Chinese tech giant ByteDance is rapidly scaling its in-house chip development efforts, with its chip R&D team now exceeding 1,000 employees, signaling a strong push into AI hardware. According to a recent report by 36Kr, the company's investment in AI chip technology is accelerating quickly.

GaAs foundry leader Win Semiconductor forecasts explosive growth in the 1.6T optical communication module market in 2026, expecting a 2-3x increase in demand driven by satellite and optical communications sectors.

Artificial intelligence-driven growth in the semiconductor industry has drawn increasing public attention. SEMICON Korea, organized by SEMI, continues to expand in scale. The 2026 exhibition featured 550 participating companies and more than 2,400 booths, with pre-registered attendance reaching 75,000.

AMD's EPYC server processors captured a record 41.3% revenue market share in the server segment in the fourth quarter of 2025, Mercury Research reported, driven by accelerated adoption in cloud and enterprise markets. The gain marks a significant shift in the composition of vendor revenue in the quarter.

Taiwan has officially signed a final trade agreement with the US, concluding bilateral negotiations. Under the deal, Taiwan will receive most-favored-nation (MFN) treatment if Washington imposes "Section 232" tariffs on semiconductors and related derivative products. Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) and Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said the agreement will serve as a foundation for advancing President Ching-te Lai's "economic resilience" strategy and expanding Taiwan's international economic influence.

The trajectory of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) into the 2030s is being shaped by a new generation of leadership. At the center of that shift is the board-approved promotion of Dr. Y.L. Wang (王英郎).

As China emerges as a major RISC-V hub shipping hundreds of billions of chips annually since 2024, Arm Holdings confronts heightened competition in a market where its architecture has powered over 300 billion chips across hundreds of licensees over 40 years. The trend is prompting Arm to accelerate efforts to secure its position in China's AI era.

On February 12, 2026, the United States and Taiwan finalized a structural "re-pricing" of their economic relationship. The Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) is not a traditional free trade agreement; it is a strategic pact that reshores semiconductor manufacturing to the US while anchoring Taiwan within a "non-red," or non-China, supply chain.

The US-Taiwan reciprocal tariff negotiations officially concluded on February 12, 2026. Notably, tariffs on information and communication technology (ICT) and semiconductors remain at zero, and even if tariffs arise in the future, Taiwan will face the lowest rates.

A Citi analyst said the next phase of artificial intelligence (AI) memory demand will extend beyond high-bandwidth memory (HBM), pointing to emerging opportunities in physical AI devices and high-capacity flash architectures.

Industry analysts indicate that Samsung Electronics' non-memory division is expected to return to profitability in the fourth quarter of 2026, with a full-year turnaround projected for 2027.