Today · post October 13

CASCI posts first drop in 12 months; its method isn't public

Tim Culpan, a former Bloomberg columnist who founded the publication Culpium, says CASCI, the index Culpan built to track revenue across Taiwan's AI compute supply chain, fell in September for the first time in 12 months because of capacity constraints. The post reads: "CASCI Posts First Drop in 12 Months as Constraints Bite" (Tim Culpan, 2026-10-13). Culpan's Culpium article says the drag came from labor and manufacturing shortages, not from demand peaking (Culpium, 2026-10-13). CASCI is an index of Culpan's own making. Its method isn't public, and the post doesn't give the size of the drop. What this means for Taiwan's supply chain: if Culpan's attribution holds, the September turn in Taiwan's AI server chain came from the supply side, not from orders. That is our reading, extending Culpan's attribution, and it isn't settled. If revenue recovers in the coming months as capacity loosens and orders don't weaken, the reading holds. If orders weaken too, it doesn't. How we checked →

Concept illustration of an open laptop whose screen shows a black banner lettered CULPIUM across the top with two grey bars beneath it, and at left a red server rack with five perforated units stacked in its lower half below an open frame. At right on the screen, a black sign lettered TAIWAN is mounted on the wall above a workbench holding a screwdriver and a wrench, with a round stool at the bench; the laptop's keyboard and touchpad sit below the screen.

Source and checks

This item ran in the brief of Oct 14, 2026, alongside 14 other items. How we checked it, the quote checks and what was still missing that day are on that issue's How we checked page.

Cite this item

SecondSource (2026). "CASCI posts first drop in 12 months; its method isn't public." https://secondsource.io/en/news/2026-10-14-6/. Accessed access date.