
The European Union has rushed through a US-EU tariff agreement after US President Donald Trump demanded that Brussels complete the deal by July 4, the 250th anniversary of US independence, or face higher 25% tariffs on auto and auto parts imports. According to media reports, the European Parliament recently held an emergency vote to approve the agreement, while the EU simultaneously added three safeguards to guard against the risk of renewed tariff hikes.
Plug and Play's Wayne Soh on the shifting flows of Chinese, Indian, and Taiwanese founders through the city-state.
The G7 debate over AI has moved beyond regulation and safety pledges into a harder fight over frontier model access: who can use the most powerful systems, under what conditions, and whether governments can switch that access off.
Samsung Electronics' foundry business has signed a strategic manufacturing collaboration with Claros, a US power-management startup, to produce semiconductors designed to cut energy waste inside AI data centers, according to a Claros announcement and a report by ZDNet Korea.
Founded in 2014, Oppstar is one of the few Malaysian companies operating at the front end of the semiconductor value chain as an IC design house. The company was established by three founders with extensive experience in the IC design industry: Meng Thai Ng, Hun Wah Cheah, and Chun Chiat Tan. Headquartered in Bayan Lepas, Penang, Oppstar opened an office in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 2022. From its inception, the company positioned itself as a one-stop IC design service provider, initially focusing on 16nm design nodes.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is scheduled to visit Assam in northeastern India in early July 2026. According to Nikkei, more than 50 Japanese companies and business groups, including Suzuki, Itochu and Toyota Tsusho, are expected to accompany the delegation, with market attention focused on cooperation in semiconductors and infrastructure.
Samsung Electronics' foundry division plans to open its Multi-Project Wafer, or MPW, service to its 2nm process next year, giving South Korean fabless chip designers access to one of the most advanced foundry nodes being commercialized without having to pay for a full wafer run, according to ZDNet Korea and iNews24.
Taiyo Yuden is preparing to accelerate production of multilayer ceramic capacitors, or MLCCs, as AI servers and hyperscale data centers tighten supply across the global component market. But the Japanese supplier is resisting the kind of broad price increases now spreading through parts of the industry.
Samsung Electronics is developing and operating a data-sharing platform with semiconductor materials, components and equipment suppliers, according to a report by South Korea's ETNews, which cited industry sources.
