DIGITIMES: News and Insight of the Global Supply Chain

South Korea unveils AI cooperation agenda as Nvidia partnerships expand

DIGITIMES — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 00:33:16 GMT

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung launched an AI-focused visit to Silicon Valley by announcing a "San Francisco AI Declaration" aimed at promoting international cooperation in artificial intelligence, while a series of technology partnerships involving Nvidia, South Korean companies and US firms were announced alongside the visit, according to The Chosun Daily, Reuters, and Bloomberg.

South Korean leaders meet Nvidia as AI partnerships expand

DIGITIMES — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 00:06:45 GMT

South Korean President Jae Myung Lee, senior government officials, business executives, and researchers gathered in San Francisco this week for an AI summit with Nvidia and industry partners, highlighting South Korea's efforts to strengthen its artificial intelligence ecosystem and expand international collaboration.

Intel, China-based Lens Technology partner to explore glass substrate semiconductor packaging

DIGITIMES — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 00:01:10 GMT

Intel Corporation and Lens Technology have announced a strategic collaboration to explore the development of advanced semiconductor packaging technologies using glass substrates. The companies said the initiative aims to support future computing platforms by improving performance, increasing interconnect density, and enhancing power efficiency.

Google raises capex outlook as compute demand stays tight, boosting Foxconn

Charlene Chen — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 11:28:13 GMT

Alphabet, Google's parent company, has raised its capital expenditure forecast to US$195-205 billion and signaled a significant increase again in 2027, while openly saying that AI compute remains in short supply and demand continues to outpace investment. Market participants say the message is a clear sign that the AI data center buildout cycle has not yet peaked.

SK Hynix seeks US engineers for 3D stacked DRAM push

DIGITIMES — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 08:43:23 GMT

SK Hynix is recruiting engineers in San Jose to co-design 3D stacked DRAM-on-logic with US customers, extending its custom memory strategy beyond high-bandwidth memory and toward on-device AI applications.

Huawei founder endorses Tau Law as sole path for post-Moore chip development

Scarlett Yu — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 08:29:23 GMT

Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei has publicly endorsed the company's τ (tau) Law as Huawei's sole technological path for advancing semiconductor development, underscoring six years of sustained investment in the approach. Rather than attempting to disrupt the existing semiconductor industry, Ren said the initiative aims to establish a sustainable path for chip evolution amid restrictions on access to leading-edge manufacturing technologies.

Taiwan's NT$210B drone bill sparks debate over defense self-reliance and industrial strategy

Willis Ke — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 08:12:18 GMT

The Executive Yuan's proposed special bill to fund Taiwan's indigenous defense unmanned systems program has triggered debate over whether the initiative should focus primarily on military procurement or broader industrial development. The plan would allocate NT$210 billion (about US$6.5 billion) from 2026 to 2031 to acquire coastal surveillance drones, coastal attack drones and small suicide unmanned boats, aiming to enhance the armed forces' asymmetric warfare capabilities.

IEI pairs NANO-X100 with Ryzen AI for edge AI inference

Lily Hess — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 07:54:41 GMT

Industrial PC maker IEI Integration joined Castec International at AMD Advancing AI 2026 in San Francisco on July 21 and 22 to showcase the new NANO-X100 4-inch single-board computer and edge AI inference applications, underscoring the two companies' collaboration on integrated edge-computing hardware and software.

Product mix optimization boosts Sinbon 2Q26 net profit up 19%

Charlene Chen — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 07:28:50 GMT

Benefiting from product mix optimization and a higher contribution from industrial applications, connector maker Sinbon on July 23, 2026, announced its unaudited operating results for the second quarter of 2026. Consolidated revenue and net profit after tax both hit the highest level for the same period on record, rising 16.58% and 19.02% year-over-year, respectively. However, operating profit edged down 1.76% quarter-over-quarter, weighed by higher strategic investment expenses.

Jensen Huang, Silicon Valley pushback against ban on Chinese open source AI models

Levi Li — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 07:27:23 GMT

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has taken an increasingly forceful position against possible sanctions from the Trump administration, arguing that US companies should remain free to use Chinese open-source AI models.

