Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix face uncertainty over demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) as US lawmakers press for tighter controls on AI chip exports to China following allegations involving Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

Phison Electronics CEO Pua Khein-Seng expects AI demand to surge again after the Lunar New Year, tightening NAND Flash supplies and intensifying competition for high-capacity triple-level cell (TLC) and quad-level cell (QLC) products. The company has already secured more than 70% of its targeted 2027 supply.

Zhu Yiming, chairman of ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), reportedly participated in Chinese AI startup DeepSeek's second funding round, drawing attention to his semiconductor investment network. Neither DeepSeek nor the reported investors have confirmed the claims, leaving the investment entity, amount, and shareholding structure unclear.

A decade ago, China's Tsinghua Unigroup alarmed Taiwan's semiconductor industry with an aggressive acquisition campaign. Under then-chairman Zhao Weiguo, the group acquired Spreadtrum Communications and RDA Microelectronics, sought stakes in Powertech, SPIL and ChipMOS, and publicly expressed interest in integrating MediaTek. Its financial firepower and rapid expansion unsettled Taiwanese chipmakers.

As artificial intelligence pushes computing systems toward unprecedented processing demands, another technological bottleneck is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore: the energy and time required to store, retrieve, and move data.

Winbond Electronics chairman Arthur Chiao said the AI data center buildout planned by major cloud service providers (CSPs) for 2027 and 2028 is largely secured, with funding, land, power, and infrastructure almost all in place, so there is no need to worry too much about investment freezing in the near term. But 2029 could become a key point for the next downturn, when it remains to be seen whether funding can keep supporting such massive spending, he said.

Winbond Electronics will revive the Spansion brand for the NOR Flash and F-RAM business it is buying from Infineon Technologies and run it as a fully independent, fabless company, chairman Arthur Chiao said, describing the US$1.12 billion deal as a way to secure top international talent and intellectual property.

Winbond Electronics chairman Arthur Chiao said memory prices and profits should not go any further at this stage, warning that a market in which memory thrives while other industries struggle is bad for consumers and the wider economy.

SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won has defended Samsung and SK's combined KRW4,755 trillion (approx. US$3.52 trillion) investment plans, arguing that South Korea cannot keep pace in the global artificial intelligence (AI) race without committing unprecedented amounts of capital.

Terafab, the chipmaking venture backed by Tesla and SpaceX, is reportedly planning memory output that would rival the world's largest DRAM maker. Japanese and Korean equipment and materials suppliers are already being courted to help build it, though suppliers and analysts question whether the schedule and the demand will hold.

Innodisk said AI-related applications generated more than 40% of its revenue as demand for high-end AI server memory and storage lifted third-quarter results. The Taiwanese industrial memory maker is expanding into the cloud service provider, AI server supply chain, and humanoid robotics markets, highlighting how artificial intelligence is reshaping technology markets worldwide.

Wireless communications company Climax Technology's third-quarter 2026 gross margin came under pressure from rising memory and key component costs, as well as delayed product validation. The company's board approved its third-quarter consolidated financial report on November 6.

Peter Shu, chairman of Taiwanese memory module maker Transcend, expects DRAM and NAND Flash prices to plateau after stabilising in the third quarter of 2026. Further price increases appear limited, but declines remain unlikely, with DRAM still in short supply while NAND Flash availability has stabilised.

Memory module maker Adata reported October 2026 consolidated revenue of NT$17.06 billion (US$521.6 million), up 8.5% month-over-month and 282.3% year-over-year, marking its third-highest monthly revenue on record. However, year-end customer inventory adjustments are expected to push fourth-quarter revenue below the third quarter, while revenue for the first 10 months of 2026 reached NT$134.37 billion, up 222.7% year-over-year. Adata expects its full-year 2026 operating performance to continue climbing.

This week's coverage highlights accelerating competition across AI infrastructure, semiconductor manufacturing and advanced memory. Sweden launched the NVIDIA-based Sferical One supercomputer as leaders urged transformational AI adoption. DRAM makers remain divided over 4F-squared scaling, while CXMT reported sharply higher revenue and outlined 2027 growth plans. Panasonic's Taiwan plant suffered a fatality-risking explosion, Musk may reconsider Terafab control, SK Hynix expanded its AI investment portfolio, and MediaTek hired former Intel packaging chief Navid Shahriari.

According to an official statement, Nvidia's board has opened an independent investigation into reports that founder and CEO Jensen Huang was targeted in a foreign intelligence effort. The move puts the leadership of the world's most closely watched AI chipmaker under formal review just as lawmakers in both US parties press for answers about China's access to sensitive American technology.

The boom in AI demand has triggered a global memory crunch, creating persistent supply shortages and price hikes. The market is currently dominated by Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology. While China's ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) has expanded its mass-production capabilities rapidly, US export controls and cybersecurity concerns continue to prevent it from competing directly in the US against American and South Korean rivals.

Solidigm, a subsidiary of SK Hynix, is considering building a NAND flash wafer fab in the US. Funding and the investment timeline have yet to be settled, but DIGITIMES Intelligence believes the project is highly likely to move forward, given AI-driven storage demand and the prospect of US government support.

DIGITIMES observes that as large language models (LLMs) and agentic AI development become increasingly widespread, it is driving not only significant growth in data center CPU demand but also a sharp surge in key-value cache (KV cache) storage requirements. As DRAM and HBM capacity face severe supply shortages, demand for data center SSDs is rising rapidly.

China's Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) plans to source as much as 70% of the manufacturing equipment for its fourth NAND flash factory from domestic suppliers, a substantial increase over the share at its existing operations as the company expands into advanced memory for AI and data centers.

Qualcomm has completed initial hardware validation of its high-bandwidth compute (HBC) memory architecture, which will form a key part of its next-generation Dragonfly data-center AI accelerators. The company aims to deliver a lower-cost, more energy-efficient alternative to sixth-generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM4) for AI inference workloads requiring high bandwidth and large buffers.

Samsung Electronics plans to begin structural work at its P5 Fab 2 facility in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, in January 2027, accelerating its memory capacity expansion as chip shortages are expected to persist through 2028, DealSite reported.

YMTC's parent company, CCSH Corporation, had planned to raise CNY33 billion (approx. US$4.93 billion) through an IPO on Shanghai's STAR Market to finance production-line upgrades and next-generation memory research. However, the strategic placement process, originally expected to begin between late October and early November 2026, has reportedly slowed.

SK Hynix's US-based artificial intelligence (AI) investment arm, HYAICO Corporation, has acquired a stake in AI infrastructure provider Penguin Solutions from an SK Telecom affiliate for US$377.16 million, according to filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are expanding their high-value NAND flash portfolios to meet growing demand for high-performance, high-capacity enterprise solid-state drives (eSSDs). The proliferation of AI agents and long-context services is increasing the need for key-value (KV) caching, prompting both companies to develop next-generation SSDs and tiered memory technologies to reuse AI computation results more efficiently.