Samsung Electronics reported record quarterly revenue and operating profit in the fourth quarter of 2025, as surging memory prices and tight supply, driven by the artificial intelligence boom, more than offset seasonal weakness in smartphones, televisions, and home appliances. The company also warned that an acute chip shortage is expected to persist, creating cost pressures for its mobile and display businesses.

Alibaba has unveiled its in-house high-end AI processor, Zhenwu 810E, advancing its strategy to vertically integrate AI chips, cloud infrastructure, and large language models. Developed by T-Head Semiconductor, the processor appeared on Alibaba's website on January 29, 2026, following an earlier mention on CCTV News, highlighting Alibaba's vertically integrated AI supercomputing framework that combines in-house chips, Alibaba Cloud's computing platform, and the open-source Qwen large language models from Tongyi Lab.

China's microcontroller (MCU) vendors have started raising prices, led by Cmsemicon's increases across MCU and related products, marking the first upward move in a market that has been depressed for years.

China's semiconductor supply chain is sending a clear signal: a wave of "chip inflation" driven by mature-node manufacturing, memory, and packaging costs is no longer theoretical; it is becoming a structural reality. Following Cmsemicon's decision to raise prices on MCU and NOR Flash products by 15% to 50%, long-stable commodity chips have officially entered an inflation cycle.

The surge in generative AI (GenAI) and high-performance computing (HPC) demand has pushed advanced semiconductor packaging to become the most critical and constrained capacity bottleneck globally. According to supply chain sources, TSMC will add a P2 fab at its Southern Taiwan Science Park AP8 site, with both fabs focusing on CoWoS technology. Meanwhile, the Chiayi AP7 facility, originally planned for WMCM, SoIC, and CoPoS packaging, will switch from SoIC to CoWoS. This means that over the next two years, TSMC will significantly ramp up CoWoS capacity, prompting Taiwanese equipment and materials suppliers within the CoWoS ecosystem to accelerate expansions amid full order books, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.

SK Hynix is moving to lock out competitors in the high-stakes battle for AI memory, deploying a "one-team" operational strategy that integrates the chipmaker directly into its customers' design processes just as it confirms the mass production of its next-generation HBM4.

As artificial intelligence (AI) applications expand globally, United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) is intensifying its efforts in advanced packaging and silicon photonics (SiPh) technologies. UMC co-president Jason Wang highlighted that although these segments currently generate modest revenues, a surge in project activity is anticipated to drive "significant growth" beginning in 2027, marking a strategic focus on emerging markets tied to AI and related fields.

Samsung Electronics posted record quarterly revenue and operating profit in the fourth quarter of 2025, underscoring how AI-driven demand for advanced memory has become the company's main earnings engine, even as smartphones, TVs, and home appliances faced seasonal slowdowns and margin pressure.

Following the signing of the Taiwan-US investment cooperation memorandum of understanding (MOU), the next step is to finalize the agreement on reciprocal trade (ART) between the two countries. As Taiwanese supply chains pursue strategies of making collective moves in the US, some companies express willingness to follow the lead of TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker who is investing enormous sums in building wafer fabs in the US. However, upstream players admit that with high production costs in the US, investments may not be profitable unless their gross margins exceed 50%.

Chinese microcontroller (MCU) supplier Cmsemicon has raised prices on its MCU and NOR Flash products by 15% to 50%, citing tighter chip supply and higher packaging and testing costs. The company said the adjustment is part of a broader price increase cycle across China's semiconductor sector in early 2026, which began with AI processors and memory products and has since extended to wafer fabrication, backend services, and upstream materials and components.