DIGITIMES: News and Insight of the Global Supply Chain

VinFast reportedly pauses India manufacturing work on three EVs, a year after opening its Tamil Nadu plant

DIGITIMES — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 23:35:13 GMT

VinFast has suspended plans to manufacture three electric vehicles in India and ordered suppliers to halt work while it reassesses costs, according to two sources and a company memo reviewed by Reuters. The pause stalls the localization push the Vietnamese automaker had placed at the center of its India strategy, barely a year after opening its first factory outside Vietnam.

CPO material race widens as Taiwan eyes key role

Charlene Chen — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 23:34:47 GMT

At the Semicon Network Summit 2026, speakers from Marvell, the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research's Holst Centre, the UK Semiconductor Centre, and the Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association (TSIA) discussed the future of silicon photonics (SiPh). They said the industry's bottlenecks have shifted from materials to packaging precision, materials platform selection, and the manufacturing tools needed to support both.

Auras sees ASIC revenue reaching 50% in 2027, eyes microchannel cooling production in 2028

Kevin Wang — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 23:34:06 GMT

Cooling specialist Auras Technology is expanding from GPU platforms to ASIC-related products as its next growth driver, amid the ongoing shift toward liquid cooling in AI servers, with chairman Steve Lin highlighting sustained progress in projects for major international cloud service providers (CSP) such as AWS and Meta.

Alpha Networks, ITRI develop B5G/Pre-6G Massive MIMO base stations

DIGITIMES — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 23:33:42 GMT

Network equipment maker Alpha Networks said it has teamed up with Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and Chen Lung Technology to jointly advance the "B5G/Pre-6G public network Massive Antenna Radio Unit project."

JPC Connectivity sees AI demand driving orders into 2027 as margins benefit from longer lead times

Jingyue Hsiao — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 23:33:27 GMT

JPC Connectivity said demand tied to artificial intelligence infrastructure continued to strengthen in the second quarter of 2026, lifting orders for optical communications, high-speed transmission, and high-power products. The connector and cable maker said visibility now stretched into 2027, and in some cases into 2028, even as tight supply and longer lead times for key components continued to constrain near-term delivery.

Column: From automation to autonomy—what robotics still needs to make the leap

Jingyue Hsiao — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 23:32:48 GMT

I visited Automation Taipei 2026 in mid-August, where the show looked lively and occupied a footprint 7% larger than in 2025. Physical AI and vision-language-action (VLA) models dominated the venue. Yet most robots on display still repeated fixed motions behind barriers, highlighting how far robotics has to go to move from automation to autonomy.

SB Energy eyes US listing as Nvidia commits US$1.5 billion

DIGITIMES — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 23:32:26 GMT

SB Energy, the data center and power infrastructure company under SoftBank Group, filed for an IPO with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on September 1, planning to list under the ticker "SBE" on Nasdaq and Nasdaq Texas. The deal could value the company at more than US$50 billion, while Nvidia's promised US$1.5 billion investment has emerged as the most prominent backing for the offering.

Analysis: India's fast-growing FWA market may widen, but suppliers still face margin pressure

Jingyue Hsiao — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 23:31:57 GMT

India's fixed wireless access (FWA) market is expanding quickly as 5G rollouts accelerate and policymakers push local manufacturing, but Taiwanese networking suppliers say the opportunity comes with familiar risks. Telecom demand in the country remains strong, yet vendors with experience in India warn that growth does not automatically translate into profit.

PlayNitride sees 3.2T AI links opening a new front for Micro LED, but auto weakness weighs on 2H26

Levi Li — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 23:31:27 GMT

Micro LED is moving beyond displays into AI optical communications, with PlayNitride targeting commercial deployment within two years if industry standards and supply-chain integration progress as planned.

Samsung Electro-Mechanics eyes 30% MLCC price hikes, ABF up too

DIGITIMES — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 23:31:04 GMT

Samsung Electro-Mechanics (SEMCO) is set to expand the scope of its price increases, with market reports saying the company will raise direct-supply prices for multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) sold to OEMs and ODMs in the fourth quarter of 2026, while ABF substrate prices are also climbing. With supply constrained and demand for AI servers strong, further price increases are likely in the near term.

SK Hynix wafer purchases jump 104% on AI demand

DIGITIMES — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 23:30:39 GMT

SK Hynix boosted its silicon wafer purchases in the second quarter of 2026 by more than doubling spending from the previous quarter as it moved early to secure raw materials amid rising wafer prices and surging AI demand. The increase drew more attention than Samsung Electronics' modest rise over the same period.

