Lam Research, a leading supplier of semiconductor manufacturing equipment dubbed the "US version of ASML," capped off fiscal 2025 with stellar performance, fueled by surging AI demand. The company reported full-year revenue of US$20.6 billion, a 27% year-over-year increase, alongside record gross margins of 49.9% and operating margins of 34.1%.

Japan's Advantest has announced an acceleration of its capacity expansion plans for system-on-chip (SoC) test equipment in response to surging demand driven by artificial intelligence (AI) hardware investments. The company also revised its fiscal year 2025 financial forecast multiple times to reflect robust market conditions.

Notebook makers are under growing pressure as memory shortages and price increases persist, while a widening shortage of CPUs adds a second constraint. What began as a supply gap at Intel has now extended to AMD, leaving notebook brands that had planned to pull forward orders with limited components available. The dual shortages are clouding the outlook for the notebook market in 2026. Industry observers say Apple is likely to benefit in the near term as Wintel suppliers absorb most of the disruption.

The competition among cloud service providers (CSPs) and AI companies for application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) has entered a new phase with Microsoft officially launching its Maia 200 chip. Industry forecasts indicate that 2027 will be a breakout year when multiple major players ramp up ASIC production simultaneously.

The epicenter of the AI supercycle converged on Taipei this Thursday as President Lai Ching-te welcomed Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra to the Presidential Office, just hours after NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang touched down on the island.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang arrived in Taiwan on the afternoon of January 29, 2026, addressing reports that the US government plans to shift 40% of Taiwan's semiconductor capacity to the United States.

Taiwan's Minister of Economic Affairs, Ming-hsin Kung, joined senior US State Department officials on January 27, 2026, in the US to conclude the sixth US-Taiwan Economic Prosperity Partnership Dialogue (EPPD). The two sides signed a joint statement on the Pax Silica Declaration and US-Taiwan Cooperation on Economic Security.

Chinese customers who had planned to use Samsung Electronics' foundry services abandoned a number of projects in 2025 as US regulatory pressure on China intensified and uncertainty peaked ahead of mass production, according to Korean industry sources. Market participants say conditions may look different in 2026.

The artificial intelligence boom has moved from cloud infrastructure to the factory floor, and ASML Holding NV's latest earnings prove it.

Tesla is entering what executives describe as a "turning point" year. As the company pushes forward with robotaxi deployment and Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology, it must also navigate potential bottlenecks in global semiconductor supply that could define its medium-term growth.

Samsung Electronics reported record quarterly revenue and operating profit in the fourth quarter of 2025, as surging memory prices and tight supply, driven by the artificial intelligence boom, more than offset seasonal weakness in smartphones, televisions, and home appliances. The company also warned that an acute chip shortage is expected to persist, creating cost pressures for its mobile and display businesses.

China's semiconductor supply chain is sending a clear signal: a wave of "chip inflation" driven by mature-node manufacturing, memory, and packaging costs is no longer theoretical; it is becoming a structural reality. Following Cmsemicon's decision to raise prices on MCU and NOR Flash products by 15% to 50%, long-stable commodity chips have officially entered an inflation cycle.

The surge in generative AI (GenAI) and high-performance computing (HPC) demand has pushed advanced semiconductor packaging to become the most critical and constrained capacity bottleneck globally. According to supply chain sources, TSMC will add a P2 fab at its Southern Taiwan Science Park AP8 site, with both fabs focusing on CoWoS technology. Meanwhile, the Chiayi AP7 facility, originally planned for WMCM, SoIC, and CoPoS packaging, will switch from SoIC to CoWoS. This means that over the next two years, TSMC will significantly ramp up CoWoS capacity, prompting Taiwanese equipment and materials suppliers within the CoWoS ecosystem to accelerate expansions amid full order books, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.

As artificial intelligence (AI) applications expand globally, United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) is intensifying its efforts in advanced packaging and silicon photonics (SiPh) technologies. UMC co-president Jason Wang highlighted that although these segments currently generate modest revenues, a surge in project activity is anticipated to drive "significant growth" beginning in 2027, marking a strategic focus on emerging markets tied to AI and related fields.

Samsung Electronics posted record quarterly revenue and operating profit in the fourth quarter of 2025, underscoring how AI-driven demand for advanced memory has become the company's main earnings engine, even as smartphones, TVs, and home appliances faced seasonal slowdowns and margin pressure.

Following the signing of the Taiwan-US investment cooperation memorandum of understanding (MOU), the next step is to finalize the agreement on reciprocal trade (ART) between the two countries. As Taiwanese supply chains pursue strategies of making collective moves in the US, some companies express willingness to follow the lead of TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker who is investing enormous sums in building wafer fabs in the US. However, upstream players admit that with high production costs in the US, investments may not be profitable unless their gross margins exceed 50%.

Vanguard International Semiconductor (VIS) has signed a licensing agreement with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) for high-voltage (650V) and low-voltage (80V) gallium nitride (GaN) process technologies, the company announced on January 28. This deal aims to accelerate Vanguard's development of next-generation GaN power devices for applications in data centers, automotive electronics, industrial control, and energy management.

United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) reported a moderate revenue increase in the fourth quarter of 2025, driven by favorable currency exchange rates and growth in its 22/28nm semiconductor business. Consolidated revenue reached NT$61.81 billion (US$1.97 billion), up 4.5% sequentially from NT$59.13 billion and 2.4% higher year-on-year. The company's gross margin improved to 30.7% from 29.8% in the previous quarter. Net income after tax stood at NT$10.06 billion, translating to earnings per share of NT$0.81.

As artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) expand rapidly, the global semiconductor industry is redirecting investments from advanced process nodes to advanced packaging and system-level integration. This shift is driving increased demand for complex packaging technologies and semiconductor equipment, creating new growth opportunities along the supply chain.

As the global trade landscape shifts under the weight of new US policies, a distinct divergence has emerged in East Asia. While South Korea currently faces a tariff hike to 25% amid legislative delays in ratifying its trade pact, Taiwan has successfully locked in a fixed 15% non-compounding rate.

In a recent interview with Jodi Shelton, Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, reflected on a life spent in near-constant motion. After years of crisscrossing the globe, he said, there are three places where he always lands with a sense of joy: Hawaii, Taiwan, and Japan.

I describe the close integration of Taiwan's semiconductor and electronics industries as the spillover of chip economic value. In earlier phases of the industry, economic value creation in electronic systems was highly concentrated at the chip level. Advancing process nodes alone was sufficient to capture most of the value. That model no longer holds. Today, improvements in manufacturing technology must propagate beyond wafer fabrication to packaging, testing, and ultimately system-level integration to translate into tradable economic value.

ASML Holding's management says demand tied to artificial intelligence is proving more durable than previously expected, with customers accelerating capacity planning that is likely to support orders for the Dutch company's most advanced lithography systems into and beyond 2026.