DIGITIMES: News and Insight of the Global Supply Chain

Taiwan AI server supply chain expands China footprint

Lily Hess — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 04:24:37 GMT

Taiwan's AI server supply chain is stepping up investment in China, but expansion is concentrated in components rather than full-system assembly. By contrast, Taiwan's notebook PC production in China is mostly flat as the industry shifts to Southeast Asia and other non-China locations.

AI boom drives Foxconn past 40% of Taiwan-listed firms' China returns, with FII leading the way

Lily Hess — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 03:55:00 GMT

Global demand for AI and high-performance computing (HPC) has lifted investment returns for Taiwan-listed companies in China, with Foxconn continuing to lead the pack. According to CRIF, Foxconn's total China investment returns in the first half of 2026 reached NT$117.6 billion (US$3.7 billion).

TSMC suppliers reportedly plan Taiwan plant for critical chipmaking tubing

DIGITIMES — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 03:45:00 GMT

Taiwan's semiconductor supply chain is moving to close a gap that turned costly during the industry's last major crunch: the plastic tubing that carries chemicals through chip fabs. TSMC suppliers Nichias and Gold Stone Development are building a factory in Hsinchu to produce fluoropolymer (PFA) tubes domestically, Nikkei Asia reported, citing sources with direct knowledge of the plan.

AI's power crunch hits Taiwan: foundry capacity tightens, chip prices climb into 2H26

DIGITIMES — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 03:35:00 GMT

AI data centres are becoming a new stress point for the global power and semiconductor supply chain. As facilities shift towards megawatt-scale architectures, demand is rising for power semiconductors, battery backup systems, liquid cooling, grid capacity and low-carbon electricity.

Vera Rubin transition gap eases as ASIC, general servers rescue supply chain

Yunnie Cheng — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 03:31:28 GMT

As Nvidia's next-generation Vera Rubin platform enters deployment, Taiwan's server supply chain is finding ways to bridge the transition gap before ramping up volume production. Ongoing shipments of the existing GB series, custom ASIC server deployments led by Google and Amazon Web Services (AWS), and general-purpose servers are all providing revenue support to cushion the interim shortfall.

US voices first complaint over South Korea's KRW800 trillion chip cluster as investment pressure mounts

Joseph Chen — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 03:24:50 GMT

The US has informally expressed dissatisfaction with the South Korean government's KRW800 trillion (US$578.5 billion) plan to build a semiconductor cluster in the country's southwest. The complaint comes as Washington escalates its demands for South Korean investment on American soil, and reflects frustration that Seoul is throwing its weight behind domestic chip projects while moving slowly on commitments in the US.

Kulicke and Soffa names Raj Talluri as CEO

DIGITIMES — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 03:14:31 GMT

Kulicke and Soffa Industries has appointed Raj Talluri as president and chief executive officer, a leadership change that may influence the company's strategy in semiconductor equipment markets used across Asia, the US, and Europe. The move signals continuity for investors, while highlighting the global competition shaping chip manufacturing supply chains.

Intel pitches Diamond Rapids at Hot Chips as server CPU competition heats up

DIGITIMES — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 03:10:17 GMT

Intel pitched its next-generation Diamond Rapids Xeon at Hot Chips 2026 as the company bets that agentic AI will increase the role of general-purpose processors in AI infrastructure, even as AMD and Arm gain ground in the server CPU market. The company also detailed Crescent Island, a GPU aimed at AI inference, and Wildcat Lake for client and edge systems.

Energy law amendments lift AIDC storage demand in Taiwan

Rodney Chan — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 03:01:38 GMT

AI data centers (AIDCs) will increasingly rely on energy storage because of its fast response and grid impact mitigation capabilities, according to Recharge Power, a Taiwan-based battery energy storage system integrator (BESSI) which has seen overseas project revenue gradually bearing fruit. In Taiwan, the energy storage market has also received a major boost following amendments to the Energy Administration Act requiring heavy users to strengthen their electricity self-sufficiency.

