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Wednesday 20 May 2026

Former Samsung semiconductor head warns that memory prices and demand could fall sharply after 2028

The global semiconductor industry has been focused on a memory supercycle, with some forecasts suggesting the upturn could last until 2030. However, Kye-hyun Kyung, former head of Samsung Electronics' Device Solutions (DS) division and currently a standing advisor to Samsung, has cautioned against overly optimistic sentiment in the memory market.

Wednesday 20 May 2026

Google and Blackstone could lift ASIC demand with TPU leasing joint venture

Recent media reports say Google is set to team up with Blackstone to form a new cloud computing leasing company, with Blackstone as the main shareholder. The new venture aims to build about 500 MW of computing capacity by 2027, most of it using Google's Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), a move industry watchers say supports Google ASIC partners such as MediaTek, Broadcom, and TSMC.

Wednesday 20 May 2026

Commentary: China hardens AI self-reliance push after Trump-Xi talks

After the Trump-Xi meeting in Beijing, China's senior leadership has stepped up inspections of artificial intelligence, smart manufacturing and computing infrastructure, offering a clear signal of where Beijing wants its technology policy to move over the next three years.

Wednesday 20 May 2026

Taiwan robotics hub aims to move suppliers beyond components

Taiwan has opened a new robotics R&D center in southern Taiwan, aiming to help local manufacturers move beyond component supply and into higher-value robotics systems as automation demand spreads across healthcare, logistics, food service, and public safety.

Wednesday 20 May 2026

Nvidia earnings set to beat again on AI rack boom

Supply chain optimism grows as Blackwell shipments ramp, Rubin approaches, and Intel CPUs re-enter the AI server spotlight.

Wednesday 20 May 2026

South Korea turns defense contracts into quantum's commercialization launchpad

South Korea's leading defense contractor, LIG Defense & Aerospace, and the state-backed Agency for Defense Development are accelerating efforts to move quantum defense technologies from labs into operational deployment, as industry players argue that military and public-sector demand will be the key catalyst for commercialization before broader private-sector adoption takes hold.

Wednesday 20 May 2026

China's OSATs chase bigger role as AI chips strain packaging supply

China's OSAT providers are trying to move deeper into advanced packaging as artificial intelligence (AI) demand strains global chip packaging supply, creating an opening for companies that have long played a lower-profile role in the semiconductor value chain.

Wednesday 20 May 2026

Phison taps overseas bond market for US$800 million storage push

Phison Electronics has completed pricing for its first overseas unsecured convertible bond sale, raising US$800 million as the NAND controller supplier moves to support expanding demand for AI storage and related solutions.

Wednesday 20 May 2026

Commentary: Musk, Huang, and H200—Nvidia's last chip in China

US President Donald Trump's trip to China with 17 business leaders thrust Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang back into the spotlight — as Beijing's position on Nvidia's H200 chips and China's broader AI supply chain continue to reshape the market narrative.

Tuesday 19 May 2026

Dell AI Factory crosses 5,000 enterprise clients on Nvidia-fueled demand

Dell Technologies has added 1,000 customers over the past quarter for its AI Factory servers, which use Nvidia chips and software to power AI applications for enterprises. The hardware company has been working to establish itself as a go-to partner for traditional businesses looking to weave AI into their workloads.

Tuesday 19 May 2026

AMD gains Beijing spotlight: China courts Lisa Su for AI chip ties

Shortly after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang left China following a delegation led by US President Donald Trump, Beijing officials swiftly announced a meeting with Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) CEO Lisa Su, drawing market attention to a possible shift in the atmosphere surrounding US-China AI chip cooperation.

Tuesday 19 May 2026

Google and Blackstone reportedly plan AI cloud venture to expand TPU business

Alphabet's Google and Blackstone are planning to launch a new artificial intelligence cloud company that would use Google's proprietary AI chips to compete in the fast-growing AI infrastructure market, according to reports from Bloomberg, Reuters, and The Wall Street Journal.

Tuesday 19 May 2026

Liquid cooling spreads beyond AI GPUs as memory and network cards join adoption wave

Nvidia's fanless Vera Rubin AI server racks, slated for mass production in the second half of 2026, are expected to accelerate global adoption of liquid cooling across server components, creating demand beyond GPUs for CPUs, memory, network cards, and switches, and reshaping thermal management supply chains worldwide and vendor economics.

