China's electric vehicle (EV) makers are shifting more of their R&D toward humanoid robots, betting the next phase of AI competition will centre on physical-world applications rather than in-car systems. As US-China tech tensions rise, automakers including Xpeng, Chery, Nio, BYD, GAC, and Seres are using their EV engineering and autonomous-driving AI to develop robots with autonomous mobility and semantic understanding, positioning embodied intelligence as their next strategic arena
Nvidia is reportedly adopting low-power DDR (LPDDR) memory in its servers to enhance power efficiency, marking a major shift in memory architecture. Industry analysts suggest this move could elevate LPDDR to become a core semiconductor in the AI era, following the prominence of high-bandwidth memory (HBM)
Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry plans to invest JPY100 billion (US$671 million) in Rapidus in fiscal 2025, securing a controlling stake as the government accelerates its push to rebuild domestic advanced chip manufacturing. The funding will be executed through the Information-Technology Promotion Agency, and Rapidus aims to reach break-even around 2030 and pursue an initial public offering in 2031
South Korea's SK Hynix is reportedly considering establishing a memory chip assembly and testing (ATMP) facility in India. However, the company's recent public announcement of investment plans did not mention any facility in India, leaving the potential entry unconfirmed
Toshiba's sudden move from its long-standing partnership with Rohm Semiconductor to a brief collaboration with China's Sicc unsettled Japan's power semiconductor sector. Toshiba reversed course after METI intervened, but uncertainty still surrounds the future of its relationship with Rohm
India's efforts to build large language models (LLMs) for its diverse linguistic landscape are accelerating, driven by community-led data collection, academic research, and government-backed AI initiatives. With more than 1,600 languages and dialects spoken across the country, developers say the lack of high-quality digital data — especially for low-resource languages — is one of the biggest obstacles to creating AI systems that work for Indian users
Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong stated that the government is studying multiple energy options but needs to carefully evaluate each option due to the country's limited land area
The memory shortage is rippling through the PC supply chain, prompting vendors to scramble for DRAM allocations at upstream suppliers. Industry sources say senior Asus executives have joined MediaTek in making direct trips to Samsung Electronics in a bid to secure inventory
South Korean battery maker SK On has restructured its investment portfolio by exchanging shares with Chinese battery firm EVE Energy, resulting in SK On acquiring full ownership of its Jiangsu-based joint venture SKOJ and divesting its entire stake in the Guangdong-based EUE factory. This move aims to enhance operational efficiency amid challenges in the EV market
India has renewed its push to become a global semiconductor hub, setting an ambitious target to match the manufacturing capabilities of leading producers by 2032. Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the country expects to reach a "level playing field" with major chipmaking nations within the next decade, as New Delhi accelerates investment to build domestic capacity. "By 2031–2032, we will be equivalent to what many of these countries are at today," he told Bloomberg's New Economy Forum in Singapore
Japanese ceramics firm NGK Insulators has announced plans to triple its production capacity of support wafers by fiscal year 2027 (April 2027-March 2028). More specifically, these refer to double-sided polished alumina ceramic HICERAM Carriers used in chiplet packaging
Fujifilm will build a semiconductor materials plant in India for regional exports; Ziroh Labs promotes CPU-first AI compute; India approves 17 ECMS projects worth US$810 million to expand component manufacturing
Doosan Electronic Business Group (Doosan Electro-Materials) is on track to become the exclusive supplier of copper-clad laminate (CCL) for Nvidia's next-generation AI chip, Rubin, following Taiwan competitor Elite Material Co. (EMC)'s failure to pass quality certification for the Nvidia Blackwell GB300 compute tray
SK Hynix is reportedly preparing a major ramp-up of its next-generation 1c DRAM production, with plans to increase capacity eightfold in 2026 to meet rising demand for high-performance general-purpose memory in server and accelerator systems. The chipmaker is expected to boost output of GDDR7 and SOCAMM2 modules built on the 1c platform to support growing orders from Nvidia and global cloud service providers