German chip suppliers deepen ties with Samsung, SK Hynix

DIGITIMES — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 07:19:06 GMT

Germany's Merck KGaA, TRUMPF and ZEISS are deepening their ties with South Korea's semiconductor industry amid large-scale investment in advanced chip production.

EU fines Google EUR890M in anti-trust case over Search and Google Play

DIGITIMES — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 07:07:02 GMT

Google has been fined EUR890 million (US$1.0 billion) under the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA) due to anti-competitive practices in its Google Search tool. The fine illustrates Europe's growing willingness to curb the power of US tech giants, despite diplomatic pressure from the US.

Samsung, LG showcase AI-era displays for humanoid robots

Kevin Wang — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 06:45:19 GMT

Samsung Display (SDC) and LG Display (LGD) have unveiled a range of display concepts for next-generation AI applications at the 2026 Korea Display Exhibition (K-Display) in Seoul, ranging from face displays for humanoid robots and AI smart glasses to hidden or retractable in-car screens, building upon the companies' focus on OLED panels for IT applications to sketch out future use cases.

Samsung Electro-Mechanics wins US$200 million AI server capacitor order

DIGITIMES — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 06:20:41 GMT

Samsung Electro-Mechanics disclosed on July 23 that it signed a KRW295.12 billion (US$200 million) supply contract with a major global company for multilayer ceramic capacitors used in artificial intelligence servers and data center systems.

India's chip plants face harder test: finding repeat customers

DIGITIMES — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 06:16:42 GMT

India's first major semiconductor customers are likely to come through existing global supply chains rather than domestic electronics brands immediately replacing imported components, according to analysts.

Advantech deepens AMD tie-up for AI servers

Charlene Chen — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 06:09:46 GMT

Industrial PC (IPC) maker Advantech is deepening its collaboration with AMD, unveiling a next-generation AI and edge computing server platform at AMD Advancing AI 2026 that is powered by the latest AMD EPYC 9006 series processors. Through a full board-to-system product lineup, the company is extending AI applications from data centers to the edge.

AMD advances telecom AI with AT&T and Microsoft

Charlene Chen — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 05:45:54 GMT

AMD unveiled a next-generation open-source telecom large language model (LLM), OTel 2.0, with AT&T and Microsoft at its Advancing AI 2026 conference, completing a training pipeline of more than 1 trillion tokens. AT&T used AMD Instinct GPUs and Microsoft Azure Foundry compute for post-training, pushing the Open Telco AI initiative from proof of concept toward commercial deployment.

AMD launches ROCm.ai to accelerate agentic AI development, reporting up to 3.3x inference gains

Scarlett Yu — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 05:17:20 GMT

Alongside its expanding AI hardware portfolio, AMD is stepping up efforts to strengthen its AI software ecosystem in a bid to challenge NVIDIA's CUDA dominance. At its Advancing AI 2026 event, the company unveiled ROCm.ai, a new AI-native development platform that integrates AI coding assistants, deployment tools, and automated optimization capabilities to simplify AI application development and accelerate model deployment on AMD hardware.

AMD says AI shift to inference and agents will reshape data centers

Jingyue Hsiao — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 05:17:09 GMT

AMD said the artificial intelligence boom is entering a new phase that will force a major redesign of data centers, as demand shifts from model training toward inference, AI agents, and physical AI. At its Advancing AI 2026 event, the company introduced new server, accelerator, and rack-scale products to power the next generation of AI infrastructure.

Taiwan, Czech chamber ink MOU to fuel Eastern Europe drone hub

Eifeh Strom — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 04:23:29 GMT

Taiwan's Commerce Development Research Institute (CDRI) signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Taiwan Chamber of Commerce in the Czech Republic (TCCCZ) on July 23 to jointly build a Taiwan-Central and Eastern Europe industrial cooperation platform, linking Taiwan with the Czech Republic and Central and Eastern European markets. The CDRI said the two sides will focus on areas such as drones, technology, and talent exchanges, as well as international market promotion and business matchmaking.

US moves to curb Chinese humanoid robots, opening a new front in the AI rivalry

DIGITIMES — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 04:20:00 GMT

Washington is opening a new front in its technology contest with China, moving beyond chips and artificial intelligence models to target humanoid robots and other autonomous systems over national security and data privacy concerns.

