News-analysis archive

January 2026

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31 articles

January 30
- China moves into manufacturing disruptive new semiconductor glass substrates as processor packaging competition intensifies
January 29
- Ongoing trade war has TSMC and Taiwan stuck between a rock and a hard place — concerns mount surrounding U.S deals cracking the nation's silicon shield
- ASML projects $71 billion in revenue by 2030, as demand for EUV lithography machines intensifies due to AI boom — China sales lag behind while company cashes in on high-end Twinscan systems
- Samsung's Taylor, Texas fab could herald a breakthrough for the chipmaker, company plans 2026 risk production — new production flows, pellicles for EUV patterning as site targets 50,000 WSPM
January 28
- SK hynix invests $10 billion in creating a U.S.-based 'AI solutions' company — company to restructure California-based Solidigm enterprise SSD brand to bolster American investments
January 27
- Intel's roadmap adds mysterious 'hybrid' AI processor featuring x86 CPUs, dedicated AI accelerator, and programmable IP — chip may capitalize on a market forgotten by Nvidia and AMD
- SoftBank pauses $50bn AI data center operator acquisition talks — move plunges Stargate data center plans into uncertainty as regulatory roadblocks pose significant challenge
- Exploring Clawdbot, the AI agent taking the internet by storm — AI agent can automate tasks for you, but there are significant risks involved
January 23
- Intel Q4 earnings reveal rocky path to recovery following weakest full-year revenue since 2010 — Intel Foundry losses continue as 18A begins ramp, but supply challenges set to ease in Q2 2026
- Alibaba plans IPO for chip-arm T-Head to help bankroll ambitious AI infrastructure investments — company to go up against Cambricon and Huawei to capture domestic accelerator market
January 21
- Chinese semiconductor industry gears up for domestic HBM3 production by the end of 2026 — CXMT to produce chips, while Naura, Maxwell, and U-Preseason design tools for assembly
- OpenAI shows clear compute and revenue scaling to soothe investor worries as company preps for IPO — expenditure continues to outweigh income as 10GW buildout continues
January 20
- U.S company Noveon Magnetics raises $215 million to expand homegrown rare earth magnet supply — $630 million spent in 2025 on American reshoring efforts to divest from Chinese reliance
- Micron acquires PSMC fab site in Taiwan for $1.8 billion, acquisition to expand the memory maker's operations within the region — move marks the end of the technology-for-capacity era
January 19
- Robotics and world models are AI's next frontier, and China is already ahead of the West — research shows almost 13,000 robots deployed in 2025 alone
January 16
- Microsoft built a ‘Community-First AI Infrastructure’ framework for its data center projects — new policy may be the blueprint for U.S hyperscalers to follow
- Glass cloth could be the next great AI shortage, as major manufacturers scramble to secure critical material — Japanese manufacturer courted by Apple, Nvidia, Google, and Amazon
January 15
- GlobalFoundries acquires ARC and RISC-V IP from Synopsys — company gains critical CPU IP as it grows beyond being a mere chipmaker
January 14
- SK hynix to spend $13 billion on the world's largest HBM memory assembly plant amid the worst shortage on record — South Korea facility to handle packaging and testing for AI memory campus
- AI chip design is pushing advanced chip packaging to its limits – workarounds exist for limits of 2.5D packaging, but are years away from viability
January 13
- Qwen boss says Chinese AI models have 'less than 20%' chance of leapfrogging Western counterparts — despite China's $1 billion AI IPO week, capital can't close the gap alone
- Deepseek research touts memory breakthrough, decoupling compute power and RAM pools to bypass GPU & HBM constraints — Engram conditional memory module commits static knowledge to system RAM
January 9
- Chinese researchers hail breakthrough in DRAM-like cells, which could be used in embedded or 3D stacked memory — absence of manufacturing detail casts doubt on mass production
- Nvidia refutes reports of HBM4 mass production delay, production 'on track' for the second half of 2025 — report suggested timeline shift to late Q126 due to revised spec
January 8
- Micron to begin work on $100 billion New York 'megafab' imminently — landmark site to produce 40% of company's overall DRAM output in the U.S. by the 2040s
January 7
- Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang explains why SRAM isn't here to eat HBM's lunch — high bandwidth memory offers more flexibility in AI deployments across a range of workloads
January 6
- Nvidia's focus on rack-scale AI systems is a portent for the year to come — Rubin points the way forward for company, as data center business booms
- China’s GPU cloud consolidates around Baidu and Huawei as domestic AI chips scale up — export controls leave gap open for homegrown solutions
January 5
- China’s top chip foundries move to consolidate as Beijing pushes semiconductor self-sufficiency — SMIC and Hua Hong Semiconductor deals pave the path to unified power
- U.S. electricity grid stretches thin as data centers rush to turn on onsite generators — Meta, xAI, and other tech giants race to solve AI's insatiable power appetite
January 2
- Micron secures $318 million Taiwanese subsidy for HBM R&D as AI memory arms race intensifies — three-year project aims to develop leading-edge, high-performance memory