Episil Precision said AI-related demand is reshaping semiconductor epitaxy for the long term, with effects reaching global power and optical supply chains. The Taiwan-based maker is expanding in silicon, GaN, SiC, and GeSi to serve AI servers, optical communications, and mature-node power components worldwide.
SK hynix has launched a corporate venture capital (CVC) brand, SK hynix Ventures, and widened its investment scope beyond semiconductors and emerging technology to include AI computing, data centers, system software and optical interconnect — areas that sit beside and above its own products rather than inside them.
Taiwan's export orders topped US$100 billion in August 2026, reaching US$102.96 billion, up US$5.02 billion from the previous month, according to statistics released by Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) on September 22. Export orders for September are forecast to be between US$106 billion and US$109.1 billion, representing year-over-year growth of 50.7% to 55.1%.
Taiwan is stepping up outreach to India's engineering sector as global competition for chip and artificial intelligence talent intensifies. The planned cooperation could affect supply chains, university links, and where skilled graduates build careers, with implications for chipmaking hubs in Asia and beyond.
Optical communications capacity is in short supply as surging computing demand from AI data centers turns transmission into a bottleneck for AI infrastructure. The market is shifting toward combined optical-and-copper solutions, while optical communications rapidly advances toward 800G and 1.6T, prompting compound semiconductor foundry Win Semiconductors to expand its photodiode (PD) and laser diode (LD) capacity and co-develop 200G components with customers.
China has tightened the security and reliability framework around its domestic computing stack, with the latest official evaluation placing Huawei's Ascend 950 at Level II and Kunlunxin's M100 at Level I among AI training and inference chips. The same assessment also gave the highest Level III rating to several general-purpose CPUs, including Loongson and HiSilicon Kunpeng products, signalling that certification is becoming a more structured gatekeeper for China's locally developed compute infrastructure.
US photonics company Lightmatter has launched an optical module that sends and receives data over a single strand of fiber. The company says this halves the cabling needed to connect GPUs in large AI clusters.
SiPearl, a fabless company backed by the European Union and France, has delivered the first Rhea1 CPU samples to Bull for integration into Europe's JUPITER supercomputer, moving the European-designed processor from bring-up and validation into customer system integration while benchmarking continues.
Meta's new AI agent, Muse, has leapt to the top of app charts roughly two weeks after its release. Its popularity has helped push up chip stocks by focusing attention on the importance of CPUs for agentic AI.
Hermes Testing Solutions began trading on the over-the-counter market on September 22, positioning itself to benefit from rising demand tied to artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. The semiconductor wafer testing provider is also expanding into high-speed memory SLT, advanced packaging equipment, and SiPh CPO testing.
Hanmi Semiconductor said on September 22 that it has shipped its first FC Bonder 75 to a customer, expanding the South Korean equipment maker's reach beyond high-bandwidth memory (HBM) into the broader system semiconductor packaging market.
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