Despite Nvidia's strong third quarter of fiscal 2026 performance, surpassing forecasts for 12 consecutive quarters, global market concerns over AI remain. According to supply chain sources, orders and outlooks for AI servers upstream and downstream continue to trend upward into 2026.
The memory shortage is rippling through the PC supply chain, prompting vendors to scramble for DRAM allocations at upstream suppliers. Industry sources say senior Asus executives have joined MediaTek in making direct trips to Samsung Electronics in a bid to secure inventory.
Qualcomm announced the winners of the 7th Qualcomm Innovate in Taiwan Challenge (QITC) on November 21. First place went to MoBagel, which provides high-efficiency, energy-saving, enterprise-level artificial intelligence (AI) agent solutions. Second place was awarded to Moovo, noted for its performance in smart city applications and global electric bike (e-bike) rental services. Third place went to Paia Technology, which focuses on AI education.
TSMC's advanced CoWoS packaging capacity has become extremely tight, resulting in only a few leading AI chipmakers having the means to book capacity in large quantities. Other ASIC makers and second-tier AI chip companies have struggled to secure sufficient capacity. There is market speculation that Intel's EMIB advanced packaging process is becoming the main alternative option that chipmakers are considering. Marvell and MediaTek are both rumored to try it, following a new business model that involves front-end water fabrication at TSMC and back-end packaging with Intel.
Although South Korea has seen its semiconductor exports hit record highs, concerns are mounting that over-reliance on specific products could heighten risks for the country's manufacturing sector. Moreover, a recent survey by the Federation of Korean Industries (FKI) highlights that China is poised to surpass South Korea across all major industries by 2030, signaling a looming challenge for the country's economic dominance.
India has renewed its push to become a global semiconductor hub, setting an ambitious target to match the manufacturing capabilities of leading producers by 2032. Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the country expects to reach a "level playing field" with major chipmaking nations within the next decade, as New Delhi accelerates investment to build domestic capacity. "By 2031–2032, we will be equivalent to what many of these countries are at today," he told Bloomberg's New Economy Forum in Singapore.
Japanese ceramics firm NGK Insulators has announced plans to triple its production capacity of support wafers by fiscal year 2027 (April 2027-March 2028). More specifically, these refer to double-sided polished alumina ceramic HICERAM Carriers used in chiplet packaging.
Fujifilm will build a semiconductor materials plant in India for regional exports; Ziroh Labs promotes CPU-first AI compute; India approves 17 ECMS projects worth US$810 million to expand component manufacturing.
Doosan Electronic Business Group (Doosan Electro-Materials) is on track to become the exclusive supplier of copper-clad laminate (CCL) for Nvidia's next-generation AI chip, Rubin, following Taiwan competitor Elite Material Co. (EMC)'s failure to pass quality certification for the Nvidia Blackwell GB300 compute tray.
SK Hynix is reportedly preparing a major ramp-up of its next-generation 1c DRAM production, with plans to increase capacity eightfold in 2026 to meet rising demand for high-performance general-purpose memory in server and accelerator systems. The chipmaker is expected to boost output of GDDR7 and SOCAMM2 modules built on the 1c platform to support growing orders from Nvidia and global cloud service providers.
The 2025 Intel Technology Innovation and Industry Ecosystem Conference was held from November 19 to 21, 2025, in Chongqing, China. At the event, Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan and newly appointed chairman of Intel China Alan Wang both made their first public appearances in China following their appointments. They took office in March and September 2025, respectively. In contrast to former CEO Pat Gelsinger, their remarks focused heavily on AI.
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