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ADTechnology said it has signed a KRW40 billion (US$27.1 million) turnkey contract with a US-based AI fabless company to develop and supply HPC SoC chiplets for AI data-center applications using Samsung Foundry's 4nm process....

Huawei is set to capture the largest share of China's AI chip market this year, with revenue expected to rise at least 60% as Chinese technology companies accelerate orders for domestic alternatives to Nvidia, according to the Financial Times....

Rising raw material prices have pushed up gallium arsenide (GaAs) substrate costs, squeezing a key material used in power amplifiers (PA). Win Semiconductors said that its scale gives it stronger bargaining power, but the company will renegotiate prices with customers if input costs swing sharply....

China's supply chain is laying the groundwork for a structural shift in car ownership and product lifecycles, as the concept of disposable cars takes shape amid rapid change in global automotive technology. The emerging framework combines hardware standardization, modular design, Tier 1 suppliers, and semiconductor companies, with Chinese automakers potentially using global channels to push the model overseas and reshape the operational logic of the auto industry....

Agentic AI drives general server demand; global server shipments to top five million units in the second quarter of 2026....

A looming strike at Samsung Electronics is exposing deeper fractures than a typical labor dispute, with widening pay gaps, divisional tensions, and a controversial bonus structure converging into a broader test of how AI-era profits are distributed inside one of the world's most critical semiconductor suppliers....

As global demand for AI infrastructure accelerates, the collaboration between Taiwan and South Korea—the core pillars of the global semiconductor supply chain—is critical to winning the new tech race. Colley Hwang, chairman of DIGITIMES and IC Broadcasting, said South Korea's plan to deploy 260,000 Nvidia GPUs remains heavily reliant on Taiwan's manufacturing capabilities....

Micro LED is emerging as a potential contender in AI optical communications as the industry shift toward "optical replacing copper" gathers pace....

Cerebras Systems is preparing to raise up to US$4 billion in an initial public offering, targeting a valuation of about US$40 billion, in what could become one of the largest AI chip listings to date....

Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP), one of the world's largest dedicated renewable energy fund managers and a major developer of offshore wind projects across Asia Pacific, says the US–Iran war has prompted governments worldwide to place greater emphasis on energy independence and supply chain resilience. Marina Hsu, CIP's Asia Pacific managing director, adds that demand for green energy from Taiwan's high-tech and ICT sectors continues to rise....

DIGITIMES' latest report says the global 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) customer premises equipment (CPE) market posted its first year-on-year shipment decline in the first quarter of 2026, with shipments of 2.835 million units, down 8.7%. The impact has likely passed its peak, however, as shipments are forecast to rebound to 3.24 million units in the second quarter of 2026, with the annual decline narrowing to 4%....

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....

Meta Platforms has acquired Assured Robot Intelligence (ARI), a startup focused on AI models for humanoid robots, marking another step in the company's broader push into physical-world artificial intelligence (AI)....

The transition from 800G to 1.6T optical modules is no longer an upgrade cycle — it is a physics-driven inflection point....

Yageo chairman Pierre Chen said the rise of AI applications is driving stronger demand not only for advanced semiconductors and memory, but also for passive components, sensors, and power semiconductors....

Below are the most-read DIGITIMES Asia stories from the week of April 27-May 4, 2026:...

Samsung Electronics has replaced the head of its Visual Display (VD) business in a rare mid-cycle reshuffle, responding to weakening demand and intensifying global competition in the television market....

In a landmark shift coinciding with its second quarter of fiscal 2026 results, Apple has announced that it will no longer maintain its formal "net cash neutral" target. This financial pivot comes as the company prepares for a significant leadership transition: John Ternus, the current hardware engineering chief, will succeed Tim Cook as CEO on September 1, 2026....

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are both riding a historic memory upcycle, but a profit gap of about KRW15 trillion (approx. US$10 billion) has opened between the two Korean chipmakers, driven largely by commodity DRAM rather than high-bandwidth memory (HBM), according to Sedaily....

Samsung Electronics' foundry business is drawing renewed attention as its 4nm process reportedly reaches higher utilization, supported by HBM4 base-die demand and orders from global technology companies....