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Jan 16
US-Taiwan reach agreement on tariff deal, but leave timelines and capacity rules unclear
The US Commerce Department said Taiwan and the US will sign a trade agreement involving up to US$500 billion in Taiwanese investment. However, the framework does not set annual allocations, phased targets, or completion deadlines, giving both sides broad flexibility.

Canon said on January 13 that it has developed a new wafer planarization technology designed to uniformly smooth surface irregularities during semiconductor manufacturing. The process applies resin materials using inkjet printing and then presses a glass plate onto the surface, using a stamping-like method to achieve planarization.

Taiwan-based passive component maker Yageo said Japan's Shibaura Electronics was officially delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange on January 13. Following the completion of the share consolidation, Yageo now holds 100% of the voting rights in Shibaura Electronics as of January 15.

At its January 15, 2026, earnings call, TSMC chairman C.C. Wei addressed questions on the authenticity of AI demand, capital expenditure plans, and US capacity expansion. Wei stated that AI demand is real and sustainable, underpinning TSMC's aggressive investment strategy.
During TSMC's first earnings call of 2026, CEO C.C. Wei said that key metrics at its Arizona fabs are approaching the level of advanced manufacturing in Taiwan. Rising demand from US-based AI customers supports TSMC's capacity expansion in the US, prompting back-end packaging and testing supply chain partners to consider expanding their US presence.

In the inaugural episode of a new leadership podcast, Jensen Huang offers a strikingly unvarnished account of how Nvidia became one of the world's most valuable technology firms.

After months of high-stakes negotiations, Taiwan has secured a reciprocal tariff rate of 15% with the United States. Officials in Taipei are presenting the result as both a diplomatic breakthrough and a strategic recalibration of Taiwan's place in the global supply chain.
China's domestic memory module maker Biwin Storage Technology has released the A-share market's first major 2025 profit outlook, signalling a sharp earnings rebound as memory prices recover and AI-driven demand reshapes the sector's supply dynamics.
Qualcomm is in talks with Samsung Electronics over contract manufacturing of 2nm chips, a move that could reportedly support Samsung's loss-making foundry business as customers reassess reliance on TSMC, according to Reuters and Korean media reports.
Samsung Electronics is expected to increase DRAM production by about 5% this year, but the expansion is unlikely to ease the global supply shortage as demand continues to outpace available output, according to South Korean media reports.

Xiaomi's second-generation in-house mobile processor, the Xring O2, will skip TSMC's 2nm process and instead use the company's 3nm N3P node, underscoring a trade-off between performance, cost, and supply availability. The choice also suggests the chip may not power Xiaomi's most premium flagship smartphones.

Taiwanese power semiconductor companies, including Taiwan Semiconductor Company (TSC), Panjit International, and Eris Tech, have recently disclosed their 2025 revenue results, anticipating benefits from order shifts driven by Nexperia. Market analysts project that these effects will take full shape in the first quarter of 2026. Concurrently, these firms are developing power management products to enter the growing AI server market, driven by rising demand for higher power density in AI data centers.