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Tuesday 1 September 2026
Samsung Electro-Mechanics discloses major MLCC supply deal tied to AI server demand
Samsung Electro-Mechanics disclosed on September 1 that it has concluded a single sales and supply contract worth KRW1.072 trillion (about US$778.9 million) for MLCCs, equal to 9.5% of the company's most recent annual revenue.
Tuesday 1 September 2026
India expands chip ambitions with full Semicon 2.0 notification
India has unveiled the next phase of its semiconductor policy, a move that could reshape global chip supply chains, investment flows, and talent markets. The expanded program aims to deepen local design and manufacturing capacity, while giving multinational companies and developers a larger role in one of technology's most strategic sectors.
Tuesday 1 September 2026
Taiwan's G2C+ Alliance members target global markets
Artificial intelligence (AI) chips are driving a new wave of integration competition among Taiwan semiconductor equipment makers. Taiwan's G2C+ strategic alliance, comprised of C Sun, Gallant Precision Machining (GPM), Gallant Micro Machining (GMM), and Contrel Technology (CT), focuses on advanced packaging, AI smart manufacturing, and global markets.
Tuesday 1 September 2026
SEMICON Taiwan 2026 to spotlight AI-driven semiconductor supply chain shifts
SEMICON Taiwan 2026 is set to open soon as Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International said AI is pushing a new wave of technology upgrades across the global chip industry. At an August 31 pre-event briefing, the group said the changes are accelerating work in AI computing, advanced process technology, heterogeneous integration, and quantum computing.
Tuesday 1 September 2026
Acme sees years of SiC growth as data center demand builds
Capex by the world's nine largest cloud service providers (CSPs) is expected to rise about 90% year over year in 2026, while AI servers are growing faster than conventional servers, increasing demand for power and energy-management solutions.
Tuesday 1 September 2026
Kaimei sees 2H26 momentum strengthen as AI demand lifts orders and resistor price hikes take effect
Kaimei Electronics, a Yageo Group company, said order visibility remains strong for the second half of 2026 as AI server demand continues to ramp and automotive and industrial-control markets recover. Across its three major product lines, the average book-to-bill (B/B) ratio reached 1.2 in June and July, while pricing pressure has eased significantly, supporting a more optimistic operating outlook.
Monday 31 August 2026
Unimicron search puts spotlight on cross-border manufacturing for Taiwan's electronics sector
Unimicron, a major Taiwanese IC substrate maker, came under intense supply chain scrutiny last week after reports that prosecutors and investigators searched the company over a suspected "origin washing" case. The move has put long-standing cross-border production arrangements in Taiwan's electronics sector under sharper review.
Monday 31 August 2026
Unimicron stock prices fall 10% daily limit, says origin probe covers PCBs, not substrates

Unimicron Technology shares plunged to Taiwan's 10% daily downside limit on August 31, the first trading session after prosecutors disclosed an investigation into alleged false country-of-origin labeling. The stock opened at NT$999 (approx. US$31.5), dropping out of Taiwan's NT$1,000-plus share club, with sell orders briefly approaching or exceeding 100,000 lots while only a few thousand lots changed hands during early trading.

Monday 31 August 2026
Kingboard Laminates raises prices again as CCL shortages deepen
Kingboard Laminates, a leading Chinese copper-clad laminate (CCL) maker, has issued another price increase notice as shortages of core materials such as fiberglass cloth and copper foil intensify and prices surge. Effective immediately, the company will raise FR-4 substrate prices by 10% across the board, while prepreg (PP) prices will rise 10% for thick cloth of style 7628 and above, and 20% for thin cloth below 7628.
Monday 31 August 2026
South Korea risks 'HBM 2.0' trap in emerging CPO market
Co-packaged optics (CPO) is emerging as a critical next-generation technology for AI infrastructure, but unless South Korea strengthens its integration and validation capabilities, it risks being left with component-level capabilities while overseas players retain control of platforms and higher-value parts of the ecosystem.
Monday 31 August 2026
China silicon wafers enter AI-led upcycle: prices rise, 12-inch capacity expands

Hangzhou Lion Microelectronics plans to invest about CNY3 billion (approx. US$446 million) in a new 12-inch silicon wafer project in Jiaxing, expanding into a market where AI demand is lifting volumes and prices while China still relies heavily on imported large-diameter wafers.

