Chip Industry Week In Review

Micron

The memory maker rolled out a slew of announcements this week, including:

• Raised its planned U.S. investment to more than $250B through 2035, an incremental $50B above what was announced last June, with an ultimate goal of producing 40% of its DRAM in the U.S.;
• Planned new investments of $3B for U.S. IC supply-chain investments, including $500M in financing for GlobalWafers’ 300mm raw silicon wafer facility in Sherman, Texas, along with a 10-year wafer supply agreement;
• Entered into a long-term strategic customer agreement with Ford, providing a supply of memory and storage solutions for the carmaker’s next-gen vehicle production.
• Started construction on its $9.3B expansion of its Hiroshima Prefecture advanced memory chip facility.

Large Deals

• Apple announced a $30B+ multiyear commitment with Broadcom to design and produce custom silicon components and wireless connectivity technologies for a wide range of Apple products. To supply RF and wireless components, Broadcom will undertake a $1.5B expansion of its Fort Collins, Colorado, manufacturing facilities.
• Solstice Advanced Materials agreed to acquire Element Solutions for $14.5B, adding Element’s electronics chemicals portfolio to Solstice’s specialty-materials business.
• SEALSQ and GlobalFoundries will co-develop secure semiconductor platforms, focusing on PQC, cryogenic CMOS technology, and trusted chip production.
• Onsemi plans to shed its Tarlac, Philippines manufacturing site to Greatek Electronics and its Mountain Top, Pennsylvania site to Silex Microsystems.
• Sumitomo Chemical’s subsidiary is teaming up with Samsung Electro-Mechanics on glass core substrates for advanced packaging.

Raking it in

• QuantumDiamonds received US$104M to ramp up production of its quantum-based semiconductor inspection technology.
• SambaNova raised $1B to expand capacity for its on-prem agentic inference chips that use a dataflow architecture.
• Oratomic raised $300M to build a fault-tolerant quantum computer based on reconfigurable atomic arrays trapped in focused laser beams.

New analysis

• SIA/WSTS reports global semiconductor sales hit a record ~$121B in May 2026, up over 9% from April and over 104% from May 2025.
• A NNME/SEMI/NSF/McKinsey analysis found the U.S. semiconductor industry will need 189K additional workers by 2030, with 74% of the projected demand related to manufacturing. The report noted that 75% of surveyed employers had difficulty hiring engineers.

AI 

• Meta’s in-house AI accelerator is moving toward manufacturing, with a goal of doubling compute capacity and reducing reliance on outside AI-chip suppliers, reports Reuters.
• TetraMem and SK hynix demonstrated progress on analog in-memory computing for AI, using resistive memory to process data closer to where it is stored.
• Flex and Cerebras expanded U.S. production of Cerebras’ AI supercomputers, supporting an expected 7X production ramp for wafer-scale AI systems through 2026. Cerebras also said it will bring its first European AI data-center capacity online by the end of this year.
• The Economist tested 25 leading AI models on morals and beliefs, finding that many don’t reflect the values held by most people around the world. That gap matters most when AI is used for judgment calls — in areas like advice, policy, education, or hiring — where a model’s built-in assumptions can shape the answer without users realizing it.

Legal matters

• The U.S. ITC reaffirmed a previous patent finding that Innoscience infringed on an Infineon patent concerning GaN technology, resulting in import and sales bans against the Chinese semiconductor developer.
• Wolfspeed filed a patent-infringement lawsuit in Delaware, alleging Navitas’ GaN-based FETs and other products infringe on multiple Wolfspeed patents. Navitas disputes the allegations.

Around the Valley

Amkor SVP David McCann (L) and ASE VP of R&D CP Hung (R) discuss future challenges and directions for advanced packaging at iMAPS CHIPCon conference in Santa Clara, California.

Financials

• Samsung (Q2 guidance), TSMC (June sales) and UMC (June revenue).

Quick links to more news:

Global |In-Depth |Reports and Deals | New Technologies | Security | Vehicles, Batteries | Trending Video | Research | Quantum |  Workforce, Education  Events and Webinars

Global

Europe

• The EU’s Chips JU opened its latest round of applications for projects that aim to advance research, infrastructure, power electronics, photonics, health, 6G, and international cooperation.
• Harvard’s Belfer Center said the EU’s proposed Tech Sovereignty Package — including Chips Act 2.0 and the Cloud/AI Development Act — marks a move from only subsidizing European fabs toward building demand for advanced chips across strategic sectors.  The brief says the effort is more likely to strengthen niche AI-chip design and ecosystem capabilities than to dramatically raise Europe’s share of chip manufacturing.
• POLYN Technology and Alter Technology plan to establish a joint chip-validation lab in Toulouse, France, with specialized electrical validation capabilities for neuromorphic analog signal-processing chips.

