Biwin has signed a locked-volume, locked-price deal to buy enterprise-grade chips from Q3 2026 to Q2 2028. The contract, valued at 12.6 billion yuan, aims to secure medium- to long-term capacity and reduce supply disruption risks.
South Korea's stock market is surging, driven by AI chip demand and tech giants like Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. However, the nation's currency, the won, is struggling, down 11% against the US dollar, due to reliance on oil imports and global energy shocks.
South Korea's trade balance with China has swung into a significant surplus, driven by a surge in memory chip exports. This marks a rare bright spot among East Asian economies facing pressure from China's rising competitiveness.
BT CEO Allison Kirkby warns the AI boom is driving demand for semiconductor chips, potentially leading to shortages and price hikes for smartphones and other electronics. Tech firms are buying large quantities of memory chips for AI data centers, impacting supply chains.
Workers at the world's largest manufacturer threaten strike as global memory shortage intensifies.
Demand for multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) is surging due to the AI boom, with AI servers requiring significantly more MLCCs than traditional ones. Manufacturers are prioritizing high-end supply, leading to price increases.
Micron Technology shares caught fire this week amid a global shortage of memory chips. The stock is heading for its best week since 2008.
Micron Technology shares caught fire this week amid a global shortage of memory chips. The stock is heading for its best week since 2008.
Bargains are disappearing and the cost of gadgets such as MacBooks and PS5s is rising as AI competes for memory chipsThe end of the cheap laptop, the bargain phone and affordable games consoles may be on the horizon. Not because new models are more hi-tech, but because the cost of computer components has shot up.Recently, the biggest manufacturers of laptops and phones, including Microsoft, Samsung and Dell, started putting up prices and pulling cheaper models – which is going to make finding budget phones and laptops under £400 much harder. Continue reading...
Earlier this year, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang likened artificial intelligence (AI) to “a five-layer cake”. At the top are applications, such as chatbots. The layer below is the software, which includes language models. Further down are infrastructure and memory chips. The bottom layer is the most important. “At the foundation is energy,” Huang said, noting that “energy is the first principle of AI infrastructure and the binding constraint on how much intelligence the system can produce”. Driving...
The AI boom is worsening a global memory chip shortage, which Samsung predicts will continue into 2027Samsung Electronics on Thursday reported record quarterly profit driven by a 49-fold jump in chip income, saying it expects a severe supply shortage to deepen next year as clients spend on AI, driving up prices of its memory chips.A boom in the construction of AI datacentres has spurred Samsung and chipmaking peers to allocate production capacity to advanced chips that Nvidia uses in its so-called AI accelerators. Even so, chipmakers are struggling to meet demand while the move also squeezes the supply of conventional chips. Continue reading...
BYD announced a 21% price increase for its DiPilot 300 assisted-driving system, raising the cost from 9,900 yuan to 12,000 yuan starting Friday. The company attributed the hike to sharp rises in global storage hardware costs. The system uses lidar sensors and memory chips, and analysts predict premium vehicles will be the next category hit hard by a memory chip 'super cycle', while mid-range models will bear the brunt as high-end buyers are less price-sensitive.
Three Chinese optical module manufacturers have seen their stock prices surge 5-10x in the past year, with combined market capitalisation now exceeding baijiu giant Kweichow Moutai. Zhongji Innolight, the world's largest optical module producer, saw shares jump tenfold, while peers Eoptolink and TFC Optical gained more than five times. The firms, which produce components for high-speed data transmission in AI infrastructure, became the second and third most popular stocks among actively managed equity funds in Q1 2026.
