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Monday 4 May 2026

Anthropic reportedly in talks with Fractile to buy inference chips amid AI compute crunch

Anthropic has been in talks with Fractile, a London-based startup, to purchase its inference chips for running its AI models more efficiently, as inferential AI tasks have pushed up compute demands, according to The Information. Although Fractile's AI chips are not expected to be available until next year at the earliest, the deal could give the maker of Claude more leverage with suppliers as it seeks to expand AI capacity to meet soaring demand.

Monday 4 May 2026

Realtek sees PC revenue growth despite 2026 shipment decline

Realtek's projection of a sharp fall in full-year 2026 PC shipments amid tight memory supply signals wider device-market shifts: global brands are prioritizing mid- and high-end models and premium components, boosting demand for higher-content semiconductors as unit volumes fall, with implications for laptop pricing, vendor strategies, and component suppliers worldwide.

Monday 4 May 2026

TSMC’s 3nm crunch will keep Apple Mac supply constrained until 2nm ramps up

Supply-chain participants said Apple's fiscal second-quarter 2026 performance should be read less as a demand story and more as a reflection of persistent constraints in advanced semiconductor capacity, particularly at leading-edge process nodes.

Monday 4 May 2026

MediaTek targets US$2B ASIC sales as cloud rivals chase custom-chip capacity

MediaTek has doubled its 2026 revenue target for its application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) business to US$2 billion, up from US$1 billion, as demand for custom chips continues to strengthen.

Monday 4 May 2026

L&T Semiconductor Technologies joins imec automotive chiplet program, aiming to shape global vehicle electronics

Larsen & Toubro's semiconductor unit, L&T Semiconductor Technologies, has joined imec's Automotive chiplet Program. The participation is expected to drive collaboration on packaging, die-to-die links, diagnostics, and lifecycle management, and to help shape standards for next-generation software-defined, energy-efficient vehicles worldwide.

Monday 4 May 2026

Realtek posts surge in revenue as Wi-Fi 7 adoption accelerates

Realtek reported first-quarter results on April 30, saying revenue rose to NT$36.42 billion (US$1.15 billion), driven by early customer pull-in orders that boosted demand into the second quarter, while warning of higher order uncertainty in the second half of the year. Executives said the company saw sequential margin improvement but flagged potential cost pressures from memory price moves and packaging constraints that could affect profitability going forward.

Monday 4 May 2026

Holtek raises low-margin MCU prices, expands AI server cooling and optical comms

Microcontroller (MCU) maker Holtek announced it has raised prices on low-margin MCUs following wafer foundry and packaging cost hikes in China at the end of 2025. This price adjustment has since driven order inflows for touch MCUs and other products. Holtek expects strong growth momentum in the security and health segments in the first half of 2026, with some orders already visible up to six months ahead. The company is also advancing the development of brushless DC motor (BLDC) products and external laser optical communication modules targeting AI servers.

Monday 4 May 2026

India roundup: India accelerates AI, semiconductor, and manufacturing push with major investments and startup bets

India's technology ecosystem is seeing rapid expansion across AI infrastructure, semiconductors, and electronics manufacturing. From startup bets on AI inference to multi-billion-dollar data center plans and OSAT capacity buildouts, global and domestic players are deepening commitments. The momentum underscores India's rising role in supply chains and compute-driven industries.

Monday 4 May 2026

AI data center demand boosts IDM growth in industrial market

Recovery in the industrial chip market, driven by AI data center demand, is poised to reshape manufacturers and supply chains worldwide, as Texas Instruments and NXP Semiconductors report stronger performance in their industrial segments. Improved demand visibility and projected growth through 2026 could influence component sourcing, pricing, and investment strategies for technology stakeholders.

Monday 4 May 2026

China AI chip designer VeriSilicon books US$1.1bn orders, revenue doubles

China-based chip design service provider VeriSilicon Microelectronics (Shanghai) Co. is seeing a sharp acceleration in AI-driven demand, with record orders and surging revenue in the first quarter of 2026 — even as heavy R&D spending continues to weigh on profitability.

Sunday 3 May 2026

Profile: MIT physicist Yichen Shen leads photonics chipmaker to Hong Kong IPO

On the morning of April 28, 2026, 37-year-old Yichen Shen stood at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, striking the IPO gong with a wooden mallet.

Saturday 2 May 2026

Qualcomm says Samsung chip share remains above 70% despite Exynos push

Qualcomm said its relationship with Samsung Electronics remains stable and that its share of Samsung smartphone silicon has risen to more than 70%, even as Samsung expands the use of its in-house Exynos application processors in selected premium models.

Saturday 2 May 2026

Onsemi expands collaboration with NIO to support 900V EV platforms

Onsemi's expanded collaboration with NIO to support the automaker's move to 900V electric vehicle platforms could accelerate global EV adoption by improving range, charging speed, and drivetrain efficiency, influencing vehicle performance and manufacturing scalability for new models introduced worldwide, including those scheduled to debut at the 2026 Beijing Auto Show.