Saturday 29 August 2026
Qualcomm's HBC play pulls Samsung and SK hynix into a new race beyond HBM
The AI infrastructure race has spent the past few years fixated on high-bandwidth memory as one of the most indispensable building blocks of accelerated compute. Yet as model sizes, context windows and inference workloads continue to expand, the bottleneck is increasingly shifting from how much memory can be stacked toward how efficiently data can move between memory and compute.
Friday 28 August 2026
Update: ABF substrate maker Unimicron searched in origin-labeling probe
(The latest status of the probe as of August 29th is updated below.)
Friday 28 August 2026
Long-term contracts tie up InP capacity due to data center optics demand
Compound semiconductor supply-chain players say China has recently eased some substrate export controls, but the upgrade of high-frequency transmission in AI data centers toward 200G and 400G has made optical communications a key technology breakthrough, creating a severe indium phosphide (InP) substrate shortage and sparking a trend toward signing long-term contracts and locking up capacity to secure stable supply.
Thursday 27 August 2026
HBM hybrid bonding delayed by 300°C heat and CMP dishing
As high-bandwidth memory (HBM) stack counts continue to rise, the industry originally anticipated that hybrid bonding (HB), a next-generation packaging solution, would be officially introduced with HBM5. However, process control challenges and cost barriers are threatening to delay that timeline. Simultaneously, thermal management is emerging as the central bottleneck for the memory sector.
Thursday 27 August 2026
Doosan thins memory-package CCL insulation to 13µm
Doosan Corporation's Electro-Materials BG has developed copper-clad laminate (CCL) technology that reduces the prepreg (PPG) insulating layer used in memory semiconductor package substrates from about 18µm to 13µm, and is preparing the material for mass production as thinner package designs raise the technical demands on substrate materials.
Thursday 27 August 2026
AI glass substrate race shifts toward reliability and mass production
The competition to develop glass substrates for artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor packaging is intensifying, with Japanese and South Korean manufacturers pursuing different approaches to solve the reliability challenges created by increasingly large and complex packages.
Wednesday 26 August 2026
Record mid-2026 growth for WUS Printed Circuit and China's pivot to ultra-high-layer PCBs
The global hardware supply chain is undergoing a structural transformation, driven by an unprecedented surge in artificial intelligence infrastructure investment. "This shift has brought unprecedented market opportunities to the industry," noted WUS Printed Circuit (Kunshan). The major supplier of high-end printed circuit boards (PCBs) reported explosive growth in its mid-2026 financial results.
Wednesday 26 August 2026
Kyocera to ramp up MLCC production for AI servers with JPY60B investment
Japanese components maker Kyocera is making a major push to capture surging AI demand. As part of its mid-term growth strategy toward FY2031, the company plans to begin mass production of next-generation multi-layer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) for AI servers by the end of March 2027. Production will take place at its Kokubu Block within the newly renamed Kagoshima Kirishima Plant in Kagoshima Prefecture.
Tuesday 25 August 2026
Nexperia China rebuilds 12-inch local supply chain after 330 days
Nexperia China said it has rebuilt a domestic 12-inch wafer supply chain after 330 days of overseas wafer supply disruptions, unveiling the new platform at a press conference outlining its new direction. The company said complete China-based manufacturing supply chains have now been established for metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) and logic IC products.
Tuesday 25 August 2026
AI's power crunch hits Taiwan: foundry capacity tightens, chip prices climb into 2H26
AI data centres are becoming a new stress point for the global power and semiconductor supply chain. As facilities shift towards megawatt-scale architectures, demand is rising for power semiconductors, battery backup systems, liquid cooling, grid capacity and low-carbon electricity.
Tuesday 25 August 2026
OmniVision's CIS business slips, but machine vision and robotics surge 71%
OmniVision Group reported a sharp drop in first-half 2026 profit as weakness in consumer electronics and automotive electronics weighed on its core image sensor business, even as machine vision, robotics and edge AI emerged as faster-growing sources of revenue.
Tuesday 25 August 2026
Commentary: Nvidia's 15% hike piles pressure on the AI supply chain, lifts ASIC prospects
Nvidia has reportedly notified major customers that server systems using its AI chips will rise by more than 15%, with the new pricing set to apply to models shipping from early 2027, including Grace Blackwell and the next-generation Vera Rubin platform. The move is expected to ripple through the chip and system supply chain, while industry figures say it could also lift the appeal of inference ASICs.
Monday 24 August 2026
TPK TGV pilot line to start by September, Thailand plant eyes 2027 ramp
TPK Holding is accelerating its move from consumer touch panels into semiconductors, with its Through Glass Via (TGV) pilot line in Taoyuan, Taiwan set to begin operations in August or September. The company is also working with leading outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) providers on the project, while its new Thailand production base aims to complete trial runs by year-end and begin volume production in early 2027.
Monday 24 August 2026
AI chip boom lifts South Korean semiconductor materials makers' profits in 2Q26
The AI semiconductor investment boom is increasingly spilling over into the materials supply chain. South Korea's major semiconductor materials suppliers broadly improved profitability in the second quarter of 2026, as stronger demand for advanced materials drove sharp operating profit growth. With customers expected to expand capacity from 2027 onward, the sector could see another wave of revenue growth.