Texas Instruments (TI), Infineon Technologies AG, STMicroelectronics, and NXP Semiconductors are expanding their manufacturing footprint in Malaysia as global customers accelerate efforts to diversify production away from China. The shift is being reinforced by rising electricity consumption from AI data centers, which is driving demand for high-voltage, high-power power management components used in servers and related infrastructure.

SK Hynix is accelerating production of 1b DRAM for high-bandwidth memory as quality testing of Nvidia's next-generation HBM4 nears its final stage, according to Korean media and industry sources.

Record demand for artificial intelligence applications propelled Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix to milestone financial results in 2025. On January 29, 2026, the two South Korean memory giants held rare, nearly simultaneous earnings calls to signal their respective positions in the race for the next generation of high-bandwidth memory.

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have both secured production-ready technology for 16-layer stacks of sixth-generation high-bandwidth memory, known as HBM4, positioning the two South Korean memory makers for a pivotal contest in 2026 as demand from artificial intelligence accelerators expands. While each company has demonstrated technical readiness, industry participants say yield performance, rather than headline specifications, is likely to determine market share, profitability, and supplier standing in the next phase of the HBM cycle.

Recent reports suggested a stall in investment between Nvidia and OpenAI, but Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has confirmed that their collaboration remains on track. Huang stated in a CNBC interview that Nvidia will participate in OpenAI's latest funding round and is interested in joining the company's planned initial public offering (IPO).

Benefiting from specification upgrades in AI servers and switches, the content per box of NOR Flash is set to grow by multiples, with high-capacity specifications likely to face severe supply shortages. NOR Flash price increases in the second quarter of 2026 are expected to jump 40–50% quarter-on-quarter from the first quarter, with some product lines even seeing customers willing to pay premiums to secure supply. As for legacy-process products with tight supply, such as SLC NAND and MLC NAND, price hikes are even more aggressive. Second-quarter contract prices are rumored to see year-on-year increases of up to 400–500%, prompting Winbond Electronics to accelerate the expansion of its SLC NAND capacity.

Vanguard International Semiconductor (VIS) held its earnings call on January 3, 2026, projecting wafer shipments to rise 1-3% quarter-over-quarter in the first quarter of 2026 as customer demand stabilizes following year-end inventory adjustments. Assuming an average exchange rate of NT$31.3 per US dollar, the company anticipates a 3-5% decline in average selling price (ASP) and gross margin between 28-30% for the quarter.

Recent market speculation has claimed that China's memory producer CXMT is triggering a price war by offloading DDR4 at deep discounts. Supply chain sources, however, said CXMT has largely pivoted to DDR5 process development, keeping only around 10,000 wafers of DDR4 capacity for a handful of long-term customers, making large-scale, low-priced dumping into the open market unlikely.

Benefiting from rising memory prices and supply shortages, DRAM giant Nanya Technology reported revenue of NT$15.31 billion (US$484.8 million) for January 2026, up 27.39% sequentially and surging a staggering 608.02% year over year. This growth reflects both monthly and annual gains, setting a new record for single-month revenue.

Taiwan's supply chain has reaped the benefits of Nvidia's AI leadership. In Taiwan, it received NT$6.7 billion (US$211.9 million) in subsidies in 2023 under the Taiwan AI Innovation R&D Center Program. In May 2025, the Nvidia Constellation was announced in Taipei's Beitou-Shilin Science Park. It has now been revealed that Nvidia's silicon photonics validation and testing laboratory at the Tai Yuen Hi-Tech Industrial Park in Zhubei City is continuing to expand.

Amid an acute global memory chip shortage, China's leading manufacturers ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) and Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) are rolling out their most aggressive capacity expansion plans, seeking to close the gap with global giants Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron.