.18, +18.38%. The same page put the market capitalisation at $990.39 billion. Volumes where the feeds disagree, both printed: 28.17m against 28.46m on 17 September, 31.17m against 31.87m on 18 September. Amended 21 September with the corrected stamp: the report ran at 8:26 a.m. on 17 September, sixty-four minutes before the open, and AMD opened at 533.60 — both feeds, sworn — a gap of 4.12% on the prior close, 533.60 ÷ 512.50, closing the session up 6.36%. Where the stock traded before 8:26 the desk cannot establish and does not guess; the earlier claim that the advance preceded the report is withdrawn. The advance has also run on through a broad semiconductor rally, so the desk still attributes nothing. Updated 22 September: Monday's close is sworn at 615.52 — stockanalysis.com and stockinvest.us, which wrote that AMD "ended at $615.52," with Yahoo Finance carrying the same as its previous close — which carries the move from the same base to +103.02, +20.10%, this desk's arithmetic, 103.02 ÷ 512.50. Today unsworn, both printed: 618.34 at 12:03 p.m. Eastern on stockanalysis.com, 614.92 at 10:46 a.m. on Yahoo Finance. A caution: Investing.com's AMD historical table was stale at 18 September when checked today, and its quote page showed a 15:39 intraday print of 615.71 that is not a close; it is not used for Monday.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: a partner or OEM price list showing fourth-quarter increases in that range; AMD's third-quarter results and call on 3 November, where a ten percent rise reaches the gross-margin line; TSMC's October call on 2027 wafer pricing; an on-the-record statement. Kills it: AMD saying no such notice went to partners, or fourth-quarter price lists arriving unchanged.

    Previous lag label1 trading day, corrected 21 September from running. First attributed sighting 17 September 8:26 a.m.; first mainstream US headline 18 September 5:22 a.m. on Yahoo Finance. The first independently authored American market story came on 21 September, two trading days out; the desk counts the earlier one.

    1. 21 Jul · tier 3 · Nikkei

       The upstream claim, via Tom's Hardware: TSMC to raise advanced-node baseline prices five to ten percent from the start of 2027, with "another 10% to 15% premium on top of the standard increase" for incremental HPC capacity, citing people with knowledge of the matter. Named no customer.

    2. 17 Sep · tier 5 · channel

       ChannelGate, a WeChat supply-chain account, relayed by a leak account on X. Counted, not named. Origin of the AMD-specific leg.

    3. 17 Sep 08:26 · tier 4 · Wccftech

       First attributed sighting; stamp corrected 21 September from 12:26 p.m., which was the page metadata's UTC time, to 8:26 a.m. Eastern per the article's own byline. "TSMC has notified its customers about the price hikes, leading to AMD notifying its partners about the same. The price hike is roughly 10% and is planned to be implemented in the fourth quarter of 2026." Cited ChannelGate; did not stand alone; said a ten percent Ryzen increase "should be treated as a 'possibility' rather than a confirmed development." Wccftech gives ChannelGate no descriptor; Club386, the same day, identifies it as the WeChat arm of a Chinese leak site.

    4. 17–18 Sep · tier 4 · relays

       Counted, not weighted: six English-language sites, among them ThinkComputers, Club386, Notebookcheck, PC Guide, XenoSpectrum and Technetbook. All downstream of the same item or the same channel.

    5. 18 Sep 05:22 · tier 3 · Yahoo Finance

       First mainstream US headline. Amended 21 September: logged in The Whisper, No. 2, as a Stocktwits relay, it was published on Yahoo Finance's markets pages as "AMD Stock Rises Premarket: Report Flags Chip Price Hike Linked To TSMC Costs," naming both Wccftech and ChannelGate; AMD up 1.4 percent premarket, a third consecutive advance, the three-session gain above twelve percent. The lag closed here.

    6. 18 Sep · tier 4 · TrendForce

       Carried in its own news file as AMD "preparing a 10% price hike for GPUs, AI chips, and chipsets in Q4 2026, attributed to rising manufacturing costs at TSMC." Downstream of the same origin; not counted as a second surface.

    7. 19 Sep · tier 2 · TSMC via Digital Citizen

       The first named-company material in the trail, and the highest tier this claim has reached. A TSMC spokesperson, asked about the report: "Our pricing strategy is strategic, not opportunistic. We will continue to work closely with customers and sell our value to them." Neither a confirmation nor a denial. The same piece set the leak's Q4 2026 timing against TSMC's July guidance of 2027 and allowed that the two "may describe one negotiation at different stages or two separate cost actions."

    8. 21 Sep 09:37 · tier 4 · 24/7 Wall St.

       First American market story written independently of the technology press, also carried on Yahoo Finance: "AMD Rises 5% as Report Flags 10% Chip Price Increase; NVIDIA and Taiwan Semiconductor Tick Up." AMD 586.66, Nvidia 223.72, TSM 440.92. Calls the claim "unconfirmed," does not name ChannelGate, and adds that "a denial or narrower scope would remove the framing that's lifting AMD stock this morning."

    9. 21 Sep · tier 4 · PCWorld

       Added 22 September. Quotes the origin channel directly, through a leak account on X: "AMD will increase chip price about 10% in Q4 / It is result from TSMC's price increase." No AMD comment. Not an independent surface; it is the same WeChat account, one relay closer to the source than Wccftech was.

    10. 22 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 5. No new sighting today, no AMD statement, no denial, and no partner or OEM price list. The claim is forking in the relay layer: one branch has Ryzen spared, the other has Ryzen following, and both cite the same channel. Status unchanged.

    11. 23 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 6. TweakTown has joined the relay layer, alongside Digital Trends, XenoSpectrum, ThinkComputers and Startup Fortune, and the Ryzen fork persists across them; every one is downstream of the same WeChat channel. No AMD statement, no denial and no partner or OEM price list. Status unchanged.

    12. 24 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 7. Digital Trends, Startup Fortune and Compsmag have joined the relay layer and the Ryzen fork persists across it; every branch still cites the same WeChat channel. No AMD statement, no denial and no partner or OEM price list. Status unchanged.

    13. 25 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8, the sixth session since the first attributed sighting. No AMD statement, no denial and no partner or OEM price list. Recorded beside this entry today: an unrelated and independently sourced claim, printed as entry 11, that the silicon wafers upstream of TSMC are themselves being repriced for 2027. The desk logs the two as separate claims and does not treat either as evidence for the other. Status unchanged.

    14. 28 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 9, the seventh session since the first attributed sighting. No AMD statement, no denial and no partner or OEM price list. Recorded beside this entry today and not as evidence for it: DigiTimes reported on 24 September that TSMC will raise its own wafer foundry prices by 3 to 6 percent from January 2027 with order visibility to 2030, relayed the same morning at 9:02 Taipei by the Economic Daily News and carried in American markets coverage by Benzinga. One origin, several relays, no document and no second surface — it does not clear the floor and is counted in the issue’s “seen, not printed.” Its quantity and its date both differ from this claim’s. Status unchanged.

    15. 29 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 10, the eighth session since the first attributed sighting. No AMD statement, no denial and no partner or OEM price list. The relay layer is unchanged and the Ryzen fork persists across it. AMD’s third-quarter results on 3 November remain the first occasion on which a ten percent rise would reach a published margin. Status unchanged. Separate documented context, not evidence for this price claim: AMD announced a definitive all-stock agreement to acquire World Labs for approximately $8.2 billion on 28 September; completion remained subject to approvals.

        • Source 1: https://ir.amd.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1299/amd-to-acquire-world-labs-to-advance-the-future-of-ai-compute

    16. 30 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 11, the ninth session since the first attributed sighting. No AMD statement, no denial and no partner or OEM price list. AMD’s third-quarter results on 3 November remain the first occasion on which a ten percent rise would reach a published margin. Status unchanged.

    17. 1 Oct 2026 · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 12, the tenth session since the first attributed sighting. No AMD statement, no denial and no partner or OEM price list, and the claim has not acquired a second origin. The fourth quarter the claim is about began today. AMD’s third-quarter results on 3 November remain the first occasion on which a ten percent rise would reach a published margin.

    Prior record for entry 5

    Previous first-seen label15 SEP

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimSamsung Electronics has begun running wafers for Tesla's next-generation AI5 processor at its foundry in Taylor, Texas, ahead of a start scheduled for November, per Seoul Economic Daily's semiconductor industry sources. Neither company has said it, and no American wire has reported it. The Whisper, No. 3.

    Previous tapeTesla 358.97 → 366.20, +2.01%, 14 to 17 September closes, sworn — 358.97 on stockanalysis.com and Investing.com, 366.20 on stockanalysis.com and Google Finance, whose Friday quote of 362.60 less 3.60 implies it; Investing.com carries 366.69 for the 17th and is printed, not sworn. On the claim's own session, 15 September, Tesla fell 0.67% to 356.58 on 30,168,264 shares against Monday's 32,068,734. Thursday alone was 8.12 points of the 7.23-point move, in a session the Nasdaq Composite rose 1.69% the day after the Fed. Samsung Electronics: −4.05% Monday, −0.2% Tuesday to 248,500 won, "only modestly higher" Wednesday per Invezz; 261,000 won, +3.37%, at Friday's Seoul close, one feed.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: Samsung's third-quarter results in late October; Tesla's results and 10-Q; a Samsung release or Taylor site announcement; a Yonhap report carrying a company confirmation. Kills it: a statement from either company that Taylor has not begun AI5 wafers, or a Samsung disclosure putting the start in November as scheduled.

    Previous lag label13 trading days and running, at 2 October. No mainstream American headline exists; the count stays open until one does.

    1. 28 Jul 2025 · tier 1 · contract

       A $16.5 billion multi-year supply agreement, about 22 trillion won, disclosed by Elon Musk after Tesla had asked that the counterparty stay unnamed; Bloomberg reported it.

    2. 22 Oct 2025 · tier 2 · Musk, CNBC

       Musk on the record: AI5 to be made by Samsung in Texas and TSMC in Arizona. This, and not the start, is what the American press has.

    3. 5 Nov 2025 · tier 4 · TrendForce

       Musk signals AI5 mass production slipping to 2027, "casting uncertainty over Samsung."

    4. 24 Apr · tier 1 · Samsung

       Equipment-installation ceremony at the Taylor plant, as referenced by Seoul Economic Daily.

    5. 13 Jul · tier 4 · TrendForce / Yonhap

       AI5 tape-out complete, production expected on Samsung's 2nm process in Texas; "the disclosure marks the first time Samsung Foundry's production timeline for the Tesla AI5 chip has been revealed in concrete terms." Taylor ramp put in 2027. Korea Times and Electrek the same day.

    6. 15 Sep 17:21 · tier 4 · Seoul Economic Daily

       First sighting. Samsung "has begun prototype production at its Taylor, Texas, foundry to supply artificial intelligence chips to Tesla"; it "plans to complete mass-production verification by the end of this year and begin full supply next year." Page stamp 17:21, updated 23:35, Seoul time, which puts it near 4:21 a.m. Eastern. The headline said mass production over a body that said prototype.

    7. 16 Sep 00:28 · tier 2 · KB Securities via ChosunBiz

       Kim Dong-won, named, on Samsung's 2nm gate-all-around yield improving from below 50 percent, carried by Invezz under "Samsung stock is ignoring a $16.5 billion Tesla catalyst." About the plant's capability, not the start.

    8. 16 Sep 07:00 KST · tier 4 · Seoul Economic Daily

       The same reporting re-headlined "Samsung Starts Trial Production of Tesla AI Chips in Texas," ahead of the originally scheduled November startup.

    9. 17 Sep 11:51 · tier 4 · DigiTimes

       Second independent surface, by its own Taipei stamp: trial production, 2nm wafer production and yield verification ahead of full-scale operations. Names no source and does not cite Seoul.

    10. 16–18 Sep · tier 5 · aggregators

        Counted, not named as sources: nine sites, among them one whose headline says the node is "silencing yield doubters," a claim in none of the underlying reporting.

    11. 21 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 4. Still no mainstream American headline and no company statement either way; the only movement is in the enthusiast layer, where Not a Tesla App and similar sites now carry the trial start as settled fact. The lag continues to run.

    12. 22 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 5 against CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, Barron's, Reuters, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal. None carries the September wafer-start claim; Yahoo Finance's Tesla AI5 items stop at the tape-out and dual-foundry stories, and the nearest American piece is Electrek's 13 July tape-out report, which is a different claim. No Samsung or Tesla statement. The lag runs on.

    13. 23 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 6 against the same American outlets. None carries the September wafer-start claim; Electrek's 13 July tape-out piece remains the nearest American surface and is a different claim, and the enthusiast layer continues to carry the trial start as settled fact. No Samsung or Tesla statement. The lag runs on, now six trading days.

    14. 24 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 7 against CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, Barron's, Reuters and Bloomberg. None carries the September wafer-start claim. The enthusiast layer has widened again — Drive Tesla Canada, Not a Tesla App, The Electric Viking, Basenor and BigGo all carry the trial start as settled fact, all downstream of Seoul Economic Daily and DigiTimes — and Electrek's 13 July tape-out piece remains the nearest American surface and is a different claim. No company statement. The lag runs on, now seven trading days.

    15. 25 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8 against CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, Barron’s, Reuters and Bloomberg. None carries the September wafer-start claim; the enthusiast layer continues to carry the trial start as settled fact, all of it downstream of Seoul Economic Daily and DigiTimes. No company statement. The lag runs on, now eight trading days.

    16. 28 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 9 against CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, Barron’s, Reuters and Bloomberg. None carries the September wafer-start claim; Electrek’s 13 July tape-out piece remains the nearest American surface and is a different claim, and the enthusiast layer continues to carry the trial start as settled fact. No company statement. The lag runs on, now nine trading days — the longest open count on this register.

    17. 29 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 10 against CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, Barron’s, Reuters and Bloomberg. None carries the September wafer-start claim; Electrek’s 13 July tape-out piece remains the nearest American surface and is a different claim, and the enthusiast layer continues to carry the trial start as settled fact. No company statement. The lag runs on, now ten trading days — fourteen calendar days, and the longest open count on this register.

    18. 30 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 11 against CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, Barron’s, Reuters and Bloomberg. None carries the September wafer-start claim; Electrek’s 13 July tape-out piece remains the nearest American surface and is a different claim, and the enthusiast layer — Drive Tesla Canada, Not a Tesla App, autoevolution, Basenor — continues to carry the trial start as settled fact. No company statement. The lag runs on, now eleven trading days, and it is worth recording beside entry 13, printed today: both claims concern the same Taylor fab and the same Korean press, and this one the American market has never printed at all.

    19. 1 Oct 2026 · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 12 against CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, Barron’s, Reuters and Bloomberg. None carries the September wafer-start claim and no company has stated anything either way. The lag runs on, now twelve trading days, and it remains the longest open count on this register. Recorded beside entry 14, printed today: both claims concern a Texas fab, and the one the American market has never printed is this one.

    20. 2 Oct 2026 · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 13 against CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, Barron’s, Reuters and Bloomberg. None carries the September wafer-start claim and no company has stated anything either way. The lag runs on, now thirteen trading days, and it remains the longest open count on this register.

    Prior record for entry 6

    Previous first-seen label14 SEP

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimTSMC's 2nm capacity is expected to rise from 90,000 wafers a month at end-2026 to 110,000 by mid-2027, its 3nm from more than 180,000 to 210,000, and CoWoS packaging from roughly 130,000 a month to 260,000 by end-2028, per TrendForce citing Taiwan's Economic Daily News. TSMC has not published these figures. The Whisper, No. 3.

    Previous tapethe claim concerns capacity two to eight quarters out and no single session's move is attributable to it; the readings below are printed as context and nothing is attributed. Added 28 September. TSM's 25 September close is sworn at 450.61 — stockanalysis.com's daily table and an independent market note carrying "TSMC stock at USD 450.61 on September 25, 2026". The 24 September close of 451.15, stockanalysis.com, reconciles against a second note describing a 0.12 percent loss into the following session: 451.15 − 450.61 = 0.54, and 0.54 ÷ 451.15 = 0.12 percent, this desk's arithmetic. The 11 September close of 433.24, the session before the first sighting, and the 14 September close of 418.01 are one feed only, printed and not sworn. From that unsworn base to Friday's sworn close the move is +17.37, +4.01%, 17.37 ÷ 433.24, across two weeks of a semiconductor tape that has run for everyone. Today unsworn, one feed: 447.14, −3.47, −0.77%, previous close 450.61, open 448.39, range 443.11–449.60, volume 3,084,181, Yahoo Finance at 11:41:27 a.m. Eastern — the stock opened lower on the morning after the American headline and traded there.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: TSMC's third-quarter call in October, its capex guidance, and its monthly revenue releases on the tenth of each month.

    Previous lag label9 trading days, closed 28 September. First sighting Monday 14 September; first mainstream American headline Sunday 27 September at 11:07 p.m. Eastern, after Friday's close and before Monday's open. The trading days between are 15, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25 September. The headline that closed it carries a 2nm figure a third larger than the one first printed; the CoWoS leg of the claim has still not been carried by any mainstream American outlet.

    1. 14 Sep · tier 4 · TrendForce / EDN

       First sighting. The capacity numbers above, attributed to Economic Daily News; a 22 percent lift at 2nm, 17 percent at 3nm and a doubling of CoWoS on this desk's arithmetic from the published figures.

    2. 15 Sep 11:30 · tier 4 · DigiTimes

       Second independent surface, by its own Taipei stamp: 3nm, 2nm and CoWoS all tight through the third quarter, Nvidia and Apple dominating advanced process and packaging, and Amazon's Annapurna unit expanding AI chip tape-outs and given more 3nm capacity. Supply-chain sources. Body paywalled.

    3. 21 Sep 07:37 · tier 1 · TSMC via Reuters

       Added 21 September. Ground was broken on an advanced-packaging industrial park at Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan, anchored by TSMC, reported by Reuters under a Taipei dateline of 21 September (some US syndications carry a 20 September date) and carried by Benzinga at 7:37 a.m. Eastern, with operations expected in the fourth quarter of 2029. Document-grade, and evidence about direction rather than about the claim's numbers: 2029 sits a year beyond the end of the claim's window, and no wafer or CoWoS figure in the claim is addressed.

    4. 21 Sep 09:59 · tier 4 · DigiTimes

       Weekly roundup, by its own stamp: semiconductor equipment makers facing lead times of up to forty months on certain Japanese components, and local component deliveries stretching about fifty percent. The physical constraint any such ramp meets. Not a second surface for the capacity figures.

    5. 22 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 5. No new sighting of the capacity figures and no TSMC statement on them; the company's only reference point remains the July call's 2026 capex guidance of $60–64 billion. The one TSMC item TrendForce carried today is adjacent and does not confirm the numbers. The date to mark: TSMC's September monthly revenue release, Thursday 8 October, 13:30 Taipei, per the company's own financial calendar. Status unchanged.

    6. 23 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 6 against TrendForce's current news file, whose 23 September items run to DRAM spot prices, LPDDR6 validation, a glass-substrate roundup and a NAND patent ruling, none of which touches the capacity figures. No new sighting and no TSMC statement on them. Status unchanged.

    7. 24 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 7 against TrendForce's current news file, whose 24 September items run to Chinese memory capacity, a Meta device launch, a GDDR7 end-of-life report, an optical-transceiver listing and a Qualcomm node statement, none of which touches the capacity figures. No new sighting and no TSMC statement on them. The date to mark remains TSMC's September monthly revenue release, Thursday 8 October, 13:30 Taipei. Status unchanged.

    8. 25 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8 against TrendForce’s current news file, whose 25 September items run to twelve-inch wafer contract pricing and a rare-earths piece, neither of which touches the capacity figures. No new sighting and no TSMC statement on them. The date to mark remains Thursday 8 October, 13:30 Taipei. Status unchanged.

    9. 27 Sep 14:06 · tier 4 · Economic Daily News

       Added 28 September, and the sighting this issue is built on: the origin outlet revising its own number. Page stamp 28 September 02:06 Taipei, byline Yin Hui-chung (尹慧中), read in the original by this desk. 大廠追加訂單 台積電2奈米擴產進度超前 年底月產能上看12萬片 — major customers have added orders, TSMC's 2nm expansion is ahead of schedule, year-end monthly capacity looking at 120,000 wafers. It states that the market had expected about 90,000 to 100,000 at year-end. Five customers named as raising 2nm-family orders by 10 to 20 percent: Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm, MediaTek. 3nm put near 180,000 a month in the fourth quarter of 2026 and 200,000 to 210,000 in 2027, which is consistent with the 14 September figures. Sourcing language 業界傳出 and 消息人士透露 — the industry says, sources disclose. No firm named, no person named, no document.

       Recorded evidence tier: 4

    10. 27 Sep 23:07 · tier 4 · Yahoo Finance

        First mainstream US headline, nine hours after the revision and nine trading days after the first sighting. Investing.com's report carried on Yahoo Finance's technology pages, byline Ayushman Ojha: "TSMC 2nm wafer capacity to exceed earlier estimates, EDN reports." Credits EDN by name; carries the 120,000 against prior forecasts of 90,000 to 100,000 and the 10-to-20-percent order increase; adds TSMC senior vice-president Hou Yung-ching on first-year 2nm output running 45 percent above 3nm's first year in 2023 and capacity compounding about 70 percent a year through 2028 — company remarks about growth rates, not about the 120,000. The lag closes here on the 2nm leg. The CoWoS leg still has no American headline. Tiered 4 by what the source is; the lag is marked by where the claim reached, which is a different field.

        Recorded evidence tier: 4

    11. 28 Sep · tier 5 · aggregators

        Counted, not named: TipRanks, GuruFocus via TradingView, CoinCentral, Blockonomi, KuCoin, Parameter and EconoTimes carried the 120,000 by mid-morning; every one credits EDN and none adds a source. Invezz, 28 September 00:10 Eastern, is the exception worth reading — it reaches TechInsights vice-chair Dan Hutcheson on more than fifteen customers working on N2 and Stifel's Sahej Singh keeping a Buy and a $515 target on a margin argument — and its own headline reads that the stock slipped.

        Recorded evidence tier: 5

    12. 28 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 9. TSMC has published none of these figures and has made no statement on them; the company's own reference points remain the July call's capex guidance and the monthly revenue releases. No options print, no volume anomaly and no prediction-market contract on the claim was found. Status unchanged: a revision is a sighting, not a document. The date to mark remains Thursday 8 October, 13:30 Taipei.

    13. 29 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 10. TSMC has published none of these figures and has made no statement on them. The CoWoS leg of the claim still has no American headline. The date to mark remains Thursday 8 October, 13:30 Taipei. Status unchanged.

    14. 30 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 11. TSMC has published none of these figures and has made no statement on them. The CoWoS leg of the claim still has no American headline. The date to mark remains Thursday 8 October, 13:30 Taipei. Status unchanged.

    15. 1 Oct 2026 · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 12. TSMC has published none of these figures and has made no statement on them. The CoWoS leg of the claim still has no American headline. The date to mark remains Thursday 8 October, 13:30 Taipei. Recorded beside entry 14, printed today: the same Taipei daily is the origin of both claims, seventeen days apart.

    Prior record for entry 9

    Previous first-seen label18 SEP

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimThe Munich I Regional Court has found Micron Technology to infringe two German utility models held by Yangtze Memory Technologies and granted injunctions covering sales of the infringing 3D NAND products in Germany, per ip fray, with Micron saying it disagrees, has appealed and is challenging the rights' validity, per TechNode citing IT Home. No judgment text is public and no mainstream American outlet has carried it. The Whisper, No. 6.

    Previous tape1,015.80 → 1,096.16, +80.36, +7.91%, the 18 September close on the day of the first sighting to the 22 September close, sworn — stockanalysis.com and Investing.com carry 977.50 (17 Sep), 1,015.80 (18 Sep), 1,043.96 (21 Sep) and 1,096.16 (22 Sep) identically to the cent; the percentage is this desk's arithmetic, 80.36 ÷ 1,015.80. Today unsworn, both printed: 1,074.68, −21.48, −1.96%, previous close 1,096.16, range 1,074.30–1,105.50, volume 6,619,617, Yahoo Finance at 10:20 a.m.; 1,067.01, open 1,100.07, high 1,105.50, low 1,069.76, volume 13,313,292, stockanalysis.com at a 1:13 p.m. page stamp. Volumes where the feeds disagree, both printed: 28,078,850 against 28.17m on 21 September, 28,588,943 against 29.19m on 22 September. Nothing is attributed: Micron reports on 30 September and the memory complex has run for weeks. Updated 25 September: Thursday’s close is sworn at 1,080.53 — Yahoo Finance’s quote page states it as the 24 September close, with open 1,049.75, range 1,044.00–1,081.04 and volume 21,938,990 — and stockanalysis.com’s live change today implies the identical previous close of 1,080.51, reconciling within rounding. That carries the move from the 18 September base to +64.73, +6.37%, this desk’s arithmetic, 64.73 ÷ 1,015.80. Today unsworn, one feed: 1,079.00, open 1,095.83, range 1,074.51–1,108.72, volume 10,532,468, stockanalysis.com at 11:58 a.m. Eastern.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: the Munich I judgment texts, which would fix the product scope; a Munich Higher Regional Court ruling on a stay; Micron's fiscal 2026 annual report and its legal-proceedings note, following the 30 September results; an 8-K if the company judges the effect material sooner; a filing by YMTC of the security German law requires before a first-instance injunction is enforced. Kills it: an appellate stay, or judgment texts showing the enjoined products are not ones Micron sells into Germany.

    Previous lag label10 trading days and running, at the 2 October desk check. First sighting Friday 18 September; no mainstream American outlet — not Reuters, Bloomberg, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch or Barron's — had carried it in the supplied desk check.

    1. 18 Sep · tier 4 · ip fray

       First sighting, and the only account with the record in it: the 7th Civil Chamber, presiding judge Dr. Oliver Schoen; cases 7 O 12615/25 and 7 O 12614/25 decided, three more adjourned, among them 7 O 12616/25 and 7 O 12593/25; utility models DE 20 2020 006 166 U1, "Staircase structure of a three-dimensional storage device," and DE 20 2021 004 551 U1, "Barrier layers for word line contacts in three-dimensional NAND memory." On what happens next: "Enforcement will likely begin soon unless the appeals court (the Munich Higher Regional Court) stays both injunctions." Stood alone.

    2. 18–23 Sep, undated · tier 4 · IAM

       "YMTC strikes NAND patent blow against Micron with two German injunctions." Logged as a headline from the search index rather than as a read: iam-media.com returns a 403 to this desk and the page was not opened. Its date is not established.

    3. 23 Sep 05:07 · tier 4 · TechNode

       09:07 UTC. Second origin rather than a relay: it cites the Chinese outlet IT Home, not ip fray. "Munich Regional Court I has ruled that Micron infringed two German utility models held by Yangtze Memory Technologies, and issued injunctions." Carries the company response the first report did not.

    4. 23 Sep · tier 2 · Micron via TechNode

       The highest tier in the trail besides the ruling itself, and carried at second hand: Micron "said it disagreed with the decision, filed an appeal and was challenging the validity of the relevant rights." No verbatim company statement has been located.

    5. 23 Sep · tier 4 · DIGITIMES

       "YMTC wins German injunctions against Micron in latest round of NAND patent battle," item a20260923PD226. Headline from the search index; digitimes.com returned a 403 to this desk on four attempts and no page was read.

    6. 23 Sep · tier 4 · TrendForce

       In its news file as "German Court Reportedly Finds Micron Infringed Two YMTC NAND Patents, Grants Injunctions" — reportedly, five days after a specialist outlet printed the chamber, the judge and the case numbers.

    7. 23 Sep 12:12 · tier 5 · aggregator

       Counted, not weighted, and quoted because it states the limits most precisely: "The injunctions are first-instance rulings that cover sales of the infringing products in Germany only," and "No report we found says YMTC has started enforcing, that Micron has asked for a stay, or that one has been granted." Also: without the judgment texts nobody outside the case can say whether the enjoined products are consumer SSD components, embedded NAND, or both.

    8. 24 Sep · tier 4 · JUVE Patent

       Added 24 September. A second origin, not a relay: it does not cite ip fray, and it carries material the first report did not. The patent EP 3 931 868 beside four German utility models — DE 20 2020 006 166.2, DE 20 2021 004 551, DE 20 2018 007 011 and DE 20 2022 003 278 — the pending cases 7 O 12609/25, 7 O 12616/25 and 7 O 12593/25 alongside the two decided, and presiding judge Oliver Schön of the 7th Civil Chamber. It states that the court found two utility models "valid and infringed and granted YMTC injunctions," that Micron has appealed, and — new to this register — that Micron has brought its own infringement claims at the Munich Regional Court and at the Unified Patent Court on EP 3 706 127, EP 3 574 526 and EP 2 745 295.

    9. 24 Sep · tier 4 · Tom's Hardware

       The claim reaches the American technology press, and not the American market press: "China's YMTC wins patent battle against Micron in ongoing 3-year legal war over memory patents — new injunctions could restrict Micron's supply into Germany." Downstream; not counted as an independent surface.

    10. 24 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 7. No judgment text, no stay, no Micron 8-K and no verbatim company statement. No mainstream American outlet carries it. The lag runs on, now four trading days.

    11. 25 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8. Electronics Weekly has joined the trail, and a further specialist write-up records Micron’s appeal of both injunctions; both are downstream and neither is counted as an independent surface. Still no judgment text, no ruling on a stay, no Micron 8-K and no verbatim company statement, and no mainstream American outlet carries it. The lag runs on, now five trading days.

    12. 28 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 9. Guru3D and a forum write-up of Micron’s appeal of both injunctions have joined the trail; both are downstream and neither is counted as an independent surface. Still no judgment text, no ruling on a stay, no Micron 8-K and no verbatim company statement, and no mainstream American outlet — not Reuters, Bloomberg, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch or Barron’s — carries it. Micron’s fiscal fourth-quarter results on Wednesday 30 September are the first occasion on which someone will be in a position to ask. The lag runs on, now six trading days.

    13. 29 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 10. Still no judgment text, no ruling on a stay, no Micron 8-K and no verbatim company statement, and no mainstream American outlet — not Reuters, Bloomberg, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch or Barron’s — carries it. Micron’s fiscal fourth-quarter results fall tomorrow, Wednesday 30 September, and the legal-proceedings commentary is the first occasion on which anyone will be in a position to ask. The lag runs on, now seven trading days.

    14. 30 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 11. Still no judgment text, no ruling on a stay, no Micron 8-K and no verbatim company statement, and no mainstream American outlet — not Reuters, Bloomberg, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch or Barron’s — carries it. Micron’s fiscal fourth-quarter results fall after this issue’s slot, tonight, and the legal-proceedings commentary is the first occasion on which anyone will be in a position to ask. The lag runs on, now eight trading days.

    15. 1 Oct 2026 · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 12. Still no judgment text, no ruling on a stay, no Micron 8-K and no verbatim company statement, and no mainstream American outlet — not Reuters, Bloomberg, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch or Barron’s — carries it. Micron’s fiscal fourth-quarter results were published after yesterday’s close and the desk has located no legal-proceedings commentary on the German injunctions in the coverage of them. The lag runs on, now nine trading days.

    16. 2 Oct 2026 · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 13. Still no judgment text, no ruling on a stay, no Micron 8-K and no verbatim company statement, and no mainstream American outlet — not Reuters, Bloomberg, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch or Barron’s — carries it. The lag runs on, now ten trading days.

    Prior record for entry 10

    Previous first-seen label23 SEP

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimMicron has marked its 2-gigabyte GDDR7 chips end of life — the 28Gbps D8FHL part, MT68A512M32DF-28:A, and its 32Gbps sibling — leaving 3-gigabyte modules as its only GDDR7 density and Samsung and SK hynix as the remaining sources of the 2-gigabyte parts used on much of Nvidia's RTX 50 range, per Hardware Busters, The FPS Review, VideoCardz, TechPowerUp and TrendForce, all reading the same page of Micron's own parts catalogue. Micron has published no notice and explained nothing; Nvidia has said nothing. The Whisper, No. 7.

    Previous tape1,096.16 → 1,071.88, −24.28, −2.22%, the 22 September close before the first sighting to the 23 September close, sworn — stockanalysis.com's daily table and Yahoo Finance's quote page carry 1,071.88 identically, Yahoo carries the change as −2.22 percent, and MarketBeat's 23 September alert headlines "Shares Down 2.2%." Desk arithmetic, inputs shown: 1,096.16 − 1,071.88 = 24.28; 24.28 ÷ 1,096.16 = 2.215 percent. Nothing is attributed. Wednesday's session already has a published explanation and it is not this one: Invezz, 23 September 15:02, gives Wells Fargo cutting its target to $1,400 from $1,525 while keeping Overweight, Citi's Atif Malik raising his to $1,300 from $1,150 on "stronger-than-expected DRAM pricing and continued undersupply across both DRAM and NAND markets," and Michael Burry adding to a short. No published account of the session mentions GDDR7. The 23 September close is carried on a third independent read, Yahoo Finance at 1:39 p.m. today, which returns 1,071.88 as the previous close. Today unsworn, one feed: 1,072.12, +0.24, +0.02%, open 1,049.75, range 1,044.00–1,076.49, volume 14,114,423, Yahoo Finance, "As of 1:39:31 PM EDT. Market Open" — Micron opened twenty-two points below the prior close, traded to 1,044.00 and was bought back to roughly unchanged, and none of that is attributed either. A reading set aside and not logged: an 11:24 a.m. table appeared to carry a 24 September close outside its own printed high and low, but on re-reading at 1:37 p.m. that page was serving data stamped 4:51 a.m. pre-market and a Yahoo read a minute later returned a level near 958 against a previous close near 956 that reconciles with no session sworn in here and did not reproduce. The desk does not log an entry against a page it cannot re-read. Updated 25 September: Thursday’s close is sworn at 1,080.53 on the two reads described in entry 9, which carries the move from the 22 September base to −15.63, −1.43%, this desk’s arithmetic, 15.63 ÷ 1,096.16. Nothing is attributed.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: a distributor's catalogue mirroring the EOL flag with a last-time-buy date; a product change notification to customers, the document this kind of decision normally travels on; board partner or distributor pricing showing 2-gigabyte parts withdrawn; Micron's fiscal fourth-quarter results and call on 30 September — four trading days from today, five from the first sighting — where a deliberate shift of graphics memory toward higher-density AI parts belongs in the commentary on mix. Kills it: Micron saying the parts remain in production, a catalogue reading showing them in Production status, or a 2-gigabyte part appearing on a new board.

    Previous lag label7 trading days and running, at 2 October. First sighting Wednesday 23 September; no mainstream American outlet — not Reuters, Bloomberg, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch or Barron's — had carried it as of 1:15 p.m. Eastern on 2 October; Tom's Hardware is the furthest it has travelled and that is the technology press.

    1. 23 Sep · tier 5 · leak account

       First sighting, counted and not named: a hardware leak account on X, quoted verbatim by The FPS Review — "the micron gddr7 28gbps 2gb chip d8fhl (MT68A512M32DF-28:A) used on some rtx50 cards, has reached end of life." One sentence, one part number, no explanation, no company. Time not established.

    2. 23 Sep 05:05 · tier 4 · Hardware Busters

       09:05:00 UTC by its own stamp, byline crmaris. Names both parts, MT68A512M32DF-28:A and MT68A512M32DF-32:A, and cites four things: Micron's GDDR7 part catalogue, the leak account, TweakTown and VideoCardz. Did not stand alone, and printed the sentence that matters most in the trail: "Micron has not published a notice or explained the decision."

    3. 23 Sep 08:14 · tier 4 · The FPS Review

       12:14:15 UTC, Peter Brosdahl. Cites the leak account via VideoCardz and places the part across the RTX 50 range from the 5060 to the 5090. Explicitly downstream.

    4. 23 Sep · tier 4 · VideoCardz, TechPowerUp

       "Micron reportedly ends production of 2GB GDDR7 used by GeForce RTX 50" and "Micron's 2 GB GDDR7 Memory Chips Reportedly Reach End of Life." Both logged as headlines from the search index rather than as reads: videocardz.com returned a 402 to this desk and techpowerup.com is disallowed to it by robots. Neither page was opened.

    5. 23–24 Sep · tier 5 · relays

       Counted, not weighted: eTeknix, Wccftech, Kantan, GameGPU, Techtroduce, FPSHub and borecraft, every one a retelling of the same catalogue reading and none an independent surface.

    6. 24 Sep · tier 4 · TrendForce

       In its news file as "Micron Reportedly Ends 2GB GDDR7, Narrowing Supply Options for NVIDIA's RTX 50 Series," citing TechPowerUp, Gazlog, the leak account, Tom's Hardware, VideoCardz and the catalogue, and stating the document claim in its cleanest form: "Micron's product catalog now lists its 28 Gbps D8FHL chip (MT68A512M32DF-28) as EOL, with the 32 Gbps version carrying the same designation." Adds the economics: 3GB modules at $60–$70 a chip against roughly $20 for the 2GB parts.

    7. 24 Sep · tier 4 · Tom's Hardware

       Added 24 September, and the surface that supplies the reason this sits on the AI beat. Etiido Uko reports both the 28 and 32 Gbps variants discontinued and Micron "shifting its focus toward higher-density 3 GB (24 Gb) GDDR7 chips," which carry "higher profit margins" and go into Nvidia's professional RTX PRO Blackwell parts for AI work; the general case, in its words, is "memory suppliers prioritizing AI-facing technologies over their consumer and retail counterparts." It also carries the counterweight this desk prints rather than the squeeze: Samsung and SK hynix already dominate 2GB GDDR7 and Micron was not competitive there, so the exit creates little shortage risk. No Micron or Nvidia comment.

    8. 24 Sep 12:46 · tier 1 · the catalogue, unread

       The desk went to the document and could not open it. micron.com's public GDDR7 part catalogue returns no results; its table carries the right columns — part number, density, parts status, depth, width, operating temperature, speed — and "parts status" is the field holding the EOL, Production and Preview values every report is quoting. The catalogue requires a Micron account. The document exists, it is Micron's own, and no reader outside can check the claim against it. The claim is not upgraded on a page this desk cannot read.

    9. 25 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 8. No Micron notice, no product change notification, no distributor catalogue mirroring the flag with a last-time-buy date, and no Nvidia comment. The parts catalogue still requires an account and is still unreadable to this desk and to any other reader outside Micron. The lag runs on, now two trading days. Status unchanged.

    10. 28 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 9. No Micron notice, no product change notification, no distributor catalogue mirroring the end-of-life flag with a last-time-buy date, and no Nvidia comment. The parts catalogue still requires an account and is still unreadable to this desk and to any other reader outside Micron. Micron’s fiscal fourth-quarter results fall on Wednesday 30 September, two sessions from today. The lag runs on, now three trading days. Status unchanged.

    11. 29 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 10. No Micron notice, no product change notification, no distributor catalogue mirroring the end-of-life flag with a last-time-buy date, and no Nvidia comment. The parts catalogue still requires an account and is still unreadable to this desk and to any other reader outside Micron. Micron reports tomorrow, Wednesday 30 September. The lag runs on, now four trading days. Status unchanged.

    12. 30 Sep · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 11. No Micron notice, no product change notification, no distributor catalogue mirroring the end-of-life flag with a last-time-buy date, and no Nvidia comment. The parts catalogue still requires an account and is still unreadable to this desk and to any other reader outside Micron. Micron reports after the close tonight, and the commentary on graphics-memory mix is where a deliberate shift toward higher-density AI parts would appear. The lag runs on, now five trading days. Status unchanged.

    13. 1 Oct 2026 · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 12. No Micron notice, no product change notification, no distributor catalogue mirroring the end-of-life flag with a last-time-buy date, and no Nvidia comment. The parts catalogue still requires an account and is still unreadable to this desk and to any other reader outside Micron. Micron reported after yesterday’s close and the desk has found no graphics-memory mix commentary addressing the 2-gigabyte parts. The lag runs on, now six trading days.

    14. 2 Oct 2026 · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 13. No Micron notice, no product change notification, no distributor catalogue mirroring the end-of-life flag with a last-time-buy date, and no Nvidia comment. The parts catalogue still requires an account and is still unreadable to this desk and to any other reader outside Micron. The lag runs on, now seven trading days.

    Prior record for entry 11

    Previous first-seen label23 SEP

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimNew 2027 long-term contract prices for twelve-inch semiconductor silicon wafers will rise fifteen to twenty-five percent for epitaxial wafers and more than forty percent for polished, with some second-tier customers above fifty percent, per the Commercial Times of Taipei, citing an industry survey and institutional analyst estimates. No wafer maker and no customer has confirmed a figure, and there is no document of any kind in the trail. The Whisper, No. 8.

    Previous tapeno reading sworn in, and the desk prints why. The claim's subjects are listed in Taipei — GlobalWafers on the Taipei Exchange under 6488, with Taisil and Wafer Works beside it — and this desk has established no US-listed line for any of them. The two feeds it reads for Taipei disagree by roughly a third and both are stale: stockanalysis.com served 1,000.00 TWD, +29.00, +2.99%, previous close 971.00, volume 1,355,000, on a page stamped 23 September 9:20 a.m. Taipei; Investing.com served 1,480.00 TWD, −35.00, −2.31%, volume 10.79m, on a page labelled "Closed as of July 15, 2026." One is ten weeks stale and says so; the other is two days stale and does not. Both are printed, neither is sworn, and no level is published as current. No options print, no volume anomaly and no prediction-market contract was found either. The fifty-two-week range on both pages runs 333 to 1,600.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: GlobalWafers' third-quarter results and investor conference in late October, and its monthly revenue releases on the tenth of each month; SUMCO's and Shin-Etsu's late-October results and their guidance language on long-term agreements; any foundry or memory maker booking a materially higher wafer cost line in fourth-quarter guidance, which confirms it from the customer's side. Kills it: a wafer maker saying on the record that 2027 agreements are renewing at single-digit or low-double-digit increases; a customer's guidance showing flat wafer costs into 2027; or the October results season passing with none of the companies raising their own pricing outlook.

    Previous lag label7 trading days and running, at 2 October. First sighting Wednesday 23 September; no mainstream American outlet — not Reuters, Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch or Barron's — carried the 2027 contract numbers as of 1:15 p.m. Eastern on 2 October. The furthest the claim has travelled into American publishing is Wccftech and TrendForce, which are the technology and research trade, not the market press.

    1. 26 Jun · tier 4 · CTEE, BigGo

       Upstream, and a different claim. The Commercial Times reported wafer prices rising about ten percent across six-, eight- and twelve-inch, the first increase in over three years. A Chinese-language analysis the same day, 12:26 UTC, citing CITIC Securities, SEMI, Bernstein and JW Insights, gave the mechanism: the long-term supply agreements "acted like shackles, making silicon wafer manufacturers the last beneficiaries in the AI industry chain." Ten percent across all sizes in June is not forty percent on polished twelve-inch in 2027.

    2. 15–17 Sep · tier 4 · CTEE

       The supply side, twice: a 15 September item putting the supply gap at at least ten percent from next year, a 17 September item widening it to twenty-four percent by 2028. Neither carried contract prices.

    3. 18 Sep · tier 4 · UBS, as reported

       Recorded because it is being conflated with the claim, not because it supports it. Wafer manufacturers "may need price increases of 40% to 50% just to justify building the capacity the AI industry says it needs" — a threshold required to unlock investment, not a forecast of contract prices. Two different forty-percents are now circulating in the same week.

    4. 23 Sep 03:00 · tier 4 · Commercial Times

       First sighting, page stamp 03:00 Taipei, modified 08:01, byline Li Juan-ping (李娟萍). The sentence, in the original: 十二吋磊晶圓新長約價格估上漢15％～25％，拋光晶圓漲幅則可能達40％以上，部分二線客戶甚至超遒50％ — new long-contract prices for twelve-inch epitaxial wafers estimated up fifteen to twenty-five percent, polished wafers possibly above forty, some second-tier customers above fifty. Three forces named: AI logic, memory capacity expansion, and the renegotiation of long-term contracts. Attributed to an industry survey and institutional analyst estimates; no firm and no person named. Stood alone; cites no earlier report.

    5. 23 Sep 14:10 · tier 4 · Wccftech

       Ramish Zafar, byline stamp "Sep 23, 2026 at 02:10pm EDT," crediting Taiwan's CTEE. Carries the split correctly — "polished wafers are expected to see a higher price jump in the form of a 40% increase compared to 15% to 25% for the standard epitaxial wafers" — and the demand arithmetic beneath it: CoWoS capacity up 70.9 percent next year, GPU and custom AI ASIC demand up 44.9 percent, wafer prices from $92 in 2026 to $122 in 2027 and $166 in 2028, shipments from 11.9 million wafers a quarter to 16.1 million and then 21.7 million. Its headline takes the polished figure as the whole. Explicitly downstream.

    6. 25 Sep · tier 4 · TrendForce

       "12-inch Wafer Price Hikes Loom for 2027 as AI Demand Tightens Supply, with LTAs Reportedly Up 15–40%+," citing the Commercial Times, Star Market Daily, Wccftech and BigGo. A synthesis of the origin and its relays that reaches past Wccftech to a second Chinese-language outlet, which is what carries this entry over the floor. The word in its own headline is reportedly, two days on, and that is the correct word.

    7. 28 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 9. No wafer maker and no customer has confirmed a figure, no document has appeared, and the claim has travelled no further into American publishing than Wccftech and TrendForce. Recorded beside this entry and not as evidence for it: DigiTimes reported on 24 September that TSMC will raise its own foundry prices 3 to 6 percent from January 2027, relayed by the Economic Daily News and by Benzinga — one origin, no second surface, below the floor. Three to six percent from a foundry and above forty percent on the silicon it buys are two claims about one cost stack at very different magnitudes, and this desk prints neither as fact. The lag runs on, now three trading days. Status unchanged.

    8. 29 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 10. No wafer maker and no customer has confirmed a figure, no document has appeared, and the claim has travelled no further into American publishing than Wccftech and TrendForce. The lag runs on, now four trading days. Status unchanged.

    9. 30 Sep · desk check

       Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 11. No wafer maker and no customer has confirmed a figure, no document has appeared, and the claim has travelled no further into American publishing than Wccftech and TrendForce. The lag runs on, now five trading days. Status unchanged.

    10. 1 Oct 2026 · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 12. No wafer maker and no customer has confirmed a figure, no document has appeared, and the claim has travelled no further into American publishing than Wccftech and TrendForce. The lag runs on, now six trading days.

    11. 2 Oct 2026 · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 13. No wafer maker and no customer has confirmed a figure, no document has appeared, and the claim has travelled no further into American publishing than Wccftech and TrendForce. The lag runs on, now seven trading days.

    Prior record for entry 13

    Previous first-seen label10 SEP

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimThe Bell reported that pricing disagreements had stalled talks over a possible Samsung 2-nanometre manufacturing contract for Qualcomm application processors, with production under such an arrangement potentially moving to 2027. The report cited an unnamed person familiar with Samsung’s foundry business; neither company has confirmed the reported price disagreement. A later Qualcomm executive interview confirms process evaluation, not a production contract. The Whisper, No. 11.

    Previous tape176.88 → 181.97, +5.09, +2.88%, the 10 September close before the first sighting to the 11 September close, sworn — stockanalysis.com’s daily history and Yahoo Finance’s history page carry both identically to the cent; the percentage is this desk’s arithmetic, 5.09 ÷ 176.88. Carried on to Monday’s sworn close of 187.48, the move from the same base is +10.60, +5.99%. Recorded separately and attributed to nothing: the 25 September close is sworn at 201.97 and the 28 September close at 187.48, a fall of −14.49, −7.17%, 14.49 ÷ 201.97 — a session with published explanations that mention no foundry contract, among them a broad semiconductor decline, the ten-year at 5.218 percent and the chief executive’s pre-arranged share sales. The 29 September close of 184.10 is stockanalysis.com only, printed and not sworn; today, one feed and unsworn, 185.00, +0.49%, stockanalysis.com at 11:56 a.m. Eastern. Volumes where the feeds disagree, both printed: 15,597,657 against 15,597,700 on 10 September; 11,556,632 against 11,546,600 on 11 September; 16,680,120 against 16,614,256 on 28 September. A caution: Yahoo Finance’s QCOM quote page at 11:54 a.m. today was serving the 25 September close as its latest reading; it labels that date, so it is a stale page and not a decoy, and the history page was used instead.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: Qualcomm’s fiscal fourth-quarter results and call in early November, where a foundry second-source decision reaches the cost commentary; Samsung Electronics’ third-quarter results in late October and its foundry-segment disclosure; a Samsung Foundry customer announcement naming Qualcomm; a die or package teardown of a shipping Snapdragon part identifying the fab. Kills it: either company saying on the record that no contract was postponed, or a 2nm Snapdragon part appearing on a Samsung line this year.

