South Korea's leading chipmakers, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, are projected to pay a combined corporate tax of approximately KRW6 trillion (US$4.2 billion) for the year 2025, signaling a nearly ninefold increase compared to 2024. This surge reflects the rapid growth in the global semiconductor market, driven largely by accelerating demand for artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.

GlobalFoundries (GF) has recently acquired Singapore-based silicon photonics chip company Advanced Micro Foundry. Meanwhile, Lightmatter, a US silicon photonics chip company that works with GF, is expanding the number of systems it is building. Seeing huge growth potential in the silicon photonics market, the company expects that after completing integration and testing with switch and XPU customers, it will move toward commercial shipments in 2027.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has revealed in a post on X that the company is close to taping out its next-generation AI5 chip while simultaneously beginning development of AI6. Tesla plans to introduce a new AI chip design into volume production every twelve months, positioning the company to become the world's largest producer of AI silicon.

Micron has rejected reports claiming it is redesigning its HBM4 product due to failure to meet Nvidia's data transfer requirements. The company stated that HBM4 will be launched as planned in 2026, with all production capacity for the year already fully booked.

These are the most-read DIGITIMES Asia stories in the week of November 17 to November 23, 2025.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.(TSMC)'s chairman and chief executive, C.C. Wei, used one of the industry's most high-profile stages to restate the company's commitment to expanding in the United States, arguing that scale in America is now indispensable for the next wave of artificial-intelligence demand.

Despite Nvidia's strong third quarter of fiscal 2026 performance, surpassing forecasts for 12 consecutive quarters, global market concerns over AI remain. According to supply chain sources, orders and outlooks for AI servers upstream and downstream continue to trend upward into 2026.

The memory shortage is rippling through the PC supply chain, prompting vendors to scramble for DRAM allocations at upstream suppliers. Industry sources say senior Asus executives have joined MediaTek in making direct trips to Samsung Electronics in a bid to secure inventory.

Qualcomm announced the winners of the 7th Qualcomm Innovate in Taiwan Challenge (QITC) on November 21. First place went to MoBagel, which provides high-efficiency, energy-saving, enterprise-level artificial intelligence (AI) agent solutions. Second place was awarded to Moovo, noted for its performance in smart city applications and global electric bike (e-bike) rental services. Third place went to Paia Technology, which focuses on AI education.

TSMC's advanced CoWoS packaging capacity has become extremely tight, resulting in only a few leading AI chipmakers having the means to book capacity in large quantities. Other ASIC makers and second-tier AI chip companies have struggled to secure sufficient capacity. There is market speculation that Intel's EMIB advanced packaging process is becoming the main alternative option that chipmakers are considering. Marvell and MediaTek are both rumored to try it, following a new business model that involves front-end water fabrication at TSMC and back-end packaging with Intel.

Although South Korea has seen its semiconductor exports hit record highs, concerns are mounting that over-reliance on specific products could heighten risks for the country's manufacturing sector. Moreover, a recent survey by the Federation of Korean Industries (FKI) highlights that China is poised to surpass South Korea across all major industries by 2030, signaling a looming challenge for the country's economic dominance.