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Wednesday 6 May 2026

AMD earnings call: AI is turning CPUs back into the main event

AMD's fiscal first-quarter 2026 earnings call was not just a victory lap for another data center beat. It was a strategic argument from management: AI infrastructure is no longer only an accelerator story. It is becoming a full compute-platform story, where CPUs, GPUs, memory, software, and rack-scale systems all have to move together.

Wednesday 6 May 2026

MediaTek unit Airoha targets AI networking surge with triple optical growth

MediaTek subsidiary Airoha Technology said its first-quarter 2026 performance met expectations, driven by continued improvement in product mix and accelerating demand across its optical communications, Ethernet, and fixed broadband businesses tied to AI infrastructure expansion.

Wednesday 6 May 2026

RichWave sees Wi-Fi 7 growth outrunning memory price pressure

Radio frequency (RF) front-end chip maker RichWave said on May 4 that Wi-Fi 7 momentum will remain very strong in the first quarter of 2026, even as rising memory and component costs squeeze profitability and cloud order visibility. The company said memory-driven price increases are affecting the broader networking industry, but the impact on its 2026 growth will be limited.

Wednesday 6 May 2026

Analysis: The US$2.5 billion smuggling case hanging over Supermicro's US$40 billion year

Supermicro CEO Charles Liang used the opening of his fiscal third quarter of 2026 earnings call to address a topic unrelated to revenue or margins: the DOJ indictment of former employees for allegedly smuggling AI servers equipped with Nvidia GPUs to China through Southeast Asian transshipment networks.

Wednesday 6 May 2026

TV panel prices stall as China cuts output to defend prices

The LCD TV panel market has shifted sharply from aggressive stocking to defensive procurement as global sports-event demand fades, pre-stocking cycles for China's 618 shopping festival wind down, and end-market demand loses momentum. TV brands are now focusing on inventory control and buying only as needed, while Chinese panel makers are trimming production to support prices.

Wednesday 6 May 2026

AMD lifts outlook as AI demand fuels data center growth

On May 5, AMD reported first-quarter 2026 results that exceeded expectations, supported by strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, according to company data and media reports. Revenue reached US$10.25 billion, while net profit rose to US$1.38 billion, reflecting robust year-on-year growth across key metrics.

Wednesday 6 May 2026

Southeast Asia's fab deficit threatens a chip boom shutout

Global semiconductor sales are projected to reach US$1 trillion this year and could double to US$2 trillion by 2035, driven by rapid growth in AI data centers. But the boom is also shining new light on Southeast Asia's limited front-end manufacturing base, as SEMI urges the region to add more fabs to reduce chip supply-chain concentration in China and Taiwan.

Tuesday 5 May 2026

Tesla AI5 dual sourcing may not mean equal weight for Samsung

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has confirmed that the company's in-house AI5 chip has completed design tape-out and entered a critical pre-production validation stage. The move has drawn renewed attention from supply chains in Taiwan and South Korea as Tesla builds a scalable computing infrastructure for vehicles, AI training systems, and humanoid robots.

Tuesday 5 May 2026

South Korea eyes memory-led AI order against Nvidia

As AI shifts from training to inference and from single-task use to multi-agent collaboration, South Korea's semiconductor industry is seeking to recast the market around memory rather than GPUs. South Korean academia and industry figures say the AI era will be defined by memory architectures, with the country aiming to build its own framework and challenge an order long dominated by Nvidia.

Tuesday 5 May 2026

Ardentec's Longtan plant to start AI ASIC testing in 3Q26

Ardentec's Longtan plant is set to begin taking AI ASIC wafer-probing orders in the third quarter of 2026, as the semiconductor testing provider moves to capture spillover demand from foundry strategic partners.

Tuesday 5 May 2026

Google's TPU push hits Nvidia's neocloud grip

Google's effort to expand its tensor processing units (TPU) beyond its own cloud is meeting resistance from some of the AI infrastructure companies best positioned to distribute alternative chips, with executives from Nebius, Lambda, and CoreWeave saying they do not plan to adopt TPUs anytime soon, according to The Information.

Tuesday 5 May 2026

Another Qualcomm exec joins Intel to lead PC and physical AI unit

Intel has announced that it has appointed Alex Katouzian as head of its Client Computing and Physical AI Division. With this hire, Intel seeks to align its consumer PC business with physical AI applications spanning robotics and AI -enabled devices.

Tuesday 5 May 2026

SEMICON SEA 2026: the trillion-dollar chip era is already here

The global semiconductor industry is entering a "multi-trillion-dollar" growth cycle sooner than expected, SEMI President and CEO Ajit Manocha said, urging Southeast Asian countries to strengthen cooperation to address talent, energy, and geopolitical challenges. Manocha predicted rapid revenue expansion driven by AI, IoT, and quantum demand.