Asia

• Asahi Kasei built a SUNFORT dry-film photoresist slitting facility in Taiwan.
• Rigaku opened a dedicated training facility for semiconductor metrology systems in Osaka, Japan.
• In India, CG Semi began commercial production at its G1 OSAT facility in Sanand, Gujarat.

Americas

• Carnegie Mellon and the U. of Pittsburgh will build a new supercomputer with $10M backing from the U.S. NSF.

Reports and Deals

More deals, launches

• Arteris’ NoC IP will be integrated into a high-speed I/O subsystem reference design for AI and HPC ASICs from IC-Link by imec.
• Swissbit and Nexperia are collaborating on secure, high-reliability hardware for AI, cloud, and server platforms.
• ADI completed its $1.5B acquisition of integrated voltage regulator maker Empower Semi.

Fundings, IPO

• e-peas raised $22M to expand its line of energy harvesting power management chips that enable battery-free or long‑lifetime IoT devices.
• Pixel-Flo raised ~$7M to industrialize its fluidic self-assembly technology for MicroLED display manufacturing.
• Syntiant, a provider of processors, sensors, and software for physical AI, filed for an IPO on Nasdaq.
• CCRAFT raised $7.8M to expand its thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) foundry.

Reports

• PC Market Runs Low on RAM to Grow (IDC)
• Panel makers lower fab utilization plans (Omdia)
• May EMS Shipments Rise (Global Electronics Assoc.)
• Trends to Watch in Advanced Semiconductor Packaging (IDTechEx)

Opinions

• Can cutting-edge semiconductors supercharge Japan? (Economist)
• Data center backlash signals a fight over AI power (Brookings)

New Technologies

Accellera released a draft version of the upcoming Functional Safety Language standard for public review through August 14. FSL defines the syntax and semantics of a language and data model for representing and exchanging functional safety intent.

Rambus introduced a DDR5 server RDIMM chipset operating at up to 9600 MT/s for AI infrastructure and HPC.

Samsung Electronics started mass production of a 4-16TB PCIe 6.0 SSD for AI and HPC server environments.

Infineon will supply 1,200 V CoolSiC MOSFETs and matching dual-channel EiceDRIVER 2EDB9259Y gate drivers to Advantics for its new line of liquid-cooled power converters.

Keysight updated its software test tool to find UI elements by description rather than visual appearance.

Daikin and NTT DATA launched a proof of concept for AI-based data-center cooling optimization, combining server thermal prediction with integrated control of HVAC, chillers, and liquid cooling for AI server environments.

Research

MITRE, UC Boulder, and other researchers built piezo-optomechanical photonic circuits directly on commercial CMOS driver wafers, creating a monolithic platform for dense electronic control of silicon nitride photonics used in AI, sensing, and quantum-computing systems.

Using the optical Kerr effect, a Caltech team demonstrated “ultrafast, reconfigurable all-optical beam steering and spatial light modulation.”

Security

New security offerings

• Infineon rolled out SECORA ID Key S USB, a Java Card-based solution with USB and NFC connectivity for secure authentication and digital signatures.
• Keysight announced the APS-ONE-400, a new modular network cybersecurity test platform. This new 4x100GE platform increases performance for Layer 4-7 traffic, encrypted traffic, and Elephant Flow traffic, all within a 1-rack unit system.

Government on cybersecurity

• The U.S. Department of Defense opened applications for its new cyber apprenticeship program after receiving more than 70,000 applicant inquiries since the program was first teased in April.
• The European Commission published a new plan for AI security, setting new standards for AI evaluation, research, and cyber defense best practices.
• The government of Alberta, Canada has been using Claude to test for cybersecurity vulnerabilities, with the province’s Ministry of Technology and Innovation publishing a series of whitepapers on their findings.
• The UK government published a frontier-AI defense plan called Cyber Shield, calling on organizations to ensure rapid patching of vulnerabilities, reduce reliance on legacy systems, and adopt secure-by-design technologies.

Warnings, vulnerabilities

• CISA published a post-mortem on lessons from its own cyber incident, warning organizations should restrict who can upload code or files to public repositories, monitor repositories for exposed secrets, and ensure exposed credentials can be quickly detected, revoked, and replaced.  The cyber agency also posted new vulnerability alerts this week.
• CERT/CC’s latest vulnerability note include a Tenda firmware backdoor and a HP Deskjet webserver authorization flaw exposing device and wireless credentials.
• Cloudflare said post-quantum signature migration cannot wait for better algorithms, arguing that ML-DSA’s size and implementation tradeoffs are acceptable for the first transition because newer NIST candidates are unlikely to be widely available before the 2030s.
• Cisco and Foundry predict AI will triple network traffic over the next three years, driving growing concerns over network infrastructure and security risks.