Kaynes Technology and BOSGAME sign MoU to expand India market presence

DIGITIMES — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 02:55:00 GMT

Kaynes Technology India and BOSGAME have signed a strategic memorandum of understanding to support BOSGAME's entry and expansion in India. The deal highlights how global hardware brands are increasingly looking to India for design, manufacturing, and customer support as the country's electronics ecosystem matures.

OmniVision's CIS business slips, but machine vision and robotics surge 71%

DIGITIMES — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 02:53:57 GMT

OmniVision Group reported a sharp drop in first-half 2026 profit as weakness in consumer electronics and automotive electronics weighed on its core image sensor business, even as machine vision, robotics and edge AI emerged as faster-growing sources of revenue.

China opens satellite IoT to private players as Geespace wins two-year commercial trial

Scarlett Yu — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 02:49:03 GMT

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has approved Geely-backed Zhejiang Geespace Technology to conduct a two-year commercial satellite Internet of Things (satellite IoT) trial, making it the first privately owned Chinese company authorized to advance such services and signaling a further opening of China's satellite communications market to private-sector players.

Foxconn scales AI server production in US and Mexico, keeps Asia expansion diversified

Levi Li — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 02:47:16 GMT

AI server demand and the continued regionalisation of global supply chains are keeping Foxconn's capital spending on an upward trajectory in 2026, with the company maintaining its target for full-year capex growth of more than 30%.

China-based Guangyu Xinchen says 3D-stacked edge AI chip has entered mass-production deployment

DIGITIMES — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 02:39:35 GMT

According to 36Kr, Shanghai Guangyu Xinchen Technology says its TC1000 series of 3D-stacked near-memory-computing AI processors has moved from silicon validation to mass-production deployment, marking a claimed acceleration in the commercialization of memory-centric computing for edge AI.

Commentary: Nvidia's 15% hike piles pressure on the AI supply chain, lifts ASIC prospects

Lily Hess — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 02:25:35 GMT

Nvidia has reportedly notified major customers that server systems using its AI chips will rise by more than 15%, with the new pricing set to apply to models shipping from early 2027, including Grace Blackwell and the next-generation Vera Rubin platform. The move is expected to ripple through the chip and system supply chain, while industry figures say it could also lift the appeal of inference ASICs.

Samsung, SK Hynix step up China NAND upgrades as US tool risks grow

DIGITIMES — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 02:21:49 GMT

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are stepping up equipment spending at their NAND flash plants in China through 2027, upgrading existing production lines even as future access to Western chipmaking tools becomes less predictable.

Samsung SDI cashes out Samsung Display stake to fund battery expansion

DIGITIMES — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 02:12:00 GMT

Samsung SDI said it will sell about one-third of its stake in Samsung Display for KRW4.45 trillion (US$3.2 billion), converting part of its affiliate holding into cash as it prepares to invest in future battery businesses.

OpenAI narrows gap as Anthropic's Fable 5 loses enterprise momentum

DIGITIMES — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 02:03:26 GMT

OpenAI has been gaining ground on Anthropic in enterprise AI spending, while Anthropic's flagship Claude Fable 5 has delivered less market traction than expected. The shift comes as Ramp analyzed usage across more than 70,000 US companies through its bill pay and corporate card products, according to TechCrunch and the Financial Times.

Russia's reusable Amur SPG rocket slips to 2031

DIGITIMES — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 02:00:16 GMT

Russia's space agency Roscosmos has again delayed development of its first reusable rocket, Amur SPG, with its first launch now reportedly delayed until 2031. That would be five years later than the original concept and three years beyond Russia's public timeline from spring 2026.

Novosense encoder launch highlights China's push into robot joint sensing

DIGITIMES — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 01:58:20 GMT

Chinese analog and mixed-signal chipmaker Novosense Microelectronics has introduced the NSM350x series, a Hall-based magnetic encoder designed for high-precision angular measurement in robot joints and industrial motion-control systems, reports Sina Finance.

