Semiconductor News 20250906

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1. OpenAI and Broadcom to jointly develop and mass-produce custom AI chips, receiving huge orders OpenAI is jointly developing custom AI chips with Broadcom, with mass production scheduled to begin in 2026 . Broadcom has reportedly secured an order for AI chips worth an estimated $10 billion from OpenAI, which has led to an upward revision of its AI-related sales forecast for 2026. This large contract indicates a new supply chain in the AI market and growing demand for application-specific chips.
2. Semiconductor Equipment Market Grows Steadily, Up 24% Y/Y in Q2 20 25 In the second quarter of 2025, SEMI reported that the global semiconductor equipment market grew 24% year over year, reaching $33.1 billion. Revenue for the top five wafer fab equipment manufacturers also grew 20% year over year in the same quarter. This strong growth reflects the booming semiconductor industry as a whole and increased capital spending driven by demand for data centers, AI, and other areas, and raises expectations for stronger semiconductor supply capacity in the future.
3. SanDisk and TSMC Announce Price Increases, NAND Flash Chip Prices Rise The NAND flash market is heating up after SanDisk raised its NAND flash prices by 10%. In addition to this, TSMC has also announced a price increase, reportedly leading to higher prices for flash memory and other chips. Price revisions by these major suppliers will affect the entire semiconductor market and may spread to the cost of end products such as PCs and smartphones. The change in the supply-demand balance in the market is believed to be behind this change.
4. Samsung and SK Hynix Delay DDR4 Phase-Out, Older Chips More Profitable than DDR