    Previous lag labelThe desk first stamped the English relay on 10 September at 9:47 p.m. Eastern, after the close; Yahoo Finance Canada carried syndicated copy on 11 September at 8:08 a.m. Eastern, before the open — one trading day to that Canadian mainstream relay. Under this register’s stated mainstream-US-headline rule, a qualifying US headline had not been established by the 30 September desk check, so that lag remains open. The Bell’s original carries a 9 September Korea-time publication stamp; the desk stamp is not the first publication.

    1. Jul, per 11 Sep · tier 4 · TrendForce

       Context, and the reason a foundry would hold its price: Samsung raised advanced-node prices in July by 10 to 15 percent on 4nm orders from Chinese and American customers, 5 to 10 percent in Taiwan, and 10 to 15 percent on 5nm, per TrendForce’s account. Names no customer and is not a surface for this claim.

    2. 10 Sep 21:47 · tier 4 · The Bell via Investing.com

       First sighting the desk can stamp, updated 22:54, byline Roushni Nair. “Qualcomm is pushing for lower prices and Samsung is resisting”; manufacturing the processors within 2026 is “becoming difficult because chip production needs to line up with smartphone launch schedules”; talks may move to next-generation parts instead. Samsung is said to regard the volume under discussion as too small to justify a concession, having signed Tesla and Broadcom. Both companies were asked for comment and neither replied. The stamp falls after Thursday’s close and before Friday’s open. Chronology clarification: The Bell original shows 9 September 2026 at 15:10 Korea time and a public/free release on 11 September at 07:00 Korea time; this 10 September stamp is the desk’s first English relay sighting, not first publication.

       • Source 1: https://www.thebell.co.kr/front/newsview.asp?key=202609091437016680105190
       • Source 2: https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/samsung-qualcomm-delay-2nm-chip-deal-as-price-talks-drag-the-bell-4897170

    3. 11 Sep 08:08 · tier 4 · Yahoo Finance (CA)

       First mainstream headline, and the desk prints the qualification rather than burying it: the page read was Yahoo Finance’s Canadian edition, carrying GuruFocus copy, byline Nauman Khan, under “Qualcomm Chip Deal With Samsung Hits a Major Pricing Snag.” “Qualcomm is seeking more competitive manufacturing costs, while Samsung appears less willing to reduce pricing.” Puts the slip at 2027; states that neither company has issued a public statement; adds Samsung’s multi-year Broadcom AI-chip agreement valued at over $200 billion through 2030. The lag closes here.

       • Source 1: https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/qualcomm-chip-deal-samsung-hits-120833823.html

    4. 11 Sep · tier 4 · TrendForce

       The item that carries this claim over the floor, because it does not rest on The Bell alone: “Samsung-Qualcomm 2nm Deal May Slip to 2027; Foundry Resists Lower Pricing as Process Stabilizes,” naming Maeil Business Newspaper, Munhwa Ilbo and Money Today beside The Bell. It also names Reuters among its sources; the desk searched for a Reuters item carrying the stall, did not find one, and does not count one. Adds on its own account: Samsung 2nm gate-all-around yield “over 70%, up sharply from below 50% at the beginning of 2026”; foundry share 5.9 percent in the second quarter; the Taylor fab reported fully booked for 2nm before it opens.

       • Source 1: https://www.trendforce.com/news/2026/09/11/news-samsung-qualcomm-2nm-deal-may-slip-to-2027-foundry-resists-lower-pricing-as-process-stabilizes

    5. 14 Sep · tier 4 · DigiTimes

       “Samsung, Qualcomm deepen 2nm talks as pricing and yield hurdles persist,” item a20260914VL208. Logged as a headline from the search index and not as a read: digitimes.com returned a 403 to this desk and the page was not opened. On its headline alone it is a second origin rather than a relay, and it introduces yield as the second variable the Korean reporting did not lead with.

    6. 25 Sep · market signal

       MarketBeat’s instant alert: 140,153 Qualcomm call contracts purchased against an average daily volume of 108,956, about 29 percent above normal, with the stock at $204.11 intraday, up $9.85. Recorded as testimony, attributed to nothing.

    7. 27 Sep (interview 23 Sep) · tier 2 · Qualcomm via iNews24

       Qualcomm senior vice-president Chris Patrick said the company was doing in-depth work evaluating Samsung Foundry’s 2nm process for possible future products, but had no specific product or application plan to announce. This does not confirm or deny The Bell’s reported price disagreement or a production contract.

       Recorded evidence tier: 2

       • Source 1: https://www.inews24.com/view/2009066

    8. 28 Sep · tier 5 · aggregator

       Counted, not named, and not an independent surface — its two named sources, TrendForce and DigiTimes, are already in this trail. Restates the claim in a harder form on the day of a seven percent session: negotiations stalled on “pricing structure and yield issues,” a partnership unlikely before 2027, every announced 2nm product still contracted to TSMC. A 28 September options item headlined at 99,880 contracts and 963,020 open interest is logged as a headline from the search index; the page requires JavaScript and was not read.

    9. 30 Sep · tier 4 · technology press

       The yield figure forks. A technology outlet puts Samsung Foundry 2nm yield at 60 percent, with a power-draw disadvantage against Snapdragon parts; TrendForce had “over 70%” on 11 September, and DigiTimes had 60 percent for the Exynos 2600 in November 2025. Three numbers, two directions, one process. Recorded as a difference rather than an error — different dates, possibly different products — and noted because a claim whose mechanism is that the buyer will not pay what the seller’s yield now justifies cannot be settled while the yield is reported three ways.

    10. 30 Sep · desk check

        EDGAR full-text search for 8-K filings naming both “Samsung” and “2nm” across September 2026 returns zero filings; recorded as a negative with a result. The only documents near this story are Forms 4 for the chief executive’s 10b5-1 sales of 10,000 shares on 21 September and 10,000 on 25 September, which are about share sales and not about a wafer price. Highest tier reached: four.

    11. 1 Oct 2026 · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 12. No company statement from either side, no filing, and no wire has carried the postponement in the twenty-one days since the first sighting. The yield fork recorded yesterday is unresolved and the three published figures stand as they were.

    • Source 1: https://www.thebell.co.kr/front/newsview.asp?key=202609091437016680105190
    • Source 2: https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/samsung-qualcomm-delay-2nm-chip-deal-as-price-talks-drag-the-bell-4897170
    • Source 3: https://www.trendforce.com/news/2026/09/11/news-samsung-qualcomm-2nm-deal-may-slip-to-2027-foundry-resists-lower-pricing-as-process-stabilizes
    • Source 4: https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/qualcomm-chip-deal-samsung-hits-120833823.html
    • Source 5: https://www.inews24.com/view/2009066
    Prior record for entry 14

    Previous first-seen label28 SEP

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimReuters reported that TSMC is evaluating a potential Texas chipmaking investment; two people familiar with the matter said plans were not finalized, and TSMC declined comment. Taiwan’s Economic Daily News separately reported Dallas as a possible site, up to six advanced fabs, and potential Texas spending above the company’s $265 billion Arizona commitment. Reuters did not confirm those specifics. Suppliers cited in the earlier reporting said they had not been asked to prepare. The Whisper, No. 12.

    Previous tapethe base is weak and the desk prints it that way. 452.97, TSM’s 28 September close and the last before the first sighting, MarketBeat’s price history, one feed only and not sworn. The 29 September close — the one session the claim had to itself — is not sworn either: MarketBeat has 457.28, Benzinga’s previous-close field has 456.74, 54 cents apart, and both are printed. The 30 September close is sworn at 456.19 on Benzinga and stockanalysis.com, with MarketBeat a cent higher at 456.20. From the unsworn base to the sworn close the move is +3.22, +0.711%, this desk’s arithmetic, 3.22 ÷ 452.97; against 456.20 it is +3.23 and 0.713 percent, and the desk prints both endpoints rather than averaging. Volume 7.87m on 28 September against 9.92m on 29 September per MarketBeat, a rise of 26.0 percent and still below the 11.94m average Benzinga carries; 8.98m on 30 September. Intraday 1 October, one feed and unsworn: 454.10, stockanalysis.com at 11:29 a.m. Eastern. Nothing is attributed: the window contains a quarter-end, no options print tied to the claim was found and no prediction-market contract on it exists.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: A TSMC filing or board resolution, a Texas government announcement, a recorded land or incentive agreement, or a company statement identifying a Texas project would establish the plan and its scope. A direct company denial would contradict it. No supplier preparation notice by itself does not disprove early evaluation. Dallas, six fabs, and investment size require their own documentary support.

    Previous lag label1 trading day. The Economic Daily News report landed after the 28 September close; Tuesday 29 September was the one session it had to itself; Reuters carried it premarket on Wednesday 30 September.

    1. 28 Sep, evening 2026 · tier 4 · Economic Daily News

       First sighting, read only through TrendForce’s account; the desk did not open the Chinese original and does not quote it directly. A second manufacturing hub that “could include as many as six advanced wafer fabs, with Dallas, Texas emerging as a potential location,” and a “total investment could exceed the US$265 billion committed to its Arizona complex.” Dated to the 28th Eastern, after that session’s close, from TrendForce’s note that TSMC had not responded “as of press time on September 28.”

       Recorded evidence tier: 4

       • Source 1: https://money.udn.com/money/story/5612/9782098
       • Source 2: https://www.trendforce.com/news/2026/09/29/news-tsmc-reportedly-eyes-texas-expansion-that-could-top-us265b-vis-nxp-mulls-second-singapore-fab/

    2. 29 Sep 2026 · tier 4 · TrendForce

       Citing the Economic Daily News; did not stand alone. Carries the line the rest of the trail dropped: “rumors that the chipmaker could build a new fab in Texas have recently circulated within the semiconductor industry,” and multiple unnamed supply-chain companies saying “TSMC has not notified them or asked them to make any preparations.”

       Recorded evidence tier: 4

       • Source 1: https://www.trendforce.com/news/2026/09/29/news-tsmc-reportedly-eyes-texas-expansion-that-could-top-us265b-vis-nxp-mulls-second-singapore-fab/

    3. 29 Sep 2026 · tier 4 · techsoda

       A market letter, also citing the Economic Daily News: “TSMC is evaluating a second large US manufacturing campus, potentially in Dallas, Texas, with six advanced-node fabs,” which “remains under review and has not received formal company or board approval,” with a source cautioning that “it is difficult to say where things stand, especially before the midterm elections.”

       Recorded evidence tier: 4

    4. 29 Sep 2026 · tier 5 · relays

       Counted, not weighted: MacTech, AppleWorld.today, Sammy Fans and Hoodline, all downstream of the same item.

       Recorded evidence tier: 5

    5. 30 Sep 05:22 2026 · tier 3 · Reuters

       Reuters independently reported that TSMC is evaluating a potential Texas investment, based on two unnamed people, with plans not finalized and no TSMC comment. It did not confirm Dallas, six fabs, or Texas spending above the $265 billion Arizona commitment. The supplied desk record places the first mainstream US headline before the 30 September market open; the exact time is from a relay with an unlabeled time zone.

       Recorded evidence tier: 3

       • Source 1: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/tsmc-evaluates-potential-texas-investment-sources-say-2026-09-30/

    6. 30 Sep 2026 · tier 4 · DigiTimes

       “TSMC reportedly evaluates Texas fabs as US regional competition intensifies,” item a20260930PD215. Logged as a headline from the search index and not as a read: digitimes.com returned a 403 to this desk and the page was not opened.

