Severe floods triggered by days of extreme rain in Thailand have paralyzed transport in Bangkok and several other areas, disrupting local auto and components supply chains and drawing attention to damage at Taiwanese companies with factories in the country. The flooding has also slowed shipments from Taiwan PCB makers in Thailand as road and airport transport remain affected.

Chunghwa Precision Test Tech (CHPT), a supplier of semiconductor test interfaces, posted record revenue for September and the third quarter of 2026 as demand for AI-related chip testing kept capacity utilization high. Revenue for the first nine months of the year also reached a record.

Prices for low-cost 6-inch silicon carbide (SiC) substrates, after years of capacity expansion and brutal price wars, are now showing clear signs of bottoming out in the second half of 2026. The cheap material has also unleashed wave after wave of demand, with China's domestic stimulus tightening SiC wafer fabrication capacity and spilling over into Taiwan's supply chain.

The resilience of global goods trade amid tariff escalation and an energy shock is real, but it rests on a narrow base. A breakdown of ITC Trade Map export data shows that a handful of AI hardware categories, led by servers, processors and memory chips, account for well over a third of the growth in world exports, and that the gains are flowing overwhelmingly to a small group of East Asian exporters and their North American customers.

As Elon Musk's Terafab ambitions advance, the realities of modern silicon manufacturing become increasingly apparent, prompting Musk to enter talks with industry mainstays like Intel and TSMC for assistance.

The AI server boom is spreading into the market for collaborative robots (cobots). The share of cobots on AI server production lines is rising as Wiwynn expands their use at its Mexico and Texas plants, while Quanta has also deployed robotic arms from Techman Robot on its server lines.

General Interface Solution (GIS) Holding is gaining traction in optical communications and other new products despite weak consumer electronics demand caused by rising memory prices. Its laser-source packaging and testing business has entered customer qualification and, if progress stays on track, could begin shipments in the fourth quarter of 2026, with a larger revenue contribution from the first quarter of 2027.

Nvidia is testing glass-free PCB material systems for its next-generation AI server platforms, evaluating polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) and hydrocarbon (HC) resin formulations for possible use in the Rubin Ultra NVL576 Switch Tray, which is scheduled for mass production in the second half of 2027.

Chip-performance gains have long been driven by an industry-wide focus on shrinking transistor nodes and tightening integration. While major economies including the US and Taiwan have historically sat at the summit of semiconductor manufacturing excellence, China has spent years building its own capabilities amid increasingly restricted access to some leading-edge technologies.

AI servers and advanced packaging continue to drive demand for semiconductor manufacturing, outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT), and equipment. Machvision said Advanced Semiconductor Engineering's (ASE's) expansion is helping make semiconductors and substrates its fastest-growing product lines.

JSR Micro Korea, the local subsidiary of Japan-based JSR, officially completed construction of a new semiconductor materials plant on September 30 in the Ochang Foreign Investment Zone in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province. The facility is dedicated to the production of metal oxide resist (MOR), an advanced, metal-based photoresist for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, marking JSR's first global manufacturing hub for EUV MOR, according to The Elec.

Shinko Electric Industries announced on September 30 it has signed a purchase agreement to acquire the Mobara Fab from Japan Display (JDI) in Mobara City, Chiba Prefecture. The transaction is intended to establish a new core production hub dedicated to high-end semiconductor packaging, addressing surging global demand for AI accelerators and data center applications.

As AI chip sizes scale up, global glass leaders Corning, AGC, Nippon Electric Glass (NEG), and Schott have all centered their next-generation core substrate and through-glass via (TGV) roadmaps on a unified 510×515mm format. The tight alignment strongly suggests that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) is eyeing this exact specification for its post-2030 glass substrate platform.

China's BOE Technology is seeking closer ties with Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics as the display maker expands beyond panels into semiconductor glass substrates and advanced packaging.

Unimicron has moved again to ease tight ABF substrate supply, buying a Hukou site from Bridgestone Taiwan for more than NT$10 billion (US$313.65 million). The deal highlights how AI chip demand is reshaping capacity plans, as customers worldwide race to secure advanced substrate supply for the next several years.

Qualcomm's senior vice president and general manager of the compute and gaming business, Kedar Kondap, said the biggest challenge facing the PC industry is not component shortages, but the unusually large price swings in memory and other parts. Speaking to the media during Snapdragon Summit 2026, he said that volatility is affecting the PC market.

The high-end cloud AI accelerator market will see a structural shift in 2027, with total ASIC shipments surpassing GPU shipments for the first time, driven by rising output from Google, Amazon, and Huawei. The market will move into a landscape of "dual competition between Nvidia and Google, with multiple players racing to catch up."

Gold Circuit Electronics (GCE) plans to bring in Amazon as a strategic investor through a private placement expected to raise NT$1.59 billion (US$49.88 million), lifting the two companies from a simple supply-chain relationship to a strategic partnership backed by equity. The deal would also turn a GCE customer into a shareholder of the printed circuit board (PCB) maker, while Amazon invests again in Taiwan's server supply chain after joining Alchip Technologies' private placement in 2024.

AI is driving the semiconductor industry into a new growth cycle while creating opportunities for display companies traditionally centered on panels to move into semiconductors. These companies are extending their reach into emerging areas such as advanced packaging and optical communications, seeking to leverage core technologies such as glass substrates and Micro LED.

Murata Manufacturing has started mass production of its LLD series, a new class of ultra-compact capacitors that could help device makers worldwide fit more power management into smaller electronics. The move underscores how component miniaturization is shaping smartphones, wearables, and other connected devices used by consumers across global markets.

National Silicon Industry Group (NSIG) chairman Haitao Jiang has resigned from all positions at the company, prompting the Shanghai-listed semiconductor materials supplier to begin a leadership transition.

Samsung Electro-Mechanics has signed another long-term supply agreement for server components, bringing the value of its disclosed supply agreements this year to about US$2.6 billion as demand for high-performance passive components continues to rise.

TDK and Taiyo Yuden have signed a memorandum of understanding to begin discussions on a business alliance to develop electronic components, including MLCCs and inductors jointly, the two Japanese companies announced on September 29, 2026. The talks will also cover cooperation in manufacturing and procurement, and the companies will consider a future capital alliance.

Advanced Substrate Technologies (AST), a joint venture between Japan's Toppan Holdings and Broadcom, officially opened a manufacturing facility in Singapore on September 29, 2026, the first in the country capable of producing high-end flip chip ball grid array (FC-BGA) substrates. The approximately 95,000-square-meter plant in the Jurong Lake District is the Toppan Group's first such facility outside Japan and is targeting the start of high-value manufacturing by late 2026, the companies said.

GlobalFoundries (GF) is expanding its Singapore footprint following its acquisition of local silicon photonics foundry Advanced Micro Foundry (AMF), integrating 200mm and 300mm silicon photonics technologies while transferring its existing US 300mm capabilities to Singapore.