AI infrastructure boom drives Taiwan export orders, exposing power bottleneck, net-zero tech needs

Eifeh Strom — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 01:50:27 GMT

Global artificial intelligence infrastructure buildouts and rising capex by cloud service providers pushed Taiwan's July export orders for information and communications technology (ICT) products, led by AI servers, up nearly 90% year-over-year, while export orders for foundry and memory also rose by more than 70%. However, companies in advanced economies are encountering power shortages as they invest in AI infrastructure, exposing a bottleneck that highlights the need to develop AI computing and net-zero technologies in tandem.

Toyota and Honda's US manufacturing push could reshape market share, not just tariffs

DIGITIMES — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 01:45:25 GMT

Toyota and Honda are accelerating US manufacturing as tariffs, local-content rules, and policy shifts reshape the auto industry. The move is defensive, but it is also a growth strategy. With American demand likely to stay steady rather than surge, Japanese automakers appear to be betting that expansion will come from taking share from rivals.

Tactical drone market reshapes as startups and incumbents compete

DIGITIMES — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 01:42:19 GMT

The tactical drone market is entering a turning point in which legacy platform suppliers and software-driven startups are competing head-on while also seeking new roles through collaboration. Janes, citing industry sources in Europe, the Middle East and North America, said startups including Anduril, Helsing, Quantum Systems and Stark Defence are accelerating their push into the market and have already caused clear disruption to the tactical drone supply chain, though it is still too early to call the market saturated.

China launches record auto recall over electronic door safety

DIGITIMES — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 01:41:53 GMT

China has launched its largest-ever auto recall, involving about 4.27 million vehicles over risks tied to electronic door emergency unlocking. The action is led by Tesla and a group of Chinese EV startups, including Xiaomi, Leapmotor and Xpeng, while joint ventures backed by European, US and Japanese automakers were left out.

Infineon buys India-based C2i Semiconductors to bolster AI data center power systems

DIGITIMES — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 01:35:07 GMT

Infineon Technologies has agreed to acquire Bangalore-based C2i Semiconductors, a move that strengthens its position in power delivery for AI data centers and highlights India's growing role in chip design. The deal could shape how global operators manage rising energy demand, efficiency pressures, and next-generation computing workloads.

Taipower pushes 'information flow' strategy to ease northern Taiwan's AI data center power crunch

Eifeh Strom — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 01:18:23 GMT

As artificial intelligence chip power consumption continues to rise, server racks are moving toward the megawatt (MW) scale. Amid the "electrical power is computing power" trend, the importance of power electronics is increasing, while the overall power system also faces significant upgrade requirements.

Nvidia Groq 3 LPX enters full production for faster agentic AI inference

DIGITIMES — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 01:04:15 GMT

Nvidia said its Groq 3 LPX inference accelerator is now in full production, a move that could speed up agentic AI systems used worldwide for coding, reasoning, and other tasks. The company said the platform is designed to improve responsiveness, lower latency, and support growing demand for real-time AI applications.

SpaceXAI to use Nvidia Vera CPUs for faster agentic AI at scale

DIGITIMES — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 01:02:04 GMT

SpaceXAI plans to deploy Nvidia's new Vera CPUs to speed up agentic AI workloads, a move that could influence how advanced AI systems are built and run worldwide. The partnership also extends toward orbital computing, signaling a broader shift in where future AI infrastructure may be located.

IBM unveils dual-architecture mainframe chip to run Arm, z/OS, Linux workloads

DIGITIMES — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 00:49:56 GMT

In an August 24 press release, IBM announced that it is developing the first dual-architecture mainframe processor, a move that could let global enterprises run Arm-native and IBM workloads on the same future systems. The milestone may broaden software choices, accelerate AI adoption, and reshape mission-critical computing for banks, governments, and large cloud operators worldwide.

