A fire broke out at Foxlink’s plant in Tucheng, New Taipei City, at around 8 a.m. on November 9, prompting the city’s fire department to dispatch multiple vehicles and emergency personnel. The company said it evacuated all employees, formed a crisis response team, and found no casualties in its initial assessment, while the cause and extent of the damage remain under investigation.
Taiwanese passive component makers Yageo and Walsin Technology reported contrasting October results, with Yageo posting record monthly revenue on strong AI demand while Walsin's sales declined from September due to China's National Day holidays. Both companies recorded year-over-year revenue growth of more than 50%.
Nvidia showcased its work with South Korean manufacturers on robot simulation, precision sanding and factory digital twins as its AI Day Seoul event opened on November 9, despite the absence of senior director Madison Huang, who canceled her planned visit to South Korea.
An incoming Democratic majority in the US Congress is likely to place Nvidia under greater scrutiny in light of recent revelations that the chipmaker's CEO, Jensen Huang, had an affair with an alleged Chinese spy. The legislature is already advancing a series of bills that seek to halt the flow of advanced US chips to China.
Trinity Fab, a semiconductor testing facility backed by SK Hynix and South Korean public bodies, will begin testing chipmaking equipment and materials in October 2027, The Elec reported on November 8. The KRW874.6 billion (approx. US$651 million) facility will operate under SK Hynix's mass-production standards, giving domestic suppliers access to production-grade testing without building their own facilities.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s admission of an extramarital affair with Alice Huang, a former senior executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed, has triggered controversy, while China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has again rejected allegations that she was a Chinese spy.
Anthropic’s generative AI service Claude suffered a data breach affecting more than 100 South Korean enterprise accounts, exposing customer names, email addresses, account IDs, organization IDs, subscription tiers, and usage and spending metrics.
South Korea has approved a seven-year national research program to support display technology development and provide companies with shared testing and commercialization facilities. The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources said the program will run from 2027 to 2033, with a total budget of KRW368.87 billion (US$272.15 million), including KRW278.9 billion in government funding.
Space-based data centers could open a new market for low-power AI chips, but moving computing workloads into orbit presents challenges involving radiation, cooling, and hardware reliability. South Korean AI chip developer Rebellions is calling for government support to help companies establish a track record in space, while researchers recommend adapting existing processors rather than developing new chips from scratch.
Sharp said it could begin delivering its new AI servers to customers as early as March 2027, leveraging parent company Foxconn's procurement and manufacturing capabilities to target Japan's growing AI server market.
Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix face uncertainty over demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) as US lawmakers press for tighter controls on AI chip exports to China following allegations involving Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
Zhu Yiming, chairman of ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), reportedly participated in Chinese AI startup DeepSeek's second funding round, drawing attention to his semiconductor investment network. Neither DeepSeek nor the reported investors have confirmed the claims, leaving the investment entity, amount, and shareholding structure unclear.
Mitsui Chemicals plans to acquire semiconductor materials maker JSR in a transaction valued at JPY1.84 trillion (approx. US$11.6 billion), including assumed debt, as it seeks to strengthen its position in the global semiconductor materials market and accelerate a broader business portfolio transformation.
A decade ago, China's Tsinghua Unigroup alarmed Taiwan's semiconductor industry with an aggressive acquisition campaign. Under then-chairman Zhao Weiguo, the group acquired Spreadtrum Communications and RDA Microelectronics, sought stakes in Powertech, SPIL and ChipMOS, and publicly expressed interest in integrating MediaTek. Its financial firepower and rapid expansion unsettled Taiwanese chipmakers.
Global sales of electrified vehicles, including hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), are forecast to rise 11.9% to more than 36 million units in 2026, even as overall vehicle sales decline 1.4%, reflecting the accelerating shift toward electrification. Electrified vehicles are expected to account for more than 35% of global new-vehicle sales, while China's BYD is poised to enter the world's top five automakers for the first time, according to Richard Hsieh, senior research manager at the Industry, Science and Technology International Strategy Center of Taiwan's government-funded Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI).
Fino, a South Korean company backed by Chinese precursor producer CNGR Advanced Material, will raise about KRW183 billion (approximately US$130 million) through a cash capital increase to fund its lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cathode materials business. The move is widely viewed as another step to reduce Chinese ownership and comply with the US Prohibited Foreign Entity (PFE) rules.