Thursday 30 April 2026

Google's split TPU chips signal shift from universal to specialized AI accelerators

Google has unveiled its eighth-generation Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) by splitting them into two distinct chips: the training-focused TPU 8t and the inference-optimized TPU 8i. This move goes beyond simply designing two chips; it reflects Google's capability to break down bottlenecks across different stages of the model lifecycle, restructuring chip design, interconnects, memory, scheduling, and software stacks.

Thursday 30 April 2026

MetaX GPU revenue jumps 75%, losses narrow on AI demand

China-based GPU developer MetaX reported a solid start to 2026, underscoring how domestic high-performance GPUs are beginning to translate technical progress into tangible commercial traction.

Thursday 30 April 2026

Memory crunch squeezes smartphone SoC market as Samsung gains share

Global smartphone system-on-chip (SoC) shipments fell 8% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2026, as a prolonged memory shortage weighed on handset makers and chipset vendors, according to Counterpoint Research.

Thursday 30 April 2026

Intel kills three projects in two months as Kechichian launches multi-year reset

Intel's reorganization under Kevork Kechichian, backed by CEO Lip‑Bu Tan, aims to reposition amid Nvidia's AI dominance and Arm's rise, signaling a shift to CPU-centric orchestration alongside GPUs and ASICs—an opportunity with major worldwide implications for data-center economics, AI deployment strategies, and competition in the next two to three years.

Thursday 30 April 2026

Cambricon earnings surge on AI compute demand

China's Cambricon Technologies reported a sharp rise in first-quarter 2026 earnings, driven by surging AI compute demand, while intensifying competition and shifting investor positioning reshape the domestic AI chip market.

Thursday 30 April 2026

Amazon highlights US$50 billion chip potential and advances LEO satellite plans

On April 29, Amazon told investors on its first-quarter 2026 earnings call that AWS continued to accelerate, while the company doubled down on its custom chip business and pushed forward with plans for the Amazon low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellite service, including the planned acquisition of Globalstar. Executives framed the moves as complementary elements of a broader strategy to capture a wave of demand driven by generative AI, even as they flagged memory and storage supply pressures and elevated capital spending tied to cloud and satellite buildouts.

Thursday 30 April 2026

Qualcomm to ship custom product with hyperscaler in 4Q26

In an earnings call on April 29, Qualcomm told investors it expects initial shipments of a custom silicon engagement with a leading hyperscaler in the December quarter, a milestone executives said will mark the start of a multi‑generation partnership

Thursday 30 April 2026

Samsung Electronics' record chip profits signal strengthening AI memory supercycle

Samsung Electronics reported a sharp increase in first-quarter 2026 profitability, led by its semiconductor division, as AI-driven demand for memory chips continued to accelerate. The company's chip unit delivered an operating profit of approximately KRW53.7 trillion (US$360 billion), accounting for the vast majority of group earnings and marking a significant expansion from the prior year.

Thursday 30 April 2026

China photonics chipmaker Lightelligence lists in HK, CPO commercialization in focus

As generative AI drives a sharp rise in computing demand, traditional electrical interconnect architectures are increasingly constrained by power consumption and density limits. On April 28, 2026, China-based silicon photonics chip developer Lightelligence debuted on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with its share price surging at the open and its market capitalization briefly reaching HK$77.8 billion (US$10 billion).

Thursday 30 April 2026

Qualcomm flags near-term headwinds as data center push gains traction

Qualcomm reported results broadly in line with its guidance, but noted ongoing headwinds from memory supply constraints and soft smartphone demand. Revenue for the fiscal second quarter came in at about US$10.6 billion, down sequentially and slightly lower year-over-year, while operating income also declined. Profit rose sharply every quarter, reflecting prior-period impacts and cost dynamics.

Thursday 30 April 2026

Nvidia CEO says Google's TPUs pose no threat as AI chip race heats up

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently stated that Google's Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) do not constitute a real threat to Nvidia. He made the comments during an interview on the Dwarkesh Podcast, where he also addressed the company's rise to a US$4 trillion market value in the large language model (LLM) era and the competitive landscape of AI chips.

Thursday 30 April 2026

Amkor advances data center CPU mass production amid manageable supply and cost risks

Amkor, the world's second-largest OSAT provider, recently held its earnings call where CEO Kevin Engel highlighted strong demand for AI and high-performance computing (HPC) chips driving robust orders for advanced packaging technologies like high-density fan-out (HDFO) and flip-chip. The company's HDFO packaging platform, which had already shipped two PC chip models, has now successfully integrated an AI data center CPU application set to enter mass production in the second quarter of 2026.

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