As Nvidia's Jensen Huang arrived in Taipei, Taiwan's leadership moved to cement the island's position at the heart of the AI supply chain, with memory technology taking center stage.
Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix both delivered record fourth-quarter 2025 results, underscoring the sharp rise in memory prices and profits as supply across the market tightens.
US President Donald Trump has threatened to restore 25% tariffs on South Korean goods, escalating trade tensions by citing delays in Seoul's passage of legislation linked to a bilateral trade agreement reached last year.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang arrived in Taiwan at noon on January 28 following a visit to China for a subsidiary's year-end event, where he outlined the latest status of H200 export approvals and detailed Nvidia's foundry strategy.
Chinese customers who had planned to use Samsung Electronics' foundry services abandoned a number of projects in 2025 as US regulatory pressure on China intensified and uncertainty peaked ahead of mass production, according to Korean industry sources. Market participants say conditions may look different in 2026.
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.
The Covid-19 pandemic once sparked a wave of upgrades for personal computers and smartphones, fueling strong demand for semiconductors. However, it also exposed vulnerabilities in supply chains, leaving companies like TSMC entangled in the global automotive chip crunch and prompting the US and Europe to invite TSMC to build factories on their soil.
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.
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