CONNECT WITH US
Jul 22
TSMC raises 2027 chip prices, giving Intel fresh pricing room

TSMC's planned 2027 wafer price increases are reinforcing confidence that AI chip demand remains strong while prompting fresh discussion over whether Intel and other semiconductor companies will gain greater flexibility to adjust their own pricing.

Competition in China's AI industry is moving beyond large language models into chips, memory and computing infrastructure. CXMT's planned IPO on Shanghai's STAR Market has put renewed attention on Alibaba, the Chinese DRAM maker's largest industry investor.
Taiwan's links with US technology firms are reshaping chip supply chains, with implications for investors and policymakers worldwide. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said those ties have strengthened America's semiconductor and PC industries, while Taiwan's companies are expanding in the US by choice, not coercion, amid growing tariff and security concerns.
Texas Instruments delivered a second-quarter 2026 result that topped Wall Street expectations and, more importantly for the industry, signaled that the analog chip cycle is turning up across several end markets at once. The Dallas-based company reported revenue of US$5.46 billion, up 13% sequentially and 23% year over year, with net income of US$1.98 billion and earnings per share of US$2.14, according to its earnings release.
Advanced Micro Devices has signed Anthropic to a multi-year supply-and-investment pact worth tens of billions of US dollars, a deal that hands the chipmaker its third top-tier artificial-intelligence customer in a year and marks its most concrete challenge yet to Nvidia's dominance of the market for AI training hardware.
While the commercialization timeline for co-packaged optics (CPO) has not accelerated as expected from the AI data center-driven demand for high-speed transmission, industry players say CPO remains a key long-term technology trend as electrical signaling is still approaching its physical limits. One increasingly favored approach is to place the laser source outside the package, which makes replacement easier and allows the same source to serve multiple transmission channels.

IQE has raised its 2026 revenue outlook as demand for artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and data centers continues to strengthen, showing that AI-related growth is spreading beyond GPUs and servers into high-speed optical communications and photonics supply chains.

As AI computing drives surging electricity demand and heat generation, Taiwan's government-funded Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) brought together government officials and industry executives on July 21 for its "Semiconductor and AI Computing Sustainable Competitiveness Forum" to explore energy-saving solutions for AI infrastructure and semiconductor manufacturing.
With Taiwan's competitiveness setting a new high, President Ching-te Lai on July 21 called on local companies to learn from the US and work together to retain talent. The remarks came at the Monte Jade Science and Technology Association's annual general meeting, where Pegatron chairman T.H. Tung said Taiwan's global ranking has climbed to a record level and its economic growth rate has continued to rise.

When Wistron opened its 324,000-square-foot plant in Fort Worth, Texas on July 21, it was easy to read the moment as a single company's strategic bet on the US market. But it is something larger than that.

Samsung Electronics is sounding out major suppliers about whether they can support four proposed new semiconductor fabrication plants through 2030, as South Korea's chipmakers prepare for a concentrated cycle of factory construction.

The rapid growth of AI data traffic is pushing quartz timing components toward three key technical upgrades: lower phase noise, reduced jitter and greater frequency accuracy. At the same time, SpaceX's continuing satellite deployment plans are creating fresh demand for frequency-control components such as filters, particularly benefiting suppliers capable of rapidly producing customized solutions.