       Recorded evidence tier: 4

    7. 30 Sep 10:25 2026 · tier 4 · Yahoo Finance

       GuruFocus copy on Yahoo Finance’s technology pages, byline Faizan Farooque: “TSMC’s $265 Billion U.S. Expansion May Be Getting Even Bigger.” Cites Reuters’ two sources and repeats that the plans remain under evaluation. Recorded because of how it reads rather than what it adds: the only named-source material in it is about Arizona — chief executive C.C. Wei on building “another four or more fabs” there and the chief financial officer on continuing to invest in the United States. Both are tier-2 remarks about a different state, and they are not corroboration of the Texas claim.

       Recorded evidence tier: 4

    8. 30 Sep 2026 · tier 5 · relays

       Counted, not weighted: US News, Stocktwits, a Michigan radio station’s wire feed, Blockonomi, Startup Fortune, Madshrimps, BigGo, CoinCentral, chaincatcher and a French trade site, all carrying the Reuters copy or a summary of it.

       Recorded evidence tier: 5

    9. 1 Oct 2026 · desk check

       No TSMC 6-K, no board resolution disclosed to the Taiwan Stock Exchange, no Texas state or Dallas County announcement, and no company statement beyond the declination. Highest tier reached on the Texas claim: three.

    10. 2 Oct 2026 · desk check

        Re-checked for The Whisper, No. 13. No TSMC 6-K, no board resolution disclosed to the Taiwan Stock Exchange, no Texas state or Dallas County announcement, no ERCOT interconnection request located, and no company statement beyond the declination. The relay layer is unchanged in kind — TrendForce, eTeknix, Hoodline, GuruFocus, BigGo, CoinCentral and briefs.co all still carry the $265 billion figure and the six fabs as a report. Status unchanged.

    11. 2 Oct 2026 · editorial source-scope check

        Direct-source comparison added in this update: EDN reported the Dallas, six-fab and potential spending specifics; Reuters independently supports only evaluation of a Texas investment. The Arizona $265 billion commitment is not a Reuters estimate of Texas spending. These specifics remain reported, not established.

        Recorded evidence tier: 3

        • Source 1: https://money.udn.com/money/story/5612/9782098
        • Source 2: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/tsmc-evaluates-potential-texas-investment-sources-say-2026-09-30/

    • Source 1: https://money.udn.com/money/story/5612/9782098
    • Source 2: https://www.trendforce.com/news/2026/09/29/news-tsmc-reportedly-eyes-texas-expansion-that-could-top-us265b-vis-nxp-mulls-second-singapore-fab/
    • Source 3: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/tsmc-evaluates-potential-texas-investment-sources-say-2026-09-30/
    Prior record for entry 15

    Previous first-seen label1 OCT

    Previous source-record statuscorroborated

    Previous recorded claimToshiba Information Equipment (Philippines) says its expanded Laguna Technopark line made a first shipment and it aims to nearly double annual HDD production capacity by FY2027 versus FY2025 on a storage-capacity basis. Separately, Nikkei reported about ¥60 billion of investment and a goal to raise capacity-based market share from just over 10% to 30% over the medium term; Toshiba’s 2 October release did not confirm those two figures. The Whisper, No. 13.

    Previous tapethe base is sworn and the move is not, and the desk prints why. Thursday 1 October closes sworn at Seagate 945.57 and Western Digital 462.56 — stockanalysis.com read at 11:37 a.m. Friday as the prior close, and corroborated by arithmetic on an independent feed, Benzinga’s 9:15 a.m. premarket levels and percentages, which imply 945.53 and 462.58: this desk’s arithmetic, 839.44 ÷ 0.8878 and 425.80 ÷ 0.9205, four cents and two cents from the first feed and inside the rounding of a two-decimal percentage. No session has closed since the claim appeared, so there is no close-to-close move to swear in. Friday intraday, one feed, 11:37 a.m. Eastern, unsworn: Seagate 804.98, −140.59, −14.87 percent, volume 7,759,347; Western Digital 397.28, −65.28, −14.11 percent, volume 12,815,532. The shape of the morning, as printed by the pages that carried it: −10 and −7 at 8:52, −11.2 and −8.0 at 9:15, about −13 and about −10 on the Invezz stamp, −14.9 and −14.1 at 11:37 — heavier through the session on no new information, the last new fact in the chain eight hours old. Toshiba is not the subject of a sworn reading here. Seen and not logged: the same market-data page carried a day’s-range low of 397.52 above a last price of 397.28 at the same minute, read once, and the runbook already records that this feed’s range fields lag its quote fields.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: Toshiba’s own capital-expenditure disclosure naming the ¥60 billion; a medium-term plan or investor presentation carrying the thirty percent capacity-share target; a Philippine Economic Zone Authority or Board of Investments registration for the Laguna Technopark expansion; Toshiba’s fiscal second-quarter results. Kills it: a Toshiba statement that the ¥60 billion or the thirty percent figure is not the company’s plan, which would leave Nikkei’s two biggest numbers sourced to nobody the company acknowledges and leave “nearly double” as the only number Toshiba has put its name to. On the other side of the trade: Seagate’s and Western Digital’s next quarterly calls, which on both companies’ recent cadence fall in the second half of October, though this desk read no confirmed date from either before the issue closed.

    Previous lag label0 trading days. The first sighting landed Thursday 1 October at 10:03 p.m., after that session’s close; the first mainstream American headline landed Friday 2 October at 8:18 a.m., before that session’s open. Not one session passed between them — ten hours and fifteen minutes end to end — and nobody on this trail had a tradeable head start. The first time the register has recorded that on a claim this size.

    1. 1 Oct 22:03 2026 · tier 3 · Investing.com

       First sighting the desk can stamp, relaying Nikkei: “Toshiba to double hard disk output capacity amid AI data centre demand - Nikkei.” Every figure in the claim, all attributed to Nikkei, with “about 60 billion yen ($380 million)”, the ten-to-thirty percent share target, new lines supporting drives with “up to 40% higher per-unit capacity” and mass production of 65-terabyte-class drives by 2030 “eventually targeting 100-terabyte-class products.” The stamp falls six hours after Thursday’s close.

       Recorded evidence tier: 3

       • Source 1: https://asia.nikkei.com/business/electronics/toshiba-to-double-hard-disk-drive-supply-to-fill-ai-chip-memory-gap
       • Source 2: https://za.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/toshiba-to-double-hard-disk-output-capacity-amid-ai-data-centre-demand--nikkei-4487521

    2. 2 Oct 02:00 2026 · tier 3 · Yahoo Finance UK

       The same Investing.com copy on Yahoo Finance’s United Kingdom pages, with one figure changed: the ¥60 billion is now “$400 million” where the Thursday evening original had $380 million. This desk’s Morning Brief logged the pair the same morning as a rounding and declined to log it as a decoy. A relay, not an independent surface.

       Recorded evidence tier: 3

    3. 2 Oct 2026 (clock reconciliation) · difference

       Two relays disagree and both are defensible: Investing.com’s copy says Nikkei reported “on Friday,” Benzinga’s says “Nikkei reported Thursday.” Nikkei publishes on Tokyo time, where Friday morning is Thursday night in New York. Recorded as a difference between clocks, not an error in either outlet; the trail is stamped in Eastern minutes the desk read directly.

    4. 2 Oct 08:18 2026 · tier 3 · Yahoo Finance

       First mainstream US headline, on its own markets pages: “Seagate and Western Digital shares fall on Toshiba HDD expansion.” Names Nikkei; Seagate down eleven percent, Western Digital seven, SanDisk about one; sets Toshiba’s current share, just over ten percent, against the thirty percent target and describes a market “dominated by three companies.” The lag closes here, before the opening bell.

       Recorded evidence tier: 3

       • Source 1: https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/seagate-western-digital-shares-fall-121819634.html

    5. 2 Oct 08:52 2026 · tier 4 · 24/7 Wall St.

       “Seagate Tumbles 10%, Western Digital Drops 7% as Toshiba Moves to Double Hard Disk Output,” Seagate 849.79, Western Digital 429.45. Recorded because of what it leaves out: it names no source at all — not Nikkei, not a release, not people familiar with anything — and states the expansion in the indicative. The version of the claim that travelled with the least behind it.

       Recorded evidence tier: 4

    6. 2 Oct 09:15 2026 · tier 4 · Benzinga

       Attribution restored: “Nikkei reported Thursday.” Seagate down 11.22 percent at 839.44, Western Digital down 7.95 percent at 425.80. Carries the sentence that explains the selling: the expansion “could raise concerns about future pricing in a market that has benefited from tight HDD supply.”

       Recorded evidence tier: 4

    7. 2 Oct 2026 · tier 1 · Toshiba TIP / TDSC

       Toshiba Information Equipment (Philippines) and Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage announced the first shipment from the expanded Laguna Technopark nearline HDD line. They aim to nearly double annual production capacity by FY2027 versus FY2025 on a storage-capacity basis. The release does not state a ¥60 billion investment, a 30% market-share goal, or a terabyte roadmap. Its publication date is 2 October; the release does not provide a comparable Eastern-time stamp, so the order against Nikkei reporting is not established.

       Recorded evidence tier: 1

       • Source 1: https://toshiba.semicon-storage.com/ap-en/company/news/news-topics/2026/10/storage-20261002-1.html

    8. 2 Oct 2026 · tier 4 · DigiTimes, TrendForce

       The trade press behind the wires rather than ahead of them, which on this beat is unusual. DigiTimes carried “Toshiba reportedly to double HDD production as AI drives storage demand,” item a20261002VL202, logged as a headline and date from the search index and not as a read: the page returned a 403. TrendForce in its news file as “Toshiba to Double AI Data Center HDD Capacity by FY2027 With $380M Expansion as AI Storage Demand Surges.”

       Recorded evidence tier: 4

    9. 2 Oct 18:25 2026 · tier 4 · Invezz

       Stamped 6:25 p.m. on its own page with no time zone given, so it is not placed on the desk’s clock. Cites Nikkei Asia; Seagate about thirteen percent lower and Western Digital about ten. The only piece read today carrying a named person on either side of the trade, and neither was speaking about the Nikkei report: Evercore ISI’s Amit Daryanani on both names’ pricing power and technology leadership, and Western Digital’s chief executive Irving Tan on “continued confidence in the durability of demand” for fiscal 2027.

       Recorded evidence tier: 4

    10. 2 Oct 2026 · tier 5 · relays

        Counted, not weighted: at least twelve further English-language sites, among them Stocktwits’ news file, GuruFocus twice, CoinCentral, Parameter, Cryptonomist, CryptoBriefing, TheCryptoBasic, HuggingNews, BigGo Finance, Futunn, ad-hoc-news and Finwire. All downstream of the same wire report.

        Recorded evidence tier: 5

    • Source 1: https://asia.nikkei.com/business/electronics/toshiba-to-double-hard-disk-drive-supply-to-fill-ai-chip-memory-gap
    • Source 2: https://za.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/toshiba-to-double-hard-disk-output-capacity-amid-ai-data-centre-demand--nikkei-4487521
    • Source 3: https://toshiba.semicon-storage.com/ap-en/company/news/news-topics/2026/10/storage-20261002-1.html
    Previous source and date metadata

    Previous supplied content as of2026-10-02

    Previous source-reported countstracked: 16 · open: 14 · confirmed: 2 · denied: 0 · expired: 0 · medianLagDays: 0

    Previous source and date notes

    This is the owner-supplied register as of 25 September 2026, not a fresh verification of the claims or market observations. Publication does not independently establish that a rumor is true.

    The supplied 24 September run note ends mid-sentence after “with the lags on 5, 6 and 9”. It is preserved as supplied; the missing remainder has not been reconstructed.

    The source names outlets, documents and domains but supplies no direct citation URLs. Citation lists are therefore empty. No article, filing or document URL has been inferred from a name or an accession number.

    The open tally includes both open and corroborated entries. The open status filter is narrower: it selects only entries whose status is open.

    The supplied tally reports a median lag of 0 days. A first-sighting-to-mainstream-headline median cannot be derived reliably: entry 7 has an undated first sighting and its zero measures document-to-wire time instead. The derived median is therefore unavailable; the reported figure is retained separately.

