Kingboard Laminates Holdings (KB Laminates), a leading Chinese manufacturer, announced its eighth price increase of 2026 on October 13, raising prices by 15% for laminates and prepreg (PP) made with style 2116 or thinner fiberglass fabrics.

Some back-end manufacturing equipment intended for SK Hynix's sixth-generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM4) production may be deferred from the second half of 2026 into 2027, raising questions about the chipmaker's expansion plans as rising conventional DRAM prices create competing opportunities for capital spending.

Huawei has begun mass-producing its Kirin 9050 series with LogicFolding, a 3D chip architecture that improves transistor density and computing efficiency without relying solely on smaller process nodes. Its next-generation Kirin chip, scheduled for 2027, has entered testing, with initial results meeting expectations.

ASML reported record third-quarter 2026 net sales of EUR11.7 billion (approx. US$13.1 billion) and net income of EUR5 billion, while warning that its planned supply for 2027 and 2028 would fall short of customer demand. Growing AI investment is prompting the lithography equipment supplier to explore a larger capacity expansion for 2028, with some customers expressing interest in placing orders for 2029 and 2030.

Nvidia's share of AI chips in China's data center market has fallen by 34% in the first half of this year, according to a new report. The drop follows months of US restrictions on advanced chip sales to the country, Chinese authorities' push to rely less on Nvidia imports, and domestic players like Huawei moving to fill in this supply gap.

Elon Musk has criticized memory chip suppliers for charging what he called "extortionate" prices while praising Micron Technology's approach to future pricing, highlighting tensions between chipmakers and customers as prolonged supply shortages strengthen manufacturers' bargaining power.

JCET is directing most of its increased capital spending towards advanced packaging, modules and testing while reorganising its two South Korean factories to meet AI infrastructure demand. The company expects benefits from the transformation of its South Korean operations to emerge from the second half of 2026 and to become more pronounced in 2027 and 2028, according to a recently released investor relations activity record.

As demand for artificial intelligence computing accelerates, the competitive focus in semiconductors is shifting beyond single-chip speed to the efficiency of entire data centers. Nvidia, Broadcom, and Qualcomm executives said memory bandwidth, chip interconnects, power use, and heat management are now among the biggest constraints on AI performance, forcing closer coordination across chips, memory, packaging, and system design.

Broadcom's Frank Ostojic said semiconductor firms need joint innovation across equipment, materials, and design to overcome bottlenecks that affect AI chips worldwide. He warned that die size, packaging, power delivery, and cooling are becoming major constraints as workloads evolve, making faster coordination essential for future system performance.

Samsung Electronics and AMD have collaborated to validate Compute Express Link (CXL) memory technology designed to expand capacity and bandwidth for AI servers, as Samsung broadens its AI infrastructure strategy beyond high-bandwidth memory (HBM) to memory pooling and enterprise storage.

At Plug and Play Taiwan's Batch 4 Selection Day, 21 startups made the case that Taiwan's next wave of innovation is being built by chip-industry veterans who are tackling problems faced by the world's biggest tech companies.