Tuesday 5 May 2026

MediaTek ASIC surge puts 60% revenue share within reach

MediaTek raised its outlook for its application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) business during its first-quarter 2026 earnings call, signaling stronger growth prospects and sending a positive shock through the market.

Tuesday 5 May 2026

Onsemi says China remains a strong market despite softer passenger vehicle volumes

Onsemi told investors during its first-quarter 2026 earnings call, held on May 4, that China remains a key growth market for its automotive power products, even as China's passenger vehicle market softened. The company reported that "Our China automotive revenue grew year-over-year in the first quarter, despite a decline in the China passenger vehicle market of 6% for the same period," framing the performance as evidence of rising semiconductor content and share gains within Chinese electric vehicle programs.

Tuesday 5 May 2026

Onsemi sees AI data center and Treo driving revenue and margin recovery

During an earnings call on May 4, Onsemi portrayed its artificial intelligence data center business and new Treo platform as central to a recovery that began in the first quarter, saying improving order patterns and product ramps are translating into higher revenue, expanding gross margins, and stronger cash returns to shareholders.

Tuesday 5 May 2026

Lattice Semiconductor strikes US$1.65B deal for AMI as AI data center demand drives record growth

Lattice Semiconductor has signed a definitive agreement to acquire AMI, a leading provider of platform firmware and infrastructure manageability software, for US$1.65 billion. The deal — structured as US$1.0 billion in cash and roughly US$650 million in Lattice stock — is expected to close in Q3 2026 and would effectively double Lattice's total serviceable addressable market to approximately US$12 billion.

Tuesday 5 May 2026

Onsemi signals early recovery as AI demand strengthens but profitability remains volatile

Onsemi reported a mixed but generally improving set of first-quarter 2026 results, signaling early signs of recovery in key end markets while highlighting ongoing volatility in profitability.

Tuesday 5 May 2026

Intel's revival runs on politics and promises — but supply bottlenecks tell a different story

Intel's share price has hit historic highs as the semiconductor industry draws significant investor attention. But is this hype justified? DIGITIMES analyst Luke Lin took a deep dive into the fundamental facts, production bottlenecks, and competitive gaps behind Intel's surge during a recent podcast.

Monday 4 May 2026

ADT lands US AI chip deal using Samsung 4nm

ADTechnology said it has signed a KRW40 billion (US$27.1 million) turnkey contract with a US-based AI fabless company to develop and supply HPC SoC chiplets for AI data-center applications using Samsung Foundry's 4nm process.

Monday 4 May 2026

Huawei targets US$12 billion in AI chip sales as China firms seek Nvidia alternatives

Huawei is set to capture the largest share of China's AI chip market this year, with revenue expected to rise at least 60% as Chinese technology companies accelerate orders for domestic alternatives to Nvidia, according to the Financial Times.

Monday 4 May 2026

DIGITIMES Chair: South Korea's 260,000 GPU plan relies heavily on Taiwanese production, highlights need for collaboration in AI era

As global demand for AI infrastructure accelerates, the collaboration between Taiwan and South Korea—the core pillars of the global semiconductor supply chain—is critical to winning the new tech race. Colley Hwang, chairman of DIGITIMES and IC Broadcasting, said South Korea's plan to deploy 260,000 Nvidia GPUs remains heavily reliant on Taiwan's manufacturing capabilities.

Monday 4 May 2026

Anthropic reportedly in talks with Fractile to buy inference chips amid AI compute crunch

Anthropic has been in talks with Fractile, a London-based startup, to purchase its inference chips for running its AI models more efficiently, as inferential AI tasks have pushed up compute demands, according to The Information. Although Fractile's AI chips are not expected to be available until next year at the earliest, the deal could give the maker of Claude more leverage with suppliers as it seeks to expand AI capacity to meet soaring demand.

Monday 4 May 2026

Realtek sees PC revenue growth despite 2026 shipment decline

Realtek's projection of a sharp fall in full-year 2026 PC shipments amid tight memory supply signals wider device-market shifts: global brands are prioritizing mid- and high-end models and premium components, boosting demand for higher-content semiconductors as unit volumes fall, with implications for laptop pricing, vendor strategies, and component suppliers worldwide.

Monday 4 May 2026

TSMC’s 3nm crunch will keep Apple Mac supply constrained until 2nm ramps up

Supply-chain participants said Apple's fiscal second-quarter 2026 performance should be read less as a demand story and more as a reflection of persistent constraints in advanced semiconductor capacity, particularly at leading-edge process nodes.

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