    Trail order and date labels are preserved as supplied, including the 24 September check before the 23 September check in entry 1. No missing observation time, date or year has been inferred.

    These import notes describe the original September 25 owner-supplied package. Later dated editorial updates and selected direct source links have been added; the original statement that its citation lists were empty is historical, not a description of the current register. Unlinked historical desk checks remain attributed to the supplied artifact rather than independently verified by hosting.

    Previous supplied correction history

    When the desk gets a trail wrong — a sighting misdated, a tier misjudged, a status moved too early — the correction is recorded here, dated, and the entry is amended below with the change marked.

    18 September. A note on a published number rather than a correction to one. The tally band's open tile counts every rumor that has not been settled by a document, which includes those at corroborated; it has read that way since this register was built and it is left reading that way.

    19 September. Two issues were published for Friday. The desk's scheduled run posted No. 2 on Friday afternoon, adding entries 3 and 4. A second issue, reported on Friday afternoon while that run was still working and published on Saturday, is numbered No. 3 and adds entries 5, 6 and 7. Neither issue restates the other and no entry has been renumbered. With seven rumors tracked and one confirmed, open is six and the median lag of resolved rumors is zero.

    21 September — entry 3 amended. The Whisper, No. 2, reported that no mainstream American outlet had carried the AMD price-increase claim as of 12:44 p.m. on Friday 18 September, and left entry 3's lag running. It had. The 5:22 a.m. Friday relay that No. 2 logged as a Stocktwits item was published on Yahoo Finance's markets pages, under the headline "AMD Stock Rises Premarket: Report Flags Chip Price Hike Linked To TSMC Costs," and Yahoo Finance is one of the outlets this desk uses to mark the end of a lag. The desk read the item and misfiled its publisher. That line is re-tiered and marked as the first mainstream US headline below, and entry 3's lag is corrected from running to one trading day. Corrected at full size at the top of The Whisper, No. 4.

    21 September — entry 3's first sighting re-stamped. The Whisper, No. 2, stamped Wccftech's piece at 12:26 p.m. Eastern on 17 September. That is the UTC time carried in the page's metadata. The article's own byline reads "Sarfraz Khan · Sep 17, 2026 at 08:26am EDT," and the correct stamp is 8:26 a.m. Eastern, sixty-four minutes before that session's open. The trail below is amended. The lag is unaffected at one trading day, but No. 2's argument that AMD's advance "began in the premarket, hours before the report existed" rested on the wrong time and is withdrawn: AMD opened that morning at 533.60 against 512.50, a gap of 4.12 percent on two feeds. Where the stock traded before 8:26 the desk cannot establish, and it no longer claims the move came first.

    21 September — entries 4 and 7 corrected: SK hynix is US-listed. Both entries stated that no US-listed security exists for SK hynix, and the 21 September note that first appeared here treated the question as open. It is not. SK hynix Inc. American Depositary Shares have traded on Nasdaq as SKHY since 10 July 2026, on a Form F-1 filed 24 June and amended 30 June and 6 July (CIK 0002120882, file 333-296987); Nasdaq's own security page carries the line, and the older OTC line HXSCL is a separate security whose prices will not reconcile with it. Benzinga's ticker was right and this register was wrong. Both tape lines are amended. No figure published here depended on the error, because no reading was ever sworn in for either entry — which is how it survived three issues.

    22 September — entry 2 amended: a company statement this register had missed. Entry 2's trail ran from Bloomberg's 14 September report to two desk checks that found no Form F-1, and recorded no company response. There was one. On 15 September, the day after the report, Kioxia published a "Notice Regarding Certain Media Reports" stating that such reports "are not announcements made by the Company" and that "details of the listing such as the schedule, listing market, and listing method have not yet been decided." That is a tier-1 document and it sat unlogged through Nos. 2, 3 and 4. It is added to the trail below. It does not move the status: it confirms that a listing preparation exists, which the company itself disclosed in May, and declines to adopt the size, the exchange, the timing or the banks — which is what the claim as printed was about. Recorded at full size in The Whisper, No. 5.

    23 September — a note on the run, not a correction. The Whisper, No. 6, was delivered after its 12:30 p.m. slot: the sweep ran long and the issue's last observations are stamped between 1:13 and 1:19 p.m. rather than before the hour. Its figures and its lag counts are stamped to those minutes and are accurate to them. No entry below is amended by this issue; entry 9 is added and entries 1, 3, 5 and 6 have a 23 September desk check appended, with the lags on 5 and 6 advanced by one session each.

    24 September — entry 2 corrected: a Form F-6 this register said did not exist, and a second facility besides. Entry 2's desk check of 22 September reported "still no Form F-1 or F-6 for Kioxia." The F-1 half holds; the F-6 half does not. A Form F-6EF sits on EDGAR under accession 0001019155-26-000048, filed 11 February 2026, registering 50,000,000 American depositary shares over Kioxia common stock and naming no exchange. Kioxia did not file it: it is signed by The Bank of New York Mellon, as Depositary, and Kioxia Holdings Corporation appears in it only as "the issuer of deposited securities," neither registrant nor signatory. Nor is it the facility that trades: the over-the-counter line KXIAY is a separate unsponsored programme with J.P. Morgan as depositary, announced 9 March 2026, ratio 10:1, CUSIP 49726J108. Two depositary banks have built receipts over Kioxia's shares and the company signed neither, which is why the status does not move: an unsponsored facility is a bank's decision and an F-6 registers receipts, not an offering. The claim tracked here — size, banks, an exchange — still needs an F-1 and an exchange application, and neither exists. The trail below is amended. The desk kept running the EDGAR search that returns SK hynix, the trap it had itself recorded on 22 September, and concluded from it that nothing was there. Corrected at full size at the top of The Whisper, No. 7.

    24 September — a note on the run, not a correction. The Whisper, No. 7, was delivered after its 12:30 p.m. slot: the sweep ran long and the issue's observations are stamped between 11:11 a.m. and 1:41 p.m. rather than before the hour, and are accurate to those minutes. Entry 10 is added and entries 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 and 9 have a 24 September desk check appended, with the lags on 5, 6 and 9

    25 September — a note on the run, not a correction. The Whisper, No. 8, was delivered after its 12:30 p.m. slot; its observations are stamped between 11:10 a.m. and 12:20 p.m. and are accurate to those minutes. The desk’s principal asked mid-run that the sweep be widened beyond the AI supply chain to technology, biotechnology and financials; it was, and nothing outside the usual beat cleared the floor, which is recorded in the issue’s “seen, not printed” counts. Entry 11 is added and entries 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9 and 10 have a 25 September desk check appended, with the lags on 5, 6, 9 and 10 advanced by one session each.

    28 September — a note on the run, not a correction. The Whisper, No. 9, was built between 11:10 a.m. and 12:20 p.m. Eastern and its observations are stamped to those minutes. No new claim cleared the floor today and no entry is added: the register stays at eleven. Entry 6 is the issue’s feature and its lag is filled at nine trading days, closed by a Yahoo Finance headline published at 11:07 p.m. Eastern on Sunday 27 September — after Friday’s close and before Monday’s open — carrying a 2nm figure a third larger than the one this register has tracked since 14 September. The revision is a sighting and not a document, so the status does not move. Entries 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10 and 11 have a 28 September desk check appended, with the lags on 5, 9, 10 and 11 advanced by one session each. Reproduced here from the already-published 28 September update note.

    29 September — The Whisper, No. 10, was built between 11:11 a.m. and 12:40 p.m. Eastern and delivered after its 12:30 slot. Entry 12 was added. The active artifact trails include 29 September desk checks for entries 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10 and 11; the lags on 5, 9, 10 and 11 advanced. Its run note also names entry 1, but no 29 September check appears in that active entry, so none has been reconstructed from the HTML comment.

    29 September — a second pass, and a withdrawal. After No. 10 was first assembled, the desk’s principal asked whether the sweep had been thorough. It had not. The extended pass added EDGAR’s full-text index, Polymarket, Data Center Dynamics and the biotechnology trade press, and it produced the 22 April Alpha Compute filing now at the head of entry 12’s trail, together with two documented negatives. The issue was rebuilt around it and republished before it went to Substack. Withdrawn in the same pass: the first build’s “seen, not printed” count of twenty-two items in six categories, which was reconstructed rather than tallied and rested on no social sweep. It is replaced by a shorter section the desk can reproduce. Also recorded, because it should have been carried into entry 3’s check: AMD announced a definitive agreement to acquire World Labs in an approximately $8.2 billion all-stock transaction, subject to closing conditions on 28 September, which is a document and not a rumor and therefore does not enter this register. The AMD primary release is linked in entry 3’s 29 September context observation.

    30 September — The Whisper, No. 11, was built between 11:10 a.m. and 12:55 p.m. Eastern and delivered after its 12:30 slot. Entry 13 was added; active trails add 30 September checks to entries 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11 and 12. The lags on 5, 9, 10 and 11 advanced. The Yahoo Finance Canada relay is distinguished from a qualifying mainstream-US headline in entry 13; its US-headline lag remains unclosed under this register’s stated rule. No decoy was logged in the supplied sweep.

    30 September — editorial evidence check for entry 12. The supplied active artifact labels the early-stage Nvidia insurance talks corroborated. The linked material establishes an FT report and syndications, but no separate independent report, signed insurance agreement, or qualifying market signal. The hosted status is held open pending that evidence; this is a status-methodology correction, not a denial of the FT report.

    2 October 2026 — This editorial revision incorporates the owner-supplied desk checks from The Whisper, Nos. 12 and 13 and adds entries 14–16. It preserves prior public corrections. EDN supplied the Dallas, six-fab and potential Texas spending details while Reuters reported only evaluation of a Texas investment. Toshiba's own release supports the FY2027 capacity target, not Nikkei's investment or market-share figures. Bloomberg described preliminary Alibaba–Solaria talks; the Solaria facility is in Puertollano, but Alibaba's proposed data-center location is not established. Dated source observations are historical desk records, not earlier public register revisions.

18. 2026-10-16T17:37:40.966Z · Entry 20

    October 16 staged import, part 2: add permanent entry 20 through the expiry-review route, retaining its 9 October historical expiry. 197 inclusive sessions equals 196 elapsed sessions. Expiry is not a verdict on the claim. The remaining historical observations and entries 21–26 follow in the final batch.

19. 2026-10-16T17:38:11.951Z · Entry 20, Entry 21, Entry 22, Entry 23, Entry 24, Entry 25, Entry 26

    October 16 staged import complete: add entries 21–26 and the remaining historical observations for expired entry 20; append the supplied October 5–16 run history without removing prior notes. Final tally: 26 tracked, 21 unsettled, 4 confirmed, 1 expired. Prior hosted corrections remain; entry 24 stays open pending independent evidence. Entry 21 is confirmed only at the preliminary-guidance stage. Source-reported median 0.5 is not a derived statistic.

    Prior record for entry 20

    Previous first-seen label28 DEC 2025

    Previous source-record statusexpired

    Previous recorded claimTSMC will raise prices from January 2027 — mature nodes by roughly 3 to 10 percent, advanced nodes 5 to 10 and advanced packaging 10 to 15 — as part of an escalator its advanced-node customers were told would run four consecutive years, per Economic Daily News and, separately, Central News Agency, each reached through English accounts of them. TSMC has neither confirmed nor denied it on any page this desk read. The Whisper, No. 16.

    Previous tapenot sworn. No reading was taken for this entry: the claim has been in print for more than nine months with no single session the desk can attribute a move to, and it prints no price rather than a selected one.

    Previous settlement account or criterionSettles it: TSMC’s earnings call on 15 October, the first scheduled occasion on which the January increase can be put to the company; a customer disclosing a price-driven cost step in 2027 guidance; or TSMC’s own pricing commentary in a quarterly report.

    Previous lag labelblank, and never closed. No mainstream American outlet carried the January figures at any point, searched again on 12 October. Final count: 197 sessions from 29 December 2025 to 9 October 2026 inclusive, US market holidays excluded — this desk’s count, and the longest this register has carried.

