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Jan 14
TSMC turns Arizona gamble into goldmine as suppliers ride 10-year wave
After five years of struggling with double construction timelines and billion-dollar regulatory hurdles, TSMC has quietly transformed its Arizona operations into a profit engine, and suppliers are reaping the benefits. Taiwan's fab equipment and materials giants now have order visibility stretching beyond 2030.

The global memory industry entered a clear upturn in the second half of 2025 as both spot and contract prices rose sharply, lifting earnings across Taiwan's memory supply chain and pushing operating performance to cyclical highs in the fourth quarter.

As global governments accelerate investments in the semiconductor sector, Japan's Rapidus is moving forward with its goal of mass-producing 2nm AI chips. The company maintains that its primary concern is not a potential surplus of capacity, but rather structural constraints, specifically a significant shortage of skilled professionals.

China has tightened export controls on rare earths and other dual-use materials bound for Japan, prompting Tokyo to formalise a rare-earth stockpiling policy and work with G7 partners to accelerate efforts to reduce supply-chain dependence on China.
After navigating a turbulent year of US-China tariffs, Taiwanese microcontroller (MCU) maker Holtek Corp. closed 2025 with a full-year revenue of NT$3.058 billion (US$96 million), up 22.2% from the previous year. The company said it sees growth opportunities in behind-the-meter energy storage and lithium battery fire-safety solutions, with plans to roll out medium- and small-power portable storage units for the residential market, as well as compact energy-storage fire-safety products already validated with multiple clients.
WUS Printed Circuit (Kunshan) Co. plans to invest up to US$300 million in a high-density optical-electrical printed circuit board (PCB) project aimed at supporting next-generation packaging and interconnect requirements for AI servers, high-performance computing (HPC), and advanced networking systems.
GlobalWafers stated it is continuing to expand the application landscape of its advanced materials technologies, with its Danish subsidiary Topsil GlobalWafers ramping up investment in ultra-high purity float zone (FZ) silicon materials to support the development of next-generation quantum applications.

GlobalFoundries said on January 13 that it has agreed to acquire the ARC Processor IP Solutions business from Synopsys, a move that modestly broadens the foundry's exposure to processor IP and so-called "physical AI" workloads.

TSMC will hold its earnings call on January 15, 2026. Supply chain sources expect AI chip demand to remain strong in 2026, while TSMC's advanced packaging and testing capacity continues to run short. As a result, outsourced backend orders are set to increase, with Taiwan's two major IC testing and packaging firms — ASE Holdings and KYEC — emerging as key beneficiaries.
PCB manufacturer Gold Circuit Electronics (GCE) posted a record-high full-year consolidated revenue in 2025, surging more than 50% year-over-year, driven by a ramp-up in ASIC server customer orders in the second-half of 2025 that significantly boosted networking and server shipments.
Samsung Electronics is set to introduce South Korea-made mask blanks into its extreme ultraviolet (EUV) process starting as early as the second quarter of 2026. According to ET News and The Elec, Samsung is in the final evaluation stages of its EUV mask blanks with local supplier S&S Tech and is expected to be completed by January 2026, or by February at the latest. This is the first time Samsung will use domestically produced mask blanks in its EUV process.

Surging demand for AI hardware is prompting memory makers to reassess their product portfolios as resources shift toward higher-margin enterprise and data center markets. Following Micron's decision to exit its Crucial consumer business late last year, market speculation has emerged that SK Hynix may also be reviewing its exposure to consumer-grade memory products.