Google stock fell 1% in early premarket trading on Monday after a report said Alphabet, Inc. is developing an upgraded TPU v9 chip codenamed Triggerfish with MediaTek as its exclusive development partner. The planned chip is being framed as the next step in Google’s custom AI hardware push, with production slated to begin in late 2027 and volume expected to ramp in 2028.
The move matters because investors had just watched GOOGL gain 2.3% over the prior breakout week after a five-week slide, and the new chip detail gave the rally a fresh test. For Google, the report points to a company that keeps leaning on its own silicon for AI instead of depending only on Nvidia accelerators, while also giving MediaTek a bigger role in the custom chip market.
Ming-Chi Kuo said Triggerfish builds on Google’s existing TPU v9 platform known internally as Humufish, but with stronger inference performance aimed at next-generation AI workloads such as AI agents and reinforcement learning. He said the new chip would carry SRAM capacity two to three times larger than Humufish and move to HBM4E memory, up from HBM4 in the current design. In Kuo’s estimate, Humufish has lifetime shipments of roughly 4 million to 5 million units, while Triggerfish would add another 1 million to 2 million units.
That timeline helps explain why the program is still years away from production. Late 2027 leaves room for design work, validation and supply-chain planning, and 2028 suggests Google is not just sketching a future chip but planning for a broader deployment cycle once the hardware is ready. The schedule also puts Triggerfish into a market where Broadcom and Marvell still dominate custom AI silicon, even as MediaTek is reported to be winning more business with Google.
The broader shift is already visible. Google has increasingly relied on custom TPUs for products such as Gemini and also offers them through Google Cloud, while MediaTek has recently deepened its partnership with Nvidia for the GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip and Nvidia’s wider AI computing efforts. It has also expanded cooperation with Microsoft around edge AI, giving the company a wider footprint across the sector than its smartphone roots once suggested.
For now, the market has to price a chip program that is real enough to move the stock but far enough out that confirmation still matters. If Google does move ahead on the reported Triggerfish schedule, the bigger question is not whether it wants more custom silicon. It is how quickly it can turn that ambition into shipped hardware while the rest of the AI chip market keeps moving around it.
