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Aug 18
Nvidia swaps credit support for exclusive chip sales in OpenAI's Ohio data center campus

Nvidia has reached a deal with OpenAI to provide up to US$105 billion in credit guarantees for the AI startup's upcoming 8GW data center campus in Ohio. The support will help OpenAI to secure a lease from SB Energy, while Nvidia will be the facility's exclusive chip supplier.

As AI chips move toward larger dies and higher integration, advanced packaging is shifting from 300mm wafers to square panel manufacturing. In panel-level packaging (PLP), FOPLP and CoPoS have emerged as the two hottest keywords, while glass-based technologies remain further ahead on the roadmap.
Optical imaging technologies company New Smart Technology (NSTC) is moving beyond traditional optical and image inspection into semiconductor high-end automated optical inspection (AOI), co-packaged optics (CPO) optoelectronic modules, and unmanned vehicle vision systems, with a clear change in its revenue structure, according to chairman Stone Shih and president Phil Chen.

Tsinghua Unigroup's former "chip-to-cloud" expansion strategy unraveled after a debt crisis in 2020 and subsequent bankruptcy restructuring. Several projects originating in the group's earlier era have since entered disposal proceedings, and one of the former group's largest planned investments has now reached a formal end.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the fifth edition of Semicon India on September 17 at Yashobhoomi (India International Convention and Expo Centre) in New Delhi, with the three-day event running through September 19 under the theme "Silicon to Systems: Building the Ecosystem," according to ETV Bharat and the Statesman.

More than half of Taiwanese companies surveyed by TAITRA reported being negatively affected by the US-Iran conflict, with rising costs emerging as the biggest concern as geopolitical tensions disrupt energy, raw material, and supply chain conditions.

Market speculation that AMD is working with Google on technology for its v10-generation tensor processing unit (TPU) has prompted questions over the potential impact on Google's existing application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) partners, including Broadcom and MediaTek.

Ethernet chipmaker IC Plus said on August 17 that its operations in 2026 have improved significantly after Airoha Technology took a stake and joined its management, while resources from MediaTek also provided substantial support. The company said it turned profitable in the first half of the year.

The two largest silicon wafer companies are the sector's slowest growers on a cumulative basis. Everything running fast sits downstream of them.

Rising chip and copper prices are rapidly increasing cost pressure on LG Electronics.

Samsung Electronics and SK hynix have amassed a combined KRW278 trillion (approx. US$196.9 billion) in cash equivalents and short-term financial instruments by the end of the second quarter of 2026 as AI-driven memory demand lifted prices, revenue, and profit. The surge has shifted attention from earnings growth to how South Korea's two largest memory chipmakers will deploy their expanding financial firepower.

Samsung Electronics is reportedly on track to complete development of 10-nanometer-class seventh-generation DRAM, also known as 1d DRAM, before SK hynix. According to The Bell, citing industry sources, Samsung is targeting September 2026 for completion, while SK hynix is aiming for December 2026, giving Samsung a lead of about one quarter.