Global smartphone outlook cut again as foldables shine

DIGITIMES — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 23:30:16 GMT

Global smartphone shipments are facing renewed downside pressure in 2026 as memory prices rise, handset makers pass on higher costs, and brands trim low-end models to protect margins. Forecasts for this year have also been cut repeatedly, with the most bearish view suggesting global smartphone shipments will fall nearly 17% from 2025.

Thailand AiPASS unlocks premium AI after lessons

DIGITIMES — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 23:29:50 GMT

Thailand has launched its TH-AI Passport and core AiPASS platform, taking a different path from South Korea's national AI push by buying access to overseas commercial AI tools such as ChatGPT and Claude and offering them free to citizens. The move aims to expand AI access while addressing the country's widening AI usage gap.

Samsung to add 1,612 new equipment units at Vietnam chip plant

DIGITIMES — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 23:29:25 GMT

Samsung Electronics is set to install 1,612 brand-new critical semiconductor back-end processing tools manufactured in South Korea at its factory under construction in Vietnam's Thai Nguyen province. Industry analysts say the move shows Samsung is accelerating efforts to turn Vietnam into a major semiconductor back-end manufacturing base.

LCY Advanced Materials launches wet chemicals for AI chip packaging

DIGITIMES — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 23:29:11 GMT

LCY Advanced Materials unveiled a new wet chemical solution for next-generation high-density interconnects at the SEMICON Taiwan 2026 Heterogeneous Integration International Summit, as AI and high-performance computing rapidly push semiconductor manufacturing toward system-level scaling centered on advanced packaging.

Macronix boosts sustainability spending to NT$780 million

DIGITIMES — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 23:28:44 GMT

Macronix (MXIC) said in its latest sustainability report for 2025 that greenhouse gas emissions fell 19.8% from 2024 and 32% from the business-as-usual (BAU) baseline, beating its original 20% reduction target. The memory chip maker also said it invested about NT$780 million (approx. US$24.66 million) in environmental, safety, and health initiatives in 2025.

MiniMax, Z.ai revenues surge on API demand but adjusted losses widen

DIGITIMES — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 16:50:00 GMT

Two of China's first listed foundation-model developers are showing that demand for their technology can translate into rapidly growing revenue. Turning that demand into profit remains a much harder problem.

TIME AI 100 spotlights China's new AI guard, from Moonshot, Z.ai to AgiBot, Manus

Levi Li — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 16:36:00 GMT

TIME recently unveiled its 2026 list of the 100 most influential people in AI. Alongside leaders of major technology companies, the list includes a new generation of Chinese entrepreneurs spanning AI models, humanoid robots, and AI agents, highlighting how China's AI industry is expanding beyond large language models into a broader range of technologies and applications.

SEMICON Taiwan 2026: Physical AI drives new demand for multimodal robot sensing

Willis Ke — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 16:33:00 GMT

The rise of physical AI is creating a new wave of demand for advanced sensors as robots move from controlled demonstrations toward practical deployment. Industry experts at SEMICON Taiwan 2026 said robots will need increasingly diverse sensing capabilities to perceive, interpret, and respond to complex real-world environments in real time.

Yield has been semiconductor industry's oldest question; now it's Microsoft's test for AI

DIGITIMES — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 16:05:00 GMT

Microsoft brought the semiconductor industry's own measure of success back to it on Wednesday, and argued that AI will be judged by it.

Sandisk says HBF can match HBM bandwidth with up to 16x the capacity

DIGITIMES — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 09:54:45 GMT

Sandisk says its NAND-based High Bandwidth Flash (HBF) technology can match HBM bandwidth while providing eight to 16 times the capacity at a similar cost, positioning flash memory closer to processors as inference workloads strain conventional memory systems.

Micron says tightly coupled DRAM could deliver more than 10x HBM bandwidth

DIGITIMES — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 09:41:08 GMT

Micron Technology is exploring tightly coupled DRAM that could deliver more than 10 times the bandwidth of HBM while using substantially less energy per bit, as the memory maker looks to new architectures to overcome the widening gap between processor performance and memory bandwidth.

Lam Research exec says automated preventive maintenance key to fabs of the future

DIGITIMES — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 09:03:25 GMT

A senior Lam Research executive told an industry audience this week that the next major leap in semiconductor manufacturing will not come from removing humans entirely from fabs, but from pairing collaborative robots with AI-driven predictive maintenance to close a long-standing gap in fab operations.

DRAM giants target 3D stacking to break memory wall and power bottlenecks

Yunnie Cheng — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 08:45:00 GMT

At a shared stage at Semicon Taiwan 2026, executives from Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron agreed that traditional 2.5D high-bandwidth memory (HBM) using interposers is approaching a performance ceiling. Consequently, the industry is transitioning toward 3D vertical stacking architectures to minimize transmission power consumption and leverage wafer-level bonding technologies.

Fresh off Nasdaq listing, Pasqal turns to Taiwan's photonics industry to help it scale

DIGITIMES — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 08:30:00 GMT

Four days after listing on Nasdaq, Pasqal came to SEMICON Taiwan with an argument aimed squarely at its competitors: the industry's assumption that quantum computing delivers nothing useful before fault tolerance arrives around 2030 is wrong, and the French company intends to sell against it.

EU EV battery recycling still lacks a profitable model

AI bot — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 08:20:00 GMT

The European Union is pushing to strengthen domestic second-life battery production and recycling loops, but EV battery recycling still faces a contradiction: the technology is maturing, yet a sustainable business model has not emerged.

Taiwan's semiconductor ecosystem has the UK taking notes

Rodney Chan — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 07:55:00 GMT

The UK wants to understand how Taiwan built such a successful semiconductor ecosystem, said Andy McLean, CEO of the UK Semiconductor Center, at a forum organized by Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) in Taipei on September 1. It is generally believed that government support, close collaboration among industry, academia and research institutions, and corporate long-term vision are key drivers of Taiwan's semiconductor success.

Nvidia and Micron top NT$4.4T in Taiwan investment

Charlene Chen — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 07:50:46 GMT

On the eve of the opening of SEMICON Taiwan 2026, the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) hosted the Semicon Network Summit, where President Ching-Te Lai said Nvidia invests and procures more than NT$3 trillion (US$94.4 billion) a year in Taiwan. He added that Micron has invested more than NT$1.4 trillion cumulatively, while AMD has expanded its Taiwan R&D and investment to more than NT$300 billion.

Zhen Ding launches 1.6T optical modules, 34-layer AI server boards at Semicon Taiwan to meet next-gen AI infrastructure demand

Yunnie Cheng — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 07:50:00 GMT

Exhibiting in the AI Technology Zone at Semicon Taiwan 2026, Zhen Ding Technology (ZDT) Group highlights two core product lines: 800G, 1.6T, XPO, and NPO high-end optical transceiver modules, and ultra-high-layer AI server boards with up to 34 layers. The showcase underscores the company's advanced printed circuit board (PCB) engineering capabilities for next-generation AI computing infrastructure, spanning high-speed data transmission to multi-layer board designs.

Samsung, SK Hynix inventories surge as valuation reserves fall

DIGITIMES — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 07:41:00 GMT

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix ended the first half of 2026 holding sharply more inventory than six months earlier, an unusual development in a memory market where demand continues to strain available supply.

Semicon Taiwan 2026 to test cloud AI investment boom

Yunnie Cheng — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 07:33:00 GMT

Cloud AI capital expenditure continues to shatter market expectations, sparking growing concerns over whether the spending surge is overheating and heading toward a bubble. Semicon Taiwan 2026 may serve as the ultimate litmus test for this debate.

Wonderful Hi-Tech expands Thailand, Vietnam capacity to capture emerging space data center, physical AI demand

Eifeh Strom — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 07:30:00 GMT

Cable manufacturer Wonderful Hi-Tech announced its financial results for the second quarter and first half of 2026 during an earnings call held on September 1. A ramp-up in high-speed transmission cable shipments for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, coupled with strong pull-in momentum from a major US low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellite customer, drove second-quarter results. The company also said it is expanding capacity in Thailand and Vietnam to capture new opportunities in space data centers and physical AI.

World's first legged robot standard sets global benchmark for humanoids, robot dogs

DIGITIMES — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 07:10:52 GMT

China-led experts have released what CCTV described as the world's first international standard for legged robots, creating a common framework for evaluating humanoid robots, robot dogs and other machines designed to walk, run, climb slopes and cross obstacles.

India reportedly readies AI agent payments on UPI, its national payment rails

DIGITIMES — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 06:55:00 GMT

India is preparing a framework that would allow AI agents to make small digital payments without requiring user approval for every transaction, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. This would be a step that would put one of the world's largest payment networks behind agentic commerce.

Indium CEO: packaging, cooling and power are next AI bottlenecks

Yunnie Cheng — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 06:55:00 GMT

As AI and high-performance computing (HPC) continue to drive semiconductor advances, industry competition is shifting beyond chip performance toward packaging, cooling, assembly, and power delivery. With GPUs, high-bandwidth memory (HBM), and advanced packaging pushing power density higher, chipmakers now face challenges that extend well beyond silicon manufacturing, including managing thermal expansion, warpage, heat dissipation, and reliability across heterogeneously integrated materials.