AI's shift from data centers into cars, robots, wearables, and connected devices is widening the market for fully depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI), while China is building a domestic supply chain spanning substrates, foundry capacity, and chip design.

Tower Semiconductor plans to make Japan its largest manufacturing base for optical communications semiconductors after expanding silicon photonics (SiPh), silicon germanium (SiGe), and advanced packaging capacity in the Hokuriku region, as demand from AI data centers accelerates.

TSMC is building an advanced packaging validation hub in southern Taiwan as rapid chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) expansion puts pressure on equipment and materials suppliers to qualify new technologies faster.

SK Hynix is pushing deeper into logic design as it develops a next-generation 3D DRAM architecture that could separate memory-cell processing from the peripheral circuits that control it, allowing each to be optimized with different manufacturing technologies.

Samsung Electronics is reportedly preparing to at least double production of its HBM4-family memory in 2027, accelerating a shift toward higher-value products as supply constraints persist across the broader memory market.

China's fast-rising AI models are running into a compute supply bottleneck as demand for advanced packaging substrates surges, with ByteDance reportedly preparing to spend CNY100 billion (US$14.9 billion) a year on large-scale chip substrate purchases by 2030. Supply chain sources say the scramble for packaging substrate capacity is intensifying across Huawei HiSilicon, Hygon Information Technology, ByteDance, and major outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) players, even as the industry races to expand output.

Major Taiwanese optical lens maker Largan Precision announced on September 17 that it acquired around 7,468.43 square meters of land and 12,215.54 square meters of building space in the Nantun District, Taiwan, for NT$1.17 billion (approx. US$36.82 million), to be used for future capacity expansion. The purchase marks the company's seventh land acquisition in 2026, with the acquisitions mainly involving ready-to-use factory buildings and land, in a move suggesting it is preparing for co-packaged optics (CPO).

South Korea's DB HiTek is gaining pricing power as tightening 8-inch foundry supply, high utilization, and stronger demand for power-management chips improve conditions across mature-node manufacturing.