South Korean President Lee Jae-myung unveiled the country's Three Mega Projects for AI and Semiconductors in late June 2026, an ambitious national strategy designed to strengthen South Korea's global leadership in artificial intelligence and semiconductors. The initiative centers on three pillars—semiconductors, physical AI, and AI data centers—and aims to double the nation's DRAM output within five years while expanding capabilities in high-bandwidth memory (HBM), advanced packaging, AI processors, and next-generation memory technologies. It also seeks to extend South Korea's semiconductor footprint beyond the Seoul metropolitan region.
SK Siltron has begun volume production and customer shipments from a KRW2.3 trillion (approx. US$1.54 billion) expansion of its Gumi wafer plant in South Korea, Newsis reported, as the company ramps up supplies of 300mm silicon wafers used to manufacture advanced memory chips.
TYLSemi, a semiconductor startup founded by former executives of AlphaWave, the connectivity chip specialist acquired by Qualcomm, has emerged from stealth with US$43 million in early-stage funding to help companies develop custom AI chips through an open, chiplet-based approach.
The US has become the leading source of helium and other noble gases for Taiwan, South Korea and Japan as disruptions to Qatari production and China's temporary export ban reshape supply routes for materials used in semiconductor manufacturing, according to a Nikkei Asia analysis of customs data and related reporting.
Intel has unveiled Starfire, a space-grade processor that leverages its leading-edge 18A manufacturing process for satellites and other systems designed to survive beyond Earth's atmosphere. The move extends Intel's most advanced node — the centerpiece of its foundry turnaround — into a defense-and-space niche long dominated by specialist radiation-hardened suppliers. It stakes the design on a selling point that rivals cannot easily match: domestic US production.
South Korea is accelerating plans to supply electricity to a new semiconductor cluster in the country's southwest by 2030, potentially expanding the domestic energy-storage market as chip fabs and AI data centers add to power demand.
As early inventory stocking by brand customers winds down, China's 618 Shopping Festival delivers weaker-than-expected sales, and LCD TV panel prices begin to retreat, demand for monitor and notebook (NB) panels is cooling in the third quarter. Despite the slowdown, panel makers remain reluctant to cut prices amid elevated production costs, and IT panel prices are expected to remain flat in July as buyers and suppliers enter a period of pricing negotiations.