Security research

• Agentic Conversational AI Assistant for HW Security Verification (UF)
• Security & Privacy Framework for AI-Native 6G Networks (U Of York)
• EM Covert Channels via Imperceptible Pixel Modulation (Shandong et al)
• DL HW: Survey of Side-Channel Vulnerabilities/Countermeasures (Tehran)
• Kill-Chain Attack on Quantum NNs: Demo on Trapped-Ion HW  (d-fine, AISEC)

Vehicles, Batteries

Autonomous, connectivity, drones

• The U.S. NHTSA issued a warning to AV developers after federal officials identified a pattern of driverless vehicles “interfering” with first responders at emergency scenes.
• Tesla launched its robotaxi service for customers in Miami. Waymo’s AVs will now be available in San Diego, Denver, Las Vegas, and Tampa.
• Molex announced its new HSAutoLink G Connector System, capable of supporting multi-gig Ethernet connections of up to 25Gbps.
• Innoviz Technologies and Cogniteam will jointly develop an advanced Counter-UAS drone detection perception module.
• Irish drone-delivery company Manna Aero announced a large-scale U.S. expansion, with a new manufacturing and business operations base planned for Tulsa, OK.

EVs

• Nearly a year after federal EV credits were terminated, first-time EV buyers in California can now get an instant $3,500 rebate for new cars under $50k.
• Fiat introduced a tiny all-electric Topolino to the U.S. market, pricing the two-seat neighborhood EV starting at $13,995. However, it can only go 19-25 mph, has a maximum range of just 46 miles, and functions more like a golf cart.
• FORVIA HELLA launched a 12V lithium-ion battery pack that integrates cells and a low-voltage BMS for EVs.

Vehicle research

• Evaluating HW Abstraction Layer Concepts for SDVs (Stuttgart)
• Monitoring Vulnerabilities in Next-Gen Automotive OS (IP Paris)
• AUTOSAR Adaptive Platform from an Industry Perspective (Chalmers)
• Testing of Vision Language Models for Scene Understanding (BMW, TUM)
• HW Rooted Authentication for Secure OTA Updates in Zonal SDVs (Inria et al.)
• Fusion of Camera, LiDAR, 4D RADAR for Robust 3D Object Detection in Adverse Weather (KAIST)

Trending Video

New USB Standards: Benefits And Incompatibilities: A roadmap for integrating different versions of the USB and eUSB.

Just because it’s a standard doesn’t mean everything will work together, and this is especially evident with conflicting USB standards. Cadence’s David Shin explains where incompatibilities can crop up, why it’s so difficult to control the different versions, and what’s behind all this confusion.

Quantum

Quantum technology is at a stage where maximum creativity meets maximum chaos. The industry hasn’t settled on a common approach to quantum computing, so different research groups have been working on different implementations simultaneously. Numerous small startups have sprung up, each addressing some aspect of a quantum system.

IQM Quantum Computers was listed on Nasdaq following the completion of a SPAC deal. IQM also acquired Quantistry, a provider of AI-powered quantum chemistry and materials simulation software.

QpiAI open-sourced its SDK, which provides a Python-based interface to build and run quantum algorithms.

Quantum research

• ETH Zurich researchers designed quantum memory using mechanical resonators that vibrate when storing information.
• Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Cleveland Clinic, and IBM used a quantum computer to calculate nine molecular configurations of a potential fusion energy material.

Government on quantum

• The U.S. NSF launched an initiative to integrate quantum sensing, quantum networking, and quantum computing into a single operational system.
• Illinois will offer $3M to encourage NSF X-Labs quantum research teams to set up in the state.

Workforce, Education

ITIF argues that the US’s outdated VISA categories are undermining US competitiveness and recommends a new visa category for foreign technical experts, researchers, and trainers whose work supports U.S. market leadership.

Purdue expanded its semiconductor professional education portfolio with Taiwan’s NYCU, adding joint stackable industry courses in AI chip design, packaging, reliability, characterization, and more.

SEMI warns that skilled trades are becoming a big roadblock on the IC construction buildout, with large fab projects requiring thousands of workers and more specialized training in cleanroom construction, electrical systems, safety, and contamination control.

New York’s Binghamton University opened a new cleanroom and microelectronic packaging research facility to train more than 100 students a year in semiconductor manufacturing and packaging skills.

Events and Webinars

Upcoming webinars are here, including:

• Scaling Compute Connectivity with PCIe and CXL, July 14
• What EMC Failures Really Cost Engineering Teams, July 15
• Integrating ModelNova Fusion Studio with Arm Keil MDK, July 21
• Attacking AI with Fault Injection, Advancing FI with AI Assistance, July 21
• When Compute Outruns Data: Rethinking AI Connectivity, July 21
• Full Spectrum Equivalence Checking: From C++ to the FPGA Bitstream, July 22

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

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