Samsung Electronics' in-house Exynos application processors (APs) are steadily regaining lost ground in the global smartphone market. Samsung's share of the global smartphone AP market rose to 9% in the second quarter of 2026, up 2 percentage points from the previous quarter and 3 percentage points from a year earlier, marking a second straight quarterly increase.
MediaTek officially unveiled the Dimensity 9600 Pro on September 15, 2026, drawing significant industry attention to its choice of packaging technology. In media interviews ahead of the launch, MediaTek acknowledged that the Dimensity 9600 Pro skips the latest wafer-level multi-chip module (WMCM) technology used by rivals, opting instead to retain its existing high-bandwidth package-on-package (HBPoP) solution.
South Korea's neural processing unit (NPU) startups are moving from chip development toward commercial deployment, but limited experience operating at scale remains a major hurdle to winning global customers.
The Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) held its ITRI Innovation Day on September 15 in Tainan, Taiwan, bringing together research groups and startup teams to highlight 25 cross-disciplinary technologies in AI, smart robotics, and unmanned vehicles. The event was designed to move more research and development results into industrial use through demonstrations, business matchmaking, and an innovation market.
DeepSeek is reportedly set to hire Wentao Yan, a partner at venture capital firm GL Ventures, as its first CFO. If the appointment takes place, it would happen at an important time for the Chinese AI startup as it seeks to go public, begins a large expansion of its workforce, and invests in chipmaking and computing capacity.
Taiwan's smaller IC design firms posted a strong revenue recovery in the first half of 2026, but the gains may prove difficult to extend. DIGITIMES said higher prices and early customer buying lifted sales, even as consumer demand remained soft. The second half now looks exposed to weaker momentum.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's call to slow frontier AI development has stirred debate over safety, but chip industry sources say global demand for AI infrastructure is likely to keep rising. For readers worldwide, the larger issue is not whether AI spending stops, but how quickly it spreads across clouds, devices, and industries.
Unigroup Guoxin Microelectronics plans to acquire WeEn Semiconductors for CNY1.9 billion (≈ US$283 million), giving the Chinese specialty IC supplier in-house wafer manufacturing and a faster route into power semiconductors.
MediaTek has become the first merchant silicon vendor to announce a 2-nanometer smartphone processor, unveiling the Dimensity 9600 Pro on Tuesday as the industry races to run heavy artificial intelligence models entirely within the thermal and memory envelopes of a handheld device.
China's domestic GPU industry is entering a tougher phase: matching high-end accelerator performance is no longer enough. Vendors must now combine competitive chips with interconnects, software stacks, and clusters capable of training increasingly large AI models.
At this year's China International Optoelectronic Expo (CIOE), Sivers Semiconductor brought two products to its booth that trace the trajectory of the optical networking industry: a 1.6T pluggable optical transceiver currently ramping toward mainstream adoption, and a prototype module built for external light source (ELS) architectures, a technology that could define the next generation of data center interconnects.
Chinese RISC-V chip designer Nuclei System Technology has formally begun its IPO process, seeking fresh capital while heavy R&D spending continues to outweigh revenue despite gross margins above 80%.
IC substrate manufacturer Phoenix Pioneer Technology (PPt) turned profitable in the first half of 2026, driven by strong momentum in its advanced AI power substrate business. Production lines are running at full capacity, with order visibility clearly extending into the first quarter of 2027. Notably, end-system customers are bypassing OSAT providers to negotiate long-term agreements (LTAs) directly with the company.
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian recently revealed that Google's overall payback period for AI server investments is less than two years, with in-house silicon recovering its costs in half that time. This translates to a payback period of less than one year for servers using Google's in-house silicon, including its tensor processing units (TPUs). Industry observers note this rapid capital return gives application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) design service partners, such as MediaTek and Broadcom, substantial room for upward revenue revisions as Google doubles down on its TPU strategy.
As Arm targets expansion in physical AI, microcontroller (MCU) maker Artery Technology has emerged as a key ecosystem partner. Focusing on high-end 32-bit MCU applications, Artery has penetrated supply chains for robotics and unmanned aerial vehicles, with full-year 2026 revenue projected to double.
Chinese AI chipmaker Enflame Technology made a striking debut on Shanghai's STAR Market on Friday, with its shares opening 188% above the IPO price after raising CNY6.12 billion (US$912 million). The listing gives the Tencent-backed company fresh capital to fund its next generations of AI processors and large-scale computing systems, while sharpening attention on China's effort to build alternatives to Nvidia.
