TSMC held its 2025 sports day on November 8 at the Hsinchu County Stadium. Founder Morris Chang, 94, was absent due to health issues, sparking worries about his condition and fueling speculation that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's visit to Taiwan might be related to checking on him.

Discussions regarding Nexperia's fate have stalled for over a month, and China and the Netherlands remain at odds. The Hague is plagued with political paralysis, where a caretaker cabinet is too weak to navigate a dispute with global supply chain stakes.

South Korea's top conglomerates are reshaping their leadership and internal structures. They are bracing for an uncertain 2026 business cycle. Samsung is integrating its group-wide management diagnostic office into Samsung Electronics. LG is preparing its own executive overhaul later this month.

Vanguard International Semiconductor (VIS) anticipates a mild slowdown in the fourth quarter of 2025 as seasonal demand eases and supply chain partners carry out year-end inventory checks.

China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) and the General Administration of Customs announced on November 7 that they will suspend the implementation of several export control measures that were introduced in October, particularly regarding rare earth.

As Moore's Law slows, advanced packaging has become the critical lever driving breakthroughs in AI chip performance, according to DIGITIMES chief semiconductor analyst Tony Huang. Speaking with DIGITIMES Asia, Huang emphasized that heterogeneous integration is now as pivotal to system performance as transistor scaling once was.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company is considering building a large semiconductor fabrication plant to meet rising demand for AI and robotics chips, while keeping open the possibility of cooperation with Intel, a move that could redefine Tesla's chip strategy and the broader US semiconductor landscape.

The ongoing surge in artificial intelligence (AI) investments has deepened the reliance of the four major US cloud service providers (CSPs) on Taiwan's AI chips and servers, significantly widening Taiwan's trade surplus with the US, according to Chien-yi Chang, president of the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER).

Hua Hong Semiconductor, one of China's top wafer foundries, reported a steep profit drop for the first three quarters of 2025, citing higher costs from new production lines and rising R&D expenses. Third-quarter revenue rose 21.1% year-over-year to CNY4.566 billion (approx. US$640.9 million), while net profit plunged 43.5% to CNY177 million. For the first three quarters, revenue totalled CNY12.583 billion, up 19.8%, but profit tumbled 56.5% to CNY251 million.

Edge AI startup Anaflash has unveiled a new AI microcontroller built on Samsung Electronics' 28nm foundry process. The move marks another design win for Samsung as it works to revive its contract chipmaking business.

The global semiconductor industry is facing widening supply-demand imbalances amid the AI boom, with memory and processor chips in particularly short supply. Prices have surged while availability remains constrained, creating a shortage that has disrupted order patterns among major brands and fueled uncertainty across downstream sectors, including power supply and connector manufacturers.

Taiwan's machinery industry is leveraging artificial intelligence to transform from a traditional manufacturing base into a high-tech powerhouse, with growing ambitions in the global defense market. Former Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI) chairman Alex Ko emphasized that the past decade has been marked by unprecedented global economic shifts and challenges for the sector.

Update: Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, is already in Tainan, a city about 300 kilometers south of Taipei. He dined with several key executives of TSMC, including CC Wei, chairman and CEO of TSMC.

Amid US President Donald Trump's tariff threats and new incentives under the US "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," foreign companies are increasingly planning major investments in the US. Japan aims to invest US$550 billion, South Korea US$350 billion, Malaysia US$70 billion, and Taiwan reportedly plans US$400 billion, though trade and diplomatic officials have not confirmed the latter figure.

ASE has announced a significant upgrade to its in-house integrated design ecosystem (IDE) platform, introducing IDE 2.0, which features AI integration to speed up design iterations and optimize chip-package interaction (CPI) analysis. The improvement aims to enhance the deployment of AI and high-performance computing applications by shortening development timelines.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has acknowledged the critical role of Taiwanese partners in domestic AI chip production in the US, while cautioning that China's technological progress has been underestimated. Huang highlighted the importance of supply chain collaboration during an interview with Fox News, as reported by Wccftech and FreeMalaysiaToday.

Since US President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, his administration has escalated technology export restrictions with unprecedented aggression. Beyond raising overseas H-1B visa application fees to US$100,000 and demanding that Nvidia and AMD remit 15% of their advanced chip revenues from China to the US Treasury, Trump has now banned sales of Nvidia's cutting-edge Blackwell AI chips to China entirely.

Samsung Electro-Mechanics is reportedly set to supply advanced semiconductor glass substrates to Broadcom. The move comes as Broadcom, a key chip supplier for tech giants like Google and Meta, secured a US$10 billion deal with OpenAI for next-generation AI accelerators. This partnership highlights Broadcom's aggressive push into AI hardware and signals a major opportunity for South Korean component makers.

ASML has introduced the TWINSCAN XT:260, its first lithography system purpose-built for 3D integration and advanced packaging. The launch marks a major step beyond front-end wafer production as lithography expands into mid- and back-end processes, unlocking new opportunities for 3D heterogeneous integration in the post-Moore era.

In 2025, the autonomous vehicle industry has become the focal point of a technological cold war. The United States and China are engaged in a high-stakes competition where chips, algorithms, and geopolitical factors not only influence market share but also impact national sovereignty and industrial survival.

Despite tariff and exchange rate uncertainties clouding the global outlook, Taiwan's machinery industry remains on its growth track in 2025, supported by strong demand from the AI and semiconductor sectors, said David Chuang, chairman of the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI).

In Learning Resources v. Trump, the administration states that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977 authorizes the president to impose tax rates on any country at any level. On November 5, 2025, the US Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether US President Donald Trump has overstepped federal law with his tariff impositions. Both the US Court of International Trade (CIT) and the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) have previously ruled that Trump did not have power under the IEEPA to set tariffs under the alleged national emergency.

Leading IDMs such as Texas Instruments (TI), NXP Semiconductors, and STMicroelectronics (STM) have reported recent quarterly results indicating a rebound in automotive semiconductor demand and inventory restocking. This trend offers a cautiously optimistic outlook for the global automotive sector despite persistent challenges, including tariffs, geopolitical tensions, and regional economic disparities.

When Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sat down for fried chicken and beer with Samsung's Lee Jae-yong and Hyundai's Chung Eui-sun on a Gyeongju street corner, the casual dinner quickly went viral across South Korea. The scene captured something larger than corporate networking: Nvidia's calculated pivot toward Asia's most agile technology hub.

Nvidia has built a massive AI infrastructure project with the South Korean government, and local enterprises will now adopt Nvidia's next-generation RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell server-version GPU. During the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Gyeongju in 2025, Nvidia announced plans to supply 260,000 GPUs to the country, a deal worth US$10 billion.