Applied Materials plans to expand its Southeast Asia workforce by about 25% this year, adding at least 1,000 workers mainly in Singapore as the city-state becomes a more important manufacturing, logistics, and advanced-packaging hub for the US chip-equipment maker, Nikkei Asia reported.

Semiconductor test equipment makers are facing severe shortages of key components, with lead times for FPGAs, CPUs, GPUs, and driver ICs stretching sharply as AI and data center demand strain the broader chip supply chain, according to The Elec.

Walsin Technology, one of Taiwan's leading manufacturers of multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs), has notified distributors that it will raise prices on resistors and selected capacitor products beginning June 1, citing mounting cost pressures and robust demand from AI-related applications. The move makes Walsin one of the first Taiwanese MLCC suppliers to formally implement a new round of price increases, and a sign that the inflationary effects of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom are spreading deeper into the electronics supply chain.