US President Donald Trump recently claimed that Taiwan's TSMC will double the size of its Arizona fab project, reviving attention on his goal of raising the US share of the global chip market to 50% before the end of his term. TSMC declined to comment on the report, but investors may press the company on the issue at its second-quarter 2026 earnings call.
Intel is developing a new memory architecture aimed at challenging the dominance of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), with commercialization targeted for around 2030. Although the path is fraught with ecosystem barriers and compatibility hurdles, Intel's parallel development of Z-angle memory (ZAM) and cross-batch memory (XBM) underscores its determination to re-enter the DRAM market, as it simultaneously bets on AI compute and storage.
AI computing demand continues to fuel growth in the global memory market, but the industry's attention is shifting beyond short-term price movements. Increasingly, the focus is on longer-term variables, including the pace of capacity expansion, the sustainability of AI-driven demand, and whether emerging AI applications can achieve commercial scale.
SK hynix shares suffered their steepest-ever decline on Monday, just one trading day after the memory chipmaker made a strong debut on Nasdaq through its newly listed American depositary receipts (ADRs), as profit-taking, earnings concerns, and a possible shift by investors into the US-listed securities weighed on its Korean shares.
SK Hynix began mass-production shipments of 12-layer HBM4 to Nvidia at the end of June and is increasing output ahead of a broader ramp, The Bell reported, citing semiconductor industry sources.
SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won said the South Korean conglomerate is preparing a US investment plan that would far exceed US$35 billion—the amount he said the group is already putting into the country—though he did not disclose the plan's size, timing or components.
AI demand is still outrunning advanced semiconductor capacity, putting foundry output, HBM supply, packaging and server infrastructure at the centre of this week's tech agenda.
Flexible circuit board maker Complex Micro Interconnection (CMI) said June 2026 revenue rebounded as consumer electronics shipments increased, even as shortages in automotive components and notebook memory continued to affect customers. The company also reported second-quarter revenue of NT$597 million (US$18.55 million), up 3.6% from the prior quarter.
Global memory chipmakers are heading toward record revenue and profit in the second quarter of 2026, as AI infrastructure demand keeps memory prices high and pushes operating margins to levels rarely seen in the semiconductor industry.
Samsung Electronics has postponed mass production of its CXL 3.1 memory modules after delays to next-generation server processors from Intel and AMD pushed back the broader PCIe 6.0 ecosystem, highlighting how AI infrastructure adoption increasingly depends on platform readiness rather than individual components.
New figures from Counterpoint Research estimate that the bill of materials (BOM) for the upcoming iPhone 18 Pro Max could rise nearly US$300 compared with the iPhone 17 Pro Max released in September last year. Ballooning memory costs largely account for this increase, although Apple may be better placed than most other smartphone brands to weather such price hikes.
Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron Technology are taking different manufacturing paths for the logic base die in HBM4, opening a new front in the competition over advanced memory performance, yield and supply.
GigaDevice Semiconductor expects first-half 2026 net profit to reach about CNY6.9 billion (US$960 million), a 1,099% increase from a year earlier, after tight memory chip supply lifted both shipment volumes and prices.