Broadcom's debt push signals AI compute is becoming Wall Street asset class

DIGITIMES — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 00:06:48 GMT

The AI infrastructure race is entering a phase where access to silicon is no longer the only constraint. As compute demand expands into multi-gigawatt projects, the industry is increasingly confronting a second bottleneck: how to finance hardware and data-center capacity at the scale frontier-model developers now require.

AIDC eyes 2H26 lift from drones, jets

Lily Hess — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 00:06:20 GMT

Aerospace Industrial Development (AIDC) is cautiously optimistic about business momentum in the second half of 2026 as Taiwan's drone policy becomes clearer and defense work stays solid. Senior Vice President Hwai-Sheng King said the company has more than NT$100 billion (approx. US$3.1 billion) in orders on hand across defense, civil aviation, and technology services over the next five years, while it also pushes into the space satellite field, advanced composites, and structural parts.

Zhongji Innolight's 1.6T surge shows AI networking is becoming next hyperscaler bottleneck

DIGITIMES — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 00:06:02 GMT

The AI infrastructure boom has long been defined by a race to secure GPUs, memory and power. Yet as cluster sizes continue expanding, another layer of the system is beginning to emerge as an equally decisive constraint: the optical links responsible for moving data fast enough between increasingly dense pools of accelerators.

SK Hynix and Alibaba tackle the next AI bottleneck: getting more value per chip

DIGITIMES — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 00:05:25 GMT

The AI infrastructure race has been marked by a near-fixated drive to expand AI-powered buildouts, as demand for increasingly complex chip configurations pushes against the physical and economic limits of scalability.

Samsung pushes HBM toward logic, SK Hynix targets packaging at Hot Chips 2026

DIGITIMES — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 00:04:43 GMT

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix outlined different areas of emphasis for overcoming the next high-bandwidth memory (HBM) bottleneck at Hot Chips 2026, with Samsung pushing more logic and customer-specific functions into the HBM base die while SK Hynix focuses on packaging, heat and the challenges of taller memory stacks.

Samsung Display resumes A7 construction as foldable demand rebounds

DIGITIMES — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 00:04:22 GMT

Samsung Display has resumed construction at its second campus in Asan, South Chungcheong Province, reviving a long-dormant OLED project just as the foldable smartphone market is expected to swing from a weak first half of 2026 to a stronger second half.

Inergy server share hits 47% on cooling, BBU demand

Lily Hess — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 00:03:53 GMT

Inergy Technology said strong demand for AI server cooling and power management pushed the share of server-related applications to 47% of revenue in the second quarter of 2026, with shipments of system-on-chip (SoC) cooling fan driver ICs set to ramp up in the second half of 2026 and battery backup unit (BBU) demand expected to keep rising as AI moves toward high-voltage direct current power architectures.

CNFI White Paper outlines solutions as labor, transformation, and energy headline Taiwan's industry hurdles

Yunnie Cheng — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 00:03:34 GMT

Navigating volatile US tariff policies, escalating geopolitical tensions, and a productivity revolution driven by agentic AI, Taiwan's industrial sector has reached a decisive crossroads.

Applied Materials executive says data centers set new AI competition standard

Yunnie Cheng — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 00:03:04 GMT

Commenting on the current surge in artificial intelligence (AI), Erix Yu, group vice president of Applied Materials and president of Applied Materials Taiwan, recently shared his perspective by tracing the evolution of industrial revolutions.

Nvidia memory demand widens the gap between SK Hynix and Samsung

DIGITIMES — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 00:02:41 GMT

Nvidia's AI memory orders helped drive a sharp split between SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics in the first half of 2026. According to Chosun Biz, Nvidia became SK Hynix's biggest customer in the first half of 2026, while it did not rank among Samsung's top five revenue sources.

Hotai and Nan Yang cut Taiwan auto market outlook as risks linger

DIGITIMES — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 10:55:00 GMT

Taiwan's new-car market is cooling, with Hotai Motor and Nan Yang Industrial both taking a cautious view of the second half of 2026. The companies cited geopolitical uncertainty, volatile international oil prices, tariff concerns and softer consumer sentiment in revising their outlook for the market.