    1. 9 Oct · desk check · expiry

       Status moved to expired for The Whisper, No. 18. This register expires a rumor after thirty trading days without a tier-one or tier-two event. No such event has ever appeared on this trail: three trade-press surfaces across nine and a half months, no company comment, no denial, no filing and no named executive. 197 sessions from 29 December 2025 to 9 October 2026 inclusive, US market holidays excluded. Expiry is a status and not a verdict: the claim may well be true, the entry keeps its trail, and TSMC’s third-quarter call on Thursday 15 October is the first scheduled occasion on which anyone can put the January increase to the company. Counting basis checked for publication: the source’s 197 is inclusive of both 29 December 2025 and 9 October 2026; the elapsed-session input is 196, excluding the first session. Weekends and full NYSE holidays are excluded; shortened sessions count as trading sessions. The first-sighting label remains 28 DEC 2025 (a Sunday). This historical expiry is being imported now, not backdated as a public save.

       • Source 1: https://www.nyse.com/trade/hours-calendars

    • Source 1: https://www.trendforce.com/news/2026/10/05/news-tsmc-earnings-preview-terafab-talks-price-hikes-and-a14-intel-race-lead-five-key-themes/
    • Source 2: https://www.trendforce.com/news/2026/07/13/news-tsmc-reportedly-notifies-ic-designers-of-mature-node-price-hikes-starting-jan-2027-increase-seen-in-single-digits/
    Previous source and date metadata

    Previous supplied content as of2026-10-16

    Previous source-reported countstracked: 19 · open: 16 · confirmed: 3 · denied: 0 · expired: 0 · medianLagDays: not available

    Previous source and date notes

    This is the owner-supplied register as of 25 September 2026, not a fresh verification of the claims or market observations. Publication does not independently establish that a rumor is true.

    The supplied 24 September run note ends mid-sentence after “with the lags on 5, 6 and 9”. It is preserved as supplied; the missing remainder has not been reconstructed.

    The source names outlets, documents and domains but supplies no direct citation URLs. Citation lists are therefore empty. No article, filing or document URL has been inferred from a name or an accession number.

    The open tally includes both open and corroborated entries. The open status filter is narrower: it selects only entries whose status is open.

    The supplied tally reports a median lag of 0 days. A first-sighting-to-mainstream-headline median cannot be derived reliably: entry 7 has an undated first sighting and its zero measures document-to-wire time instead. The derived median is therefore unavailable; the reported figure is retained separately.

    Trail order and date labels are preserved as supplied, including the 24 September check before the 23 September check in entry 1. No missing observation time, date or year has been inferred.

    These import notes describe the original September 25 owner-supplied package. Later dated editorial updates and selected direct source links have been added; the original statement that its citation lists were empty is historical, not a description of the current register. Unlinked historical desk checks remain attributed to the supplied artifact rather than independently verified by hosting.

    Previous supplied correction history

    When the desk gets a trail wrong — a sighting misdated, a tier misjudged, a status moved too early — the correction is recorded here, dated, and the entry is amended below with the change marked.

    18 September. A note on a published number rather than a correction to one. The tally band's open tile counts every rumor that has not been settled by a document, which includes those at corroborated; it has read that way since this register was built and it is left reading that way.

    19 September. Two issues were published for Friday. The desk's scheduled run posted No. 2 on Friday afternoon, adding entries 3 and 4. A second issue, reported on Friday afternoon while that run was still working and published on Saturday, is numbered No. 3 and adds entries 5, 6 and 7. Neither issue restates the other and no entry has been renumbered. With seven rumors tracked and one confirmed, open is six and the median lag of resolved rumors is zero.

    21 September — entry 3 amended. The Whisper, No. 2, reported that no mainstream American outlet had carried the AMD price-increase claim as of 12:44 p.m. on Friday 18 September, and left entry 3's lag running. It had. The 5:22 a.m. Friday relay that No. 2 logged as a Stocktwits item was published on Yahoo Finance's markets pages, under the headline "AMD Stock Rises Premarket: Report Flags Chip Price Hike Linked To TSMC Costs," and Yahoo Finance is one of the outlets this desk uses to mark the end of a lag. The desk read the item and misfiled its publisher. That line is re-tiered and marked as the first mainstream US headline below, and entry 3's lag is corrected from running to one trading day. Corrected at full size at the top of The Whisper, No. 4.

    21 September — entry 3's first sighting re-stamped. The Whisper, No. 2, stamped Wccftech's piece at 12:26 p.m. Eastern on 17 September. That is the UTC time carried in the page's metadata. The article's own byline reads "Sarfraz Khan · Sep 17, 2026 at 08:26am EDT," and the correct stamp is 8:26 a.m. Eastern, sixty-four minutes before that session's open. The trail below is amended. The lag is unaffected at one trading day, but No. 2's argument that AMD's advance "began in the premarket, hours before the report existed" rested on the wrong time and is withdrawn: AMD opened that morning at 533.60 against 512.50, a gap of 4.12 percent on two feeds. Where the stock traded before 8:26 the desk cannot establish, and it no longer claims the move came first.

    21 September — entries 4 and 7 corrected: SK hynix is US-listed. Both entries stated that no US-listed security exists for SK hynix, and the 21 September note that first appeared here treated the question as open. It is not. SK hynix Inc. American Depositary Shares have traded on Nasdaq as SKHY since 10 July 2026, on a Form F-1 filed 24 June and amended 30 June and 6 July (CIK 0002120882, file 333-296987); Nasdaq's own security page carries the line, and the older OTC line HXSCL is a separate security whose prices will not reconcile with it. Benzinga's ticker was right and this register was wrong. Both tape lines are amended. No figure published here depended on the error, because no reading was ever sworn in for either entry — which is how it survived three issues.

    22 September — entry 2 amended: a company statement this register had missed. Entry 2's trail ran from Bloomberg's 14 September report to two desk checks that found no Form F-1, and recorded no company response. There was one. On 15 September, the day after the report, Kioxia published a "Notice Regarding Certain Media Reports" stating that such reports "are not announcements made by the Company" and that "details of the listing such as the schedule, listing market, and listing method have not yet been decided." That is a tier-1 document and it sat unlogged through Nos. 2, 3 and 4. It is added to the trail below. It does not move the status: it confirms that a listing preparation exists, which the company itself disclosed in May, and declines to adopt the size, the exchange, the timing or the banks — which is what the claim as printed was about. Recorded at full size in The Whisper, No. 5.

    23 September — a note on the run, not a correction. The Whisper, No. 6, was delivered after its 12:30 p.m. slot: the sweep ran long and the issue's last observations are stamped between 1:13 and 1:19 p.m. rather than before the hour. Its figures and its lag counts are stamped to those minutes and are accurate to them. No entry below is amended by this issue; entry 9 is added and entries 1, 3, 5 and 6 have a 23 September desk check appended, with the lags on 5 and 6 advanced by one session each.

    24 September — entry 2 corrected: a Form F-6 this register said did not exist, and a second facility besides. Entry 2's desk check of 22 September reported "still no Form F-1 or F-6 for Kioxia." The F-1 half holds; the F-6 half does not. A Form F-6EF sits on EDGAR under accession 0001019155-26-000048, filed 11 February 2026, registering 50,000,000 American depositary shares over Kioxia common stock and naming no exchange. Kioxia did not file it: it is signed by The Bank of New York Mellon, as Depositary, and Kioxia Holdings Corporation appears in it only as "the issuer of deposited securities," neither registrant nor signatory. Nor is it the facility that trades: the over-the-counter line KXIAY is a separate unsponsored programme with J.P. Morgan as depositary, announced 9 March 2026, ratio 10:1, CUSIP 49726J108. Two depositary banks have built receipts over Kioxia's shares and the company signed neither, which is why the status does not move: an unsponsored facility is a bank's decision and an F-6 registers receipts, not an offering. The claim tracked here — size, banks, an exchange — still needs an F-1 and an exchange application, and neither exists. The trail below is amended. The desk kept running the EDGAR search that returns SK hynix, the trap it had itself recorded on 22 September, and concluded from it that nothing was there. Corrected at full size at the top of The Whisper, No. 7.

    24 September — a note on the run, not a correction. The Whisper, No. 7, was delivered after its 12:30 p.m. slot: the sweep ran long and the issue's observations are stamped between 11:11 a.m. and 1:41 p.m. rather than before the hour, and are accurate to those minutes. Entry 10 is added and entries 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 and 9 have a 24 September desk check appended, with the lags on 5, 6 and 9

    25 September — a note on the run, not a correction. The Whisper, No. 8, was delivered after its 12:30 p.m. slot; its observations are stamped between 11:10 a.m. and 12:20 p.m. and are accurate to those minutes. The desk’s principal asked mid-run that the sweep be widened beyond the AI supply chain to technology, biotechnology and financials; it was, and nothing outside the usual beat cleared the floor, which is recorded in the issue’s “seen, not printed” counts. Entry 11 is added and entries 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9 and 10 have a 25 September desk check appended, with the lags on 5, 6, 9 and 10 advanced by one session each.

    28 September — a note on the run, not a correction. The Whisper, No. 9, was built between 11:10 a.m. and 12:20 p.m. Eastern and its observations are stamped to those minutes. No new claim cleared the floor today and no entry is added: the register stays at eleven. Entry 6 is the issue’s feature and its lag is filled at nine trading days, closed by a Yahoo Finance headline published at 11:07 p.m. Eastern on Sunday 27 September — after Friday’s close and before Monday’s open — carrying a 2nm figure a third larger than the one this register has tracked since 14 September. The revision is a sighting and not a document, so the status does not move. Entries 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10 and 11 have a 28 September desk check appended, with the lags on 5, 9, 10 and 11 advanced by one session each. Reproduced here from the already-published 28 September update note.

    29 September — The Whisper, No. 10, was built between 11:11 a.m. and 12:40 p.m. Eastern and delivered after its 12:30 slot. Entry 12 was added. The active artifact trails include 29 September desk checks for entries 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10 and 11; the lags on 5, 9, 10 and 11 advanced. Its run note also names entry 1, but no 29 September check appears in that active entry, so none has been reconstructed from the HTML comment.

    29 September — a second pass, and a withdrawal. After No. 10 was first assembled, the desk’s principal asked whether the sweep had been thorough. It had not. The extended pass added EDGAR’s full-text index, Polymarket, Data Center Dynamics and the biotechnology trade press, and it produced the 22 April Alpha Compute filing now at the head of entry 12’s trail, together with two documented negatives. The issue was rebuilt around it and republished before it went to Substack. Withdrawn in the same pass: the first build’s “seen, not printed” count of twenty-two items in six categories, which was reconstructed rather than tallied and rested on no social sweep. It is replaced by a shorter section the desk can reproduce. Also recorded, because it should have been carried into entry 3’s check: AMD announced a definitive agreement to acquire World Labs in an approximately $8.2 billion all-stock transaction, subject to closing conditions on 28 September, which is a document and not a rumor and therefore does not enter this register. The AMD primary release is linked in entry 3’s 29 September context observation.

    30 September — The Whisper, No. 11, was built between 11:10 a.m. and 12:55 p.m. Eastern and delivered after its 12:30 slot. Entry 13 was added; active trails add 30 September checks to entries 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11 and 12. The lags on 5, 9, 10 and 11 advanced. The Yahoo Finance Canada relay is distinguished from a qualifying mainstream-US headline in entry 13; its US-headline lag remains unclosed under this register’s stated rule. No decoy was logged in the supplied sweep.

    30 September — editorial evidence check for entry 12. The supplied active artifact labels the early-stage Nvidia insurance talks corroborated. The linked material establishes an FT report and syndications, but no separate independent report, signed insurance agreement, or qualifying market signal. The hosted status is held open pending that evidence; this is a status-methodology correction, not a denial of the FT report.

    2 October 2026 — This editorial revision incorporates the owner-supplied desk checks from The Whisper, Nos. 12 and 13 and adds entries 14–16. It preserves prior public corrections. EDN supplied the Dallas, six-fab and potential Texas spending details while Reuters reported only evaluation of a Texas investment. Toshiba's own release supports the FY2027 capacity target, not Nikkei's investment or market-share figures. Bloomberg described preliminary Alibaba–Solaria talks; the Solaria facility is in Puertollano, but Alibaba's proposed data-center location is not established. Dated source observations are historical desk records, not earlier public register revisions.