Tower Semiconductor is placing a roughly US$3 billion wager that the artificial-intelligence buildout will force data centers to move data with light rather than electricity, anchoring the bet in Japan with backing from Tokyo.
Nvidia and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries are weighing a partnership under which the Japanese industrial group would supply cooling systems and energy management equipment for the artificial-intelligence data centers Nvidia is building with partners worldwide, Nikkei reported. The talks point to where the AI buildout is now bottlenecked: not chips, but the power and heat they generate.
Taiwan's memory sector delivered an extraordinary June 2026, with aggregate revenue reaching US$2,829.5 million, up 6.4% month-over-month and a staggering 288.3% year-over-year — by far the fastest-growing category in Taiwan's entire semiconductor supply chain, dwarfing silicon foundry (~54% year-over-year) and OSAT (~24% year-over-year). The surge reflects the AI/HBM-driven DRAM and NAND pricing supercycle layered on a depressed year-ago base.
Taiwan's back-end packaging and testing (OSAT) industry posted US$3,105.4 million in June 2026 revenue, up 2.9% month-over-month and 23.7% year-over-year — a solid, steady pace, but one that masks sharply divergent performance beneath the surface.
Shanghai Orient Computing Core Technology has launched the DF1000, a 14-nanometre AI accelerator that uses software-defined computing and 3D-stacked near-memory architecture to reduce reliance on advanced process nodes and high-bandwidth memory, as Sohu and ICsmart reported.
South Korea is accelerating plans to supply electricity to a new semiconductor cluster in the country's southwest by 2030, potentially expanding the domestic energy-storage market as chip fabs and AI data centers add to power demand.
QBit Semiconductor reported a June consolidated revenue of NT$132 million (US$4.1 million) in 2026, a record high marking a rise of 108.5% from the previous month and 41.1% from a year earlier. The Taiwan-based IC design company said its first-half revenue for 2026 reached NT$320 million, up 91.7% year on year and equal to 75% of its full-year 2025 sales.
Nam Liong Global Corporation reported consolidated revenue of NT$245 million (US$8.4 million) for June 2026, down 2.56% from the previous month but up 21.66% year over year, reflecting mid-year inventory adjustments by some customers and normal seasonal shipment patterns. Second-quarter revenue reached NT$743 million, rising 23.73% sequentially and 17.07% from a year earlier. Revenue for the first half totaled NT$1.343 billion, up 8.87% year over year.
CXMT is preparing China's largest chip-sector IPO of 2026, seeking up to US$4.3 billion to expand DRAM and HBM capacity, deepen vertical integration, and challenge Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology under rising AI demand and tighter US export controls.
AI image sensor chips have become a key market for Taiwan's IC design firms, with major players such as Novatek Microelectronics, Realtek Semiconductor, and Himax Technologies, as well as mid-sized companies including Sunplus Technology, Egis Technology, and Etron Technology, all stepping up their efforts. Among firms also pushing into drone imaging solutions, including Elan Microelectronics and PixArt Imaging, a broad consensus is emerging: compute power and price are not the real winning factors in this market.
China's IC exports surged in the first half of 2026, underscoring strong demand for AI, data center, and HPC hardware that lifted electronics supply-chain momentum. The General Administration of Customs said on July 14 that IC exports reached US$177.28 billion in the first half of 2026, up 96.1% year-over-year.
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