TSMC's Arizona expansion moves past initial hurdles as fabs and packaging ramp up

Charlene Chen — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 04:19:10 GMT

Since TSMC announced in 2020 that it would build factories in the US, the market has closely watched how overseas fab costs would affect operations. TSMC's long-running Arizona buildout has entered a new phase after five years of construction, with the company's first 4nm fab now ramping production and contributing to profits. The second fab is set to enter equipment move-in in the fourth quarter of 2026, the third fab is scheduled for move-in in September 2027, and the fourth has already begun site preparation.

AMD Advancing AI 2026: Gorgon Halo brings 300-billion-parameter models to local AI with Cisco governance

Levi Li — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 04:05:21 GMT

Agentic AI is spreading rapidly across personal computers and enterprise endpoints, prompting AMD to expand its local AI strategy with a new platform capable of running significantly larger models on-device.

Rapidus expands Hokkaido chip hub with packaging and analysis

DIGITIMES — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 03:56:57 GMT

Rapidus is expanding the semiconductor development and production network around its Chitose, Hokkaido foundry, adding chip analysis and advanced packaging capabilities alongside a front-end pilot line for 2nm logic chips.

AI-driven DRAM surge hits EV costs, forcing Chinese automakers to rethink pricing

Levi Li — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 03:32:49 GMT

Surging AI server demand is reshaping supply and demand across the global memory market. With DRAM prices rising sharply over the past year, the resulting cost pressure is beginning to spill into the automotive industry.

NAN GreenMet to invest US$130M in India's first integrated rare earth magnet plant

DIGITIMES — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 03:32:43 GMT

NAN GreenMet Pvt. Ltd. has launched NAN MagneTech Pvt. Ltd. to develop what it says will be India's first fully integrated manufacturing facility for high-performance Neodymium-Iron-Boron (NdFeB) rare earth magnets. The company plans to invest INR12.5 billion (US$130 million) in the project, which will be located at the Naidupeta Industrial Park in Andhra Pradesh, with commercial production targeted for the first quarter of 2028.

STMicroelectronics lifts data center target as AI optical demand outruns supply, but margin recovery waits on 2027 reshaping

DIGITIMES — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 03:21:30 GMT

STMicroelectronics raised its cloud AI revenue ambition and guided to a rising gross margin through the second half of 2026, but told analysts on its July 23 second-quarter earnings call that the full profitability recovery hinges on a manufacturing overhaul that will not finish before the end of 2027, and that its near-term ceiling is supply rather than demand.

China's Xi'an Eswin tops 1 million monthly 12-inch wafer sales and output, targets 1.8 million capacity

Levi Li — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 03:16:49 GMT

China's 12-inch silicon wafer maker Xi'an Eswin Material Technology said monthly output and sales of its 12-inch electronic-grade silicon wafers have both exceeded 1 million units, marking a further increase in its mass-production scale.

AMD redraws server chip strategy as AI workloads evolve

Jingyue Hsiao — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 03:07:49 GMT

AMD has launched its sixth-generation EPYC Venice server processor as the foundation of its next-generation AI data center platform, while CEO Lisa Su said the company is reshaping its roadmap for a world where AI workloads are spreading from training models to enterprise agents. The shift matters globally because it signals that data centers may need more balanced upgrades to CPU, GPUs, and networking.

Intel reportedly considers SK Hynix for Ohio fab partnership

DIGITIMES — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 02:50:05 GMT

Intel is considering SK Hynix as a potential partner to help operate its delayed Ohio semiconductor project, Semafor reported, after the South Korean memory maker formally denied pursuing an acquisition of the site.

India approves two electronics manufacturing clusters in Tamil Nadu

DIGITIMES — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 02:49:37 GMT

India's central government has approved two Electronics Manufacturing Clusters (EMCs) in Tamil Nadu, at Manallur and Pillapaikkam, with a combined project cost of INR10.12 billion (US$104.75 million), in a move aimed at strengthening the state's electronics ecosystem and advancing the country's self-reliance drive. Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw announced the approvals in a written reply in the Lok Sabha on July 22, 2026, according to Project Monitor and Trade Brains.