Tuesday 19 May 2026

China doubles down on AI-driven manufacturing upgrade

Chinese officials have renewed calls to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) more deeply into manufacturing as Beijing seeks to modernize traditional industries, strengthen industrial competitiveness, and cultivate new growth drivers.

Tuesday 19 May 2026

China's AI token boom fuels push for national compute network

China is accelerating plans for a national computing power network as artificial intelligence (AI) token usage surges, casting AI compute as part of the country's next layer of public infrastructure.

Tuesday 19 May 2026

Baidu says AI is now the majority of its business

Baidu said its core AI businesses became the majority of the company's revenue in the first quarter of 2026, driven by rapid growth in AI cloud infrastructure, expanded foundation-model support on its model-as-a-service platform Qianfan, and stronger commercial adoption of its Kunlunxin AI chips.

Tuesday 19 May 2026

Analysts divided on Baidu's AI monetization as cloud growth offsets ad weakness

Analysts offered mixed assessments of Baidu after the Chinese internet company posted first-quarter revenue that topped market expectations, with some pointing to stronger AI monetization. In contrast, others warned that profitability remains under pressure from rising investment and lower-margin AI businesses.

Tuesday 19 May 2026

Nvidia Rubin platform to drive LPDDR demand past Apple and Samsung in 2027

A US research firm reported that Nvidia's next-generation Vera Rubin platform will consume more low-power DRAM (LPDDR) in 2027 than the combined global usage of Apple and Samsung, the two largest smartphone brands. According to a Citrini Research estimate cited by Wccftech, Rubin is expected to require more than 6 billion gigabytes of LPDDR in 2027, outstripping Apple's 2.966 billion gigabytes and Samsung's 2.724 billion gigabytes combined.

Tuesday 19 May 2026

SanDisk: AI data centers still lack a cost case to replace HDDs with SSDs

AI-driven memory demand has sent NAND prices soaring more than 20-fold, but flash memory and hard drive makers alike remain cautious about large-scale capacity expansion. SanDisk argues that the widening price gap between NAND and hard disk drives (HDDs) has further weakened the economic case for solid-state drives (SSDs) to replace HDDs in AI data centers.

Monday 18 May 2026

TI says safety will decide 800V AI data center adoption and supplier wins

Pradeep S. Shenoy, a computing technology expert at Texas Instruments's (TI) US headquarters, recently shared his views on 800V architectures for AI data centers in a media appearance. He said 800V solutions will not see broad adoption in AI data centers in 2026, but rollout will accelerate year by year from 2027.

Monday 18 May 2026

Hiwin doubles robotics revenue share in 1Q26 on semiconductor automation demand

Taiwan precision motion-control leader Hiwin Technologies is accelerating growth on the back of semiconductor automation and robotics demand, with robot-related products emerging as a rapidly expanding revenue driver as the company deepens its push into wafer-handling systems, logistics robots, and humanoid robot components.

Monday 18 May 2026

Taiwan firms seek tax breaks for AI compute center bids

Taiwan's Ministry of Digital Affairs (MODA) has revealed that three applicants have submitted bids for its AI compute center BOO (build-own-operate) program, which closed on May 14, 2026. The disclosure comes as Foxconn is widely reported to be highly interested in building a large AI compute center.

Monday 18 May 2026

Asus leverages manufacturing expertise and memory supply edge to grow its South Korean server business

Asus is accelerating its push into the server market in South Korea, leveraging its manufacturing prowess, long-term ties with major memory makers, and flexible design and supply strategies to take advantage of mass procurements in South Korea's government-led sovereign AI infrastructure initiative and GPU server roll-outs at Hyundai Motor, telecom operators, and financial institutions in the country.

Monday 18 May 2026

Kioxia gets rare chance to challenge Samsung, SK Hynix in AI storage boom

Kioxia Holdings is moving to capture a larger share of AI-related storage demand, as the shift from AI training to inference raises interest in high-speed, high-capacity NAND flash and solid-state drives.

Monday 18 May 2026

DIGITIMES Insight: Intel and AMD diverge as TSMC prepares price hikes

Global server markets may shift as DIGITIMES analyst Luke Lin says Intel's revenue gains stem largely from price rises while AMD posts stronger shipment-led growth. TSMC plans another price increase as customers prioritize capacity over cost, developments that could affect cloud providers, vendors, and data center economics worldwide.

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