Gudeng Precision Industrial chairman Bill Chiu said on August 31, 2026, that trust is the core foundation of Taiwan's place in the global supply chain, as he commented on sensitive issues including alleged country-of-origin labeling violations involving PCB maker Unimicron. He said Taiwanese firms gain opportunities in global markets because of Western customers' trust, warning that undermining that trust would be self-defeating.
Unimicron Technology shares plunged to Taiwan's 10% daily downside limit on August 31, the first trading session after prosecutors disclosed an investigation into alleged false country-of-origin labeling. The stock opened at NT$999, dropping out of Taiwan's NT$1,000-plus share club, with sell orders briefly approaching or exceeding 100,000 lots while only a few thousand lots changed hands during early trading.
Kingboard Laminates, a leading Chinese copper-clad laminate (CCL) maker, has issued another price increase notice as shortages of core materials such as fiberglass cloth and copper foil intensify and prices surge. Effective immediately, the company will raise FR-4 substrate prices by 10% across the board, while prepreg (PP) prices will rise 10% for thick cloth of style 7628 and above, and 20% for thin cloth below 7628.
MetaX posted its first half-year profit since listing, with rising GPU shipments and the mass production of its C600 accelerator strengthening its commercial position while China's domestic AI chip sector increasingly splits between profitable vendors and peers still absorbing heavy R&D costs.
ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) is suing the Pentagon to overturn its designation as a Chinese military company as the Chinese DRAM maker seeks to turn a global memory shortage into overseas growth.
On August 26, the Shanghai municipal government released its 15th Five-Year Plan for the Development of Strategic Emerging Industries, setting a target for added value in strategic emerging industries to reach CNY2.1 trillion (approx. US$312.5 billion) by 2030. The plan puts ICs, biopharmaceuticals, and artificial intelligence (AI) at the center of the city's industrial strategy, while shifting policy focus from expansion to higher-value areas such as advanced chips, advanced packaging, industrial software, and critical materials.
Co-packaged optics (CPO) is emerging as a critical next-generation technology for AI infrastructure, but unless South Korea strengthens its integration and validation capabilities, it risks being left with component-level capabilities while overseas players retain control of platforms and higher-value parts of the ecosystem.
China's CXMT has begun mass production of its LPDDR6 memory and will supply the first batch to Xiaomi's upcoming 18 Fold flagship, marking what the company says is the first commercial deployment of LPDDR6 worldwide.
Hangzhou Lion Microelectronics plans to invest about CNY3 billion (approx. US$446 million) in a new 12-inch silicon wafer project in Jiaxing, expanding into a market where AI demand is lifting volumes and prices while China still relies heavily on imported large-diameter wafers.
Seven Chinese silicon wafer producers reported first-half 2026 results in the second half of August, indicating an uneven sector recovery. Several semiconductor-grade wafer makers swung from losses to reported profits, though how much of that improvement came from core operations rather than one-off items varies widely by company. The two solar-wafer producers in the group, meanwhile, remain far deeper in the red amid a separate, unrelated downturn.
Taisic Materials, a subsidiary of Kenmec Mechanical Engineering, has successfully produced Taiwan's first 12-inch silicon carbide (SiC) boule using a crystal growth furnace independently developed by Kenmec.
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