Commentary: Wistron's Texas AI factory shows why US manufacturing still needs Taiwan

Levi Li — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 02:45:49 GMT

Wistron's opening of its D1 AI smart factory in Fort Worth, Texas, marks a new milestone for Taiwan's downstream electronics manufacturers. The plant will support the first US mass production of Nvidia GB300 compute boards, a development with far-reaching implications for Taiwan, the US and the global AI industry.

Mobileye founder Amnon Shashua to step down as CEO after nearly three decades

DIGITIMES — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 02:34:40 GMT

Amnon Shashua will step down as CEO of autonomous driving technology supplier Mobileye once the company appoints a successor, marking the biggest leadership transition since he co-founded the Israeli firm in 1999.

TGV still faces technical barriers; CoPoS commercialization not likely until 2030

DIGITIMES — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 02:29:38 GMT

TGV still faces technical barriers; CoPoS commercialization not likely until 2030

Stripe reportedly eyes OpenRouter in potential US$10B AI infrastructure deal

DIGITIMES — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 02:20:37 GMT

Stripe is in talks to acquire AI model-routing startup OpenRouter in a deal that could value the company at around US$10 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal, which cited people familiar with the matter. The report said an agreement could be announced soon, although negotiations could still collapse or another bidder could emerge. The acquisition would significantly expand Stripe's ambitions beyond payments into AI infrastructure.

DIGITIMES: News and Insight of the Global Supply Chain

South Korea unveils AI cooperation agenda as Nvidia partnerships expand

South Korean leaders meet Nvidia as AI partnerships expand

Intel, China-based Lens Technology partner to explore glass substrate semiconductor packaging

Google raises capex outlook as compute demand stays tight, boosting Foxconn

SK Hynix seeks US engineers for 3D stacked DRAM push

Huawei founder endorses Tau Law as sole path for post-Moore chip development

Taiwan's NT$210B drone bill sparks debate over defense self-reliance and industrial strategy

IEI pairs NANO-X100 with Ryzen AI for edge AI inference

Product mix optimization boosts Sinbon 2Q26 net profit up 19%

Jensen Huang, Silicon Valley pushback against ban on Chinese open source AI models

German chip suppliers deepen ties with Samsung, SK Hynix

EU fines Google EUR890M in anti-trust case over Search and Google Play

Samsung, LG showcase AI-era displays for humanoid robots

Samsung Electro-Mechanics wins US$200 million AI server capacitor order

India's chip plants face harder test: finding repeat customers

Advantech deepens AMD tie-up for AI servers

AMD advances telecom AI with AT&amp;T and Microsoft

AMD launches ROCm.ai to accelerate agentic AI development, reporting up to 3.3x inference gains

AMD says AI shift to inference and agents will reshape data centers

Taiwan, Czech chamber ink MOU to fuel Eastern Europe drone hub

US moves to curb Chinese humanoid robots, opening a new front in the AI rivalry

TSMC's Arizona expansion moves past initial hurdles as fabs and packaging ramp up

AMD Advancing AI 2026: Gorgon Halo brings 300-billion-parameter models to local AI with Cisco governance

Rapidus expands Hokkaido chip hub with packaging and analysis

AI-driven DRAM surge hits EV costs, forcing Chinese automakers to rethink pricing

NAN GreenMet to invest US$130M in India's first integrated rare earth magnet plant

STMicroelectronics lifts data center target as AI optical demand outruns supply, but margin recovery waits on 2027 reshaping

China's Xi'an Eswin tops 1 million monthly 12-inch wafer sales and output, targets 1.8 million capacity

AMD redraws server chip strategy as AI workloads evolve

Intel reportedly considers SK Hynix for Ohio fab partnership

India approves two electronics manufacturing clusters in Tamil Nadu

Commentary: Wistron's Texas AI factory shows why US manufacturing still needs Taiwan

Mobileye founder Amnon Shashua to step down as CEO after nearly three decades

TGV still faces technical barriers; CoPoS commercialization not likely until 2030

Stripe reportedly eyes OpenRouter in potential US$10B AI infrastructure deal

AMD advances telecom AI with AT&T and Microsoft