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Jul 15
ASML raises 2026 sales outlook as AI-fueled logic and memory demand accelerates
Dutch lithography giant ASML reported total net sales of EUR9.3 billion for the second quarter of 2026, exceeding its own guidance, as customers accelerated capacity expansion plans amid continued AI-driven demand for advanced logic and memory chips.

Across almost every competitive metric disclosed in its STAR Market IPO prospectus, Changxin Memory Technologies (CXMT) trails the established leaders of the global DRAM industry. There is one conspicuous exception: the share of revenue the company devotes to research and development has exceeded every peer in the comparison group for three consecutive years — and by a wide margin.

Generative AI applications are expanding rapidly, making computing costs a growing bottleneck to commercial AI deployment. The AI accelerator market, long dominated by graphics processing units (GPUs), has increasingly explored specialised architectures in recent years. Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), optimised for the matrix operations used by AI models, have again drawn industry attention.

Samsung Electronics is considering outsourcing some or all of the back-end design work for an input/output die in Google's reported 10th-generation tensor processing unit, as growing demand for Samsung's 2nm foundry process reportedly stretches its internal engineering resources.

The IPO prospectus of Changxin Memory Technologies (CXMT), filed ahead of a planned listing on Shanghai's STAR Market, lays bare the international talent base the company has assembled to compete against the established leaders of the global DRAM industry — and raises a subtler question about the residency arrangements of its founder.

South Korean prosecutors have opened a criminal front in a widening international investigation into alleged price-fixing of the small but critical chips that link AI processors to high-speed memory, raiding the local operations of three global suppliers on July 15.

Nvidia co-founder and chief executive Jensen Huang used a developer event in Tokyo on July 15 to reject reports that manufacturing problems could delay its next-generation AI accelerator systems, telling reporters the claims were "not true" and that "Vera Rubin is already in production. Giant amounts of production incoming."

CXMT's STAR Market IPO has become more than a fundraising exercise. The strategic placement roster shows how China's largest DRAM maker is using the capital market to connect semiconductor suppliers, AI cloud providers, device brands, automakers, and state-backed investors, reinforcing a domestic memory ecosystem.

Reports of longer chip lead times have been mounting. ADI has notified customers that, as recovering demand tightens supply, lead times for some analog chip products have stretched to six months, and it has urged customers to place orders early to avoid delivery delays. Meanwhile, a channel player said STMicroelectronics (ST) MCU lead times have extended to 52 weeks, prompting distributors to begin asking customers about demand for all of 2027.
Apple is exploring acquisitions of semiconductor companies to accelerate development of AI server chips, reflecting mounting pressure to improve the computing infrastructure behind its AI ambitions, according to The Information.

Nvidia has laid out a sweeping expansion of its Japanese footprint. The company is moving beyond one-off supercomputer wins to embed its Blackwell-generation chips and software across the country's research labs, banks, hospitals, factories, and automakers. The breadth signals that Japan is being positioned as a full "AI ecosystem" for Nvidia, not a single-sector customer. It's a hedge that spreads the company's growth across sovereign science, industrial automation, and physical AI, even as questions mount over chip pricing and supply.

Component shortages that began with PCs and smartphones are now spreading to servers. Inventec, a leading server motherboard maker, said supply gaps will continue widening from the third quarter of 2026 and could hit shipments, while a supply-chain source said some companies are even reluctant to talk about shortages for fear upstream vendors will redirect supply.