Taiwan is aggressively pursuing a core strategy of "Team Taiwan to Team Global," according to Cheng-Wen Wu, Minister of the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC). Wu noted that when AI chips are manufactured in Taiwan, local tech companies are the first to understand their application scenarios and strengths—giving domestic industries a head start in integrating advanced AI into their own manufacturing processes.
Murata Manufacturing announced plans to invest around JPY1 trillion (US$6.3 billion) in expanding multilayer ceramic capacitor (MLCC) capacity by 2030. Booming demand from data centers and AI applications has pushed up orders for MLCC makers. MLCCs are a crucial component in managing power demand.
Tokyo Electron (TEL) forecasts nearly 90% annual operating-profit growth as chipmakers accelerate capital spending to meet demand for AI hardware, despite mounting concerns over an AI bubble. The company also announced a JPY150 billion share buyback program.
Tong Hsing Electronic Industries (THEIL) outlined the latest developments and market trends across its four major product lines of optical communications, ceramic substrates, new semiconductor materials, and image sensors, during an earnings call on October 30.
Memory chipmaker Macronix International Co. has become Taiwan's first semiconductor company to receive an IEEE Milestone, in recognition of its pioneering sNOVA engineering data analysis system and its contribution to semiconductor manufacturing automation.
Chinese AI chipmaker Iluvatar CoreX has released benchmarks showing its next-generation Tiangai 300 general-purpose GPU outperforming Nvidia's H200 in selected large language model (LLM) inference, long-context processing and multimodal generation workloads.
Samsung Electronics chairman Lee Jae-yong visited the company's Advanced Package Lab (APL) in Yokohama, Japan, on November 1, as the chipmaker looks to Japan's semiconductor materials and equipment industry to strengthen its advanced packaging capabilities for AI processors.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman met with executives from Samsung Group and SK Group during a brief visit to South Korea on October 31, as tightening memory supplies and growing commitments to major AI customers raise the stakes for the company's semiconductor and data center partnerships.
China's leading electronic design automation (EDA) supplier, Empyrean Technology, plans to acquire a controlling stake in Easy-Logic Technology, a specialist in digital logic optimization, for about CNY219 million (≈ US$32.9 million). The acquisition will address a gap in Empyrean's digital chip design tools and support its development of next-generation solutions for AI chips and 3D integrated circuits (3DIC).
As AI and large-scale data center buildouts drive up data transmission speeds, heat is becoming increasingly concentrated in key components. This has drawn attention to ceramic substrates and higher-performance aluminum nitride (AlN) substrates for use in optical communications and advanced packaging. Supply chain sources say, however, that metal adhesion remains a major engineering challenge, one that industry participants are reluctant to discuss publicly.
Tata Sons has put INR11 billion (US$115.71 million) into Tata Electronics through a rights issue, according to regulatory filings, adding capital to a business that has quickly become one of the largest in the Tata group.
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