Sandisk sees demand for roughly 60 to 90 gigabytes of NAND flash per CPU in certain AI inference and agent-orchestration applications, as customers rethink how they use different memory and storage technologies across their AI systems.

Sandisk says AI infrastructure customers are returning to secure more NAND flash after underestimating their storage requirements, even as its pipeline of prospective long-term supply agreements exceeds planned output through the end of the decade.

AI chipmakers' rising memory performance requirements are accelerating the shift from sixth-generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM4) to HBM4E, according to analysis of the South Korean supply chain. Major AI semiconductor customers are already pushing HBM4E development, potentially shortening HBM4's mass-production cycle, while suppliers' development and manufacturing capabilities, thermal management, and customer validation remain decisive.

Taiwan's semiconductor rise was built on a powerful division of labor: world-class IC design feeding increasingly advanced foundries, supported by packaging, testing, and an unusually dense electronics manufacturing base.

Sandisk's latest quarter showed enterprise storage as a stronger growth engine while its consumer business contracted. This divergence is central to interpreting the company's expansion: data center demand is supporting a much larger, more profitable business, but the performance should not be read as a uniform recovery across flash storage markets.

Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance are reportedly seeking long-term server DRAM supply agreements with Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, with some requests extending through 2035, as Chinese cloud service providers (CSPs) join US technology giants in competing for future memory capacity.

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix expect memory shortages to persist for years despite rising investment in chip factories, as surging AI demand and increasingly complex manufacturing processes limit how quickly new capacity can come online.

Despite new smartphone launches from Apple, Huawei, Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi, rising memory prices are weakening sales momentum and prompting Chinese smartphone brands to adjust their product mix. DIGITIMES Intelligence senior analyst Luke Lin expects smartphone shipments in China to fall more than 13.5% year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2026, and total shipments by Chinese brands to decline more than 35% year-over-year.

Silicon Motion Technology reported third-quarter 2026 revenue of about US$560 million, marking a record high for the fourth consecutive quarter. Revenue rose 24% quarter-over-quarter and surged 131% year-over-year, putting the company on track to achieve record full-year revenue in 2026, up more than 100% from 2025.

Samsung Electronics' third-quarter profit came almost entirely from charging more for memory chips, not from selling more of them. On its earnings call, the company also told investors the shortage behind those prices will last into 2028, even as chipmakers raise spending.

ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), China's leading producer of DRAM memory, is reportedly planning to begin production of HBM3E, despite yields so far only reaching 20% to 30%. This reflects the memory shortage faced by China's market as it seeks to expand its domestic capacity while facing restrictions on critical equipment imports.

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are undertaking their largest-ever equipment investments in 2026, but the memory supply increase is not expected to materialize until 2028. By then, however, new South Korean plants and expanded capacity at China's ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) are expected to come online simultaneously, potentially triggering price competition in commodity DRAM.

Nvidia is reportedly adjusting the fourth-generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM4) specification for its Vera Rubin NVL72 platform, cutting bandwidth per GPU from the previously announced 22TB/s to 19.2TB/s, a reduction of about 13%. South Korean industry observers said the move could increase supply flexibility and help balance performance with mass-production delivery, although the reason for the change and its actual impact on supplier orders remain unconfirmed.

Soaring memory prices have pushed some IC design firms to develop and manufacture their own SRAM as a substitute for DRAM, while electronics assemblers and brand manufacturers that still need DRAM face challenges in passing on higher costs and securing supply through long-term contracts.

Samsung Electronics' next-generation semiconductor process data was allegedly removed without authorization by a university-industry research partner in South Korea, raising concerns over security vulnerabilities in industry-academia collaborations. The researcher, who reportedly retained Samsung employee access while working on the project, was indicted after allegedly transferring extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography information to a personal cloud account for use in the collaboration.

Memory module maker Team Group reported record third-quarter results for 2026, with earnings per share soaring 1,482.55% year-over-year, while its board approved plans for a new plant in New Taipei City that is scheduled to begin production in the second quarter of 2027 and increase total capacity by about 50%.

Macronix International posted record profits in the third quarter of 2026, surpassing $10 billion for the first time in company history. Chairman Miin-Chyou Wu announced that the company will phase out its traditional game console-related read-only memory (ROM) business and freeze NOR Flash capacity expansion. Instead, Macronix will allocate more than NT$30 billion (US$925 million) in capital expenditure toward embedded MultiMediaCard (eMMC) and NAND Flash. The initial phase of new capacity is expected to ramp up gradually from the second half of 2027 through year-end. "As long as we target the right customers, contract price hikes are inevitable," Wu said.

Taiwan-based Phison Electronics received two awards at Micron Supplier Day 2026, marking the third consecutive year the company has earned recognition from the US memory chipmaker.

The global memory shortage is no longer lifting only the commodity DRAM giants. Ingenic Semiconductor, a Beijing-based fabless chip designer whose memory chips go mainly into cars, factory equipment, medical devices, and networking gear rather than smartphones and PCs, reported third-quarter net profit attributable to shareholders of CNY1.419 billion (US$212.39 million), up 2,595.49% from a year earlier, as tight supply pushed up prices for the specialty DRAM, static random-access memory (SRAM), and flash products that now make up most of its sales.

Samsung Electronics' latest results show AI infrastructure demand increasingly determining the group's earnings, with soaring semiconductor profit offsetting continued losses in its consumer-device division. The company said a sharp expansion in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) sales and rising memory prices drove another record quarter, while its outlook pointed to supply pressure further as customers expand AI investment.

US AI startup Anthropic has formally filed for an initial public offering (IPO) with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), identifying competitive pressure from Chinese AI companies, model distillation, and cross-border technology restrictions among its operational risks.

SK Hynix said customers are seeking more than twice the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) volume it can currently supply, as moves toward shorter memory stacks reflect supply shortages rather than weakening demand.

SK Hynix plans to extend the life of its existing 6F-squared DRAM cell architecture through extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography and process improvements, keeping 4F-squared and three-dimensional (3D) DRAM on its technology roadmap as China's ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) prepares to unveil a product based on a smaller cell design.

Solidigm, the US-based subsidiary of SK Hynix, is in talks with the US Department of Commerce over a potential US$45 billion investment in a new NAND flash memory fabrication plant, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the discussions.

SK Hynix is looking beyond its position as a leading supplier of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), using venture investments to gain a greater say in how next-generation AI infrastructure is designed.