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Friday 17 July 2026
South Korean bill could let SK Hynix bring in outside investors for new fabs

A South Korean lawmaker has introduced a bill that would allow a second-tier subsidiary of a general holding company to retain a stake of at least 50% in a jointly funded semiconductor venture, rather than the 100% currently required under the country's holding-company rules.

Friday 17 July 2026
China's AI chips hit three walls — and bet on 3D memory to break through
China's AI chip industry is moving beyond a contest over process nodes and into a broader race involving memory, advanced packaging, chip interconnects and system architecture.
Thursday 16 July 2026
TSMC says 2nm has four times as many tape-outs as 3nm at the same stage
Customer tape-outs for TSMC's N2 process have reached four times the number recorded by its 3nm technology at the same stage, showing faster design activity as the foundry ramps production of its first 2nm process.
Thursday 16 July 2026
DeepSeek eyes US$70 billion valuation and Shanghai IPO as Apple Intelligence enters China

DeepSeek is preparing a new fundraising round and a possible Shanghai listing as surging computing costs force one of China's best-known artificial intelligence startups to rethink its long-standing resistance to outside capital.

Thursday 16 July 2026
Apple Intelligence edges closer to China with Alibaba Qwen integration
Apple Intelligence has passed a key regulatory milestone in China, bringing the iPhone maker closer to launching generative AI features for mainland users after a prolonged delay.
Thursday 16 July 2026
CXMT IPO raises fresh capital, but its own prospectus map shows distance still to close
The IPO prospectus filed by Changxin Memory Technologies (CXMT) ahead of its planned listing on Shanghai's STAR Market offers an unusually candid portrait of the global DRAM industry it is entering, including detailed profiles of the three incumbents it must eventually displace, and a frank accounting of how far behind it still sits.
Thursday 16 July 2026
Samsung turns to titanium to reduce screen creases in next foldables
Samsung Electronics unveiled a new titanium-based display structure on July 15, designed to reduce screen crease visibility while improving durability and preserving a slim profile in its next generation of Galaxy foldable devices.
Thursday 16 July 2026
Commentary: Xi Jinping elevates Sovereign AI, diplomacy, ecosystems into China's next AI strategy

The 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) opens in Shanghai on July 17, with Chinese President Xi Jinping set to attend and deliver a keynote speech.

Thursday 16 July 2026
Hanmi, Hanwha clash in court over HBM equipment patents
Hanmi Semiconductor and Hanwha Semitech clashed in a Seoul courtroom over patents covering thermocompression bonders, or TC bonders, critical equipment used to stack DRAM chips vertically in high-bandwidth memory, or HBM.
Thursday 16 July 2026
LG Electronics ramps up actuator hiring as AXIUM production starts early
LG Electronics is expanding hiring for its robotic actuator business after reportedly starting AXIUM production months ahead of schedule, as the South Korean company builds the development, sales and quality-management capabilities needed to supply its own robots and outside humanoid manufacturers.
Thursday 16 July 2026
China's TPU path gains traction with low-cost AI inference challenging GPU economics

Generative AI applications are expanding rapidly, making computing costs a growing bottleneck to commercial AI deployment. The AI accelerator market, long dominated by graphics processing units (GPUs), has increasingly explored specialised architectures in recent years. Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), optimised for the matrix operations used by AI models, have again drawn industry attention.

Thursday 16 July 2026
Samsung weighs outsourcing Google TPU back-end design as 2nm demand grows

Samsung Electronics is considering outsourcing some or all of the back-end design work for an input/output die in Google's reported 10th-generation tensor processing unit, as growing demand for Samsung's 2nm foundry process reportedly stretches its internal engineering resources.

Thursday 16 July 2026
Nvidia expands Japan AI partnerships with Kawasaki, Toyota, and industrial leaders

Nvidia unveiled a series of new partnerships in Japan on July 16, 2026, highlighting the growing adoption of AI across manufacturing, robotics, automotive, healthcare and data center infrastructure. The announcements coincided with CEO Jensen Huang's visit to Japan, where the company showcased its latest physical AI technologies and deepened collaborations with several of the country's leading industrial groups.

Thursday 16 July 2026
CXMT IPO filing reveals Micron and Samsung alumni at heart of China's DRAM push

The IPO prospectus of Changxin Memory Technologies (CXMT), filed ahead of a planned listing on Shanghai's STAR Market, lays bare the international talent base the company has assembled to compete against the established leaders of the global DRAM industry — and raises a subtler question about the residency arrangements of its founder.

Thursday 16 July 2026
Korean prosecutors raid Rambus, Montage, and Renesas as memory-interface chip probe goes global
South Korean prosecutors have opened a criminal front in a widening international investigation into alleged price-fixing of the small but critical chips that link AI processors to high-speed memory, raiding the local operations of three global suppliers on July 15.