Lam Research's Lam Capital recently held its fourth startup competition, drawing teams from the US, South Korea, Singapore, India, and Taiwan to vie for a sizeable prize pool. US startup Lightfinder won the top prize with a proposal centered on silicon photonics and intelligent software for a chip-scale spectrometer.

As the global semiconductor industry confronts the limits of Moore's Law, Huawei has unveiled a new roadmap aimed at extending chip performance growth through architecture, interconnect, and system-level optimisation rather than pure transistor miniaturisation.

Lam Research CEO Tim Archer said artificial intelligence and robotics can help chipmakers improve fab productivity as the semiconductor industry faces memory capacity constraints, chip-scaling limits, and growing demand for faster equipment delivery.

Nvidia's decision to sell its Vera CPU as a standalone chip could create a new source of demand for low-power DRAM, adding another pressure point to the already tight memory supply chain.

At its earnings conference, Weltrend Semiconductor described the first quarter of 2026 as an exceptional one. Despite the period being historically slow, the company posted year-over-year and sequential growth. Nearly all major product lines demonstrated strong growth momentum, with server-related products standing out in particular. Order visibility is now expected to remain strong throughout the full year. Meanwhile, AI servers are becoming increasingly diversified, with demand across GPUs, ASICs, and CPUs growing almost simultaneously, underpinning a highly promising operating outlook.

Ample Electronic said rising demand from artificial intelligence end customers has driven a stronger market for multilayer ceramic capacitors and related passive components, lifting orders, driving inventory builds, and prompting a shift toward longer-term material lock-in agreements. The conductive paste supplier reported a positive outlook for the second half of 2026 and said customers who initially carried low inventories were replenishing stock and, in some cases, signing extended supply arrangements.

For AMD CEO Lisa Su, the current moment presents an opening that Nvidia does not have. Nvidia's high-end chips have repeatedly faced scrutiny and export restrictions in China, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang only recently confirmed in May that Nvidia once held as much as 95% market share there. That dominance has since been reset, with the bulk of that share ceding to domestic rival Huawei.

Below are the most-read DIGITIMES Asia stories from the week of May 18-24, 2026:

Stellantis and Qualcomm expanded their multi-year collaboration to deploy Snapdragon Digital Chassis system-on-chip (SoC) solutions across Stellantis' global vehicle portfolio, affecting cockpit, connectivity, and driver-assistance systems. The move aims to standardize platforms, cut costs, and accelerate the deployment of advanced driver-assist and automated-driving features for customers worldwide, while enabling continuous updates and AI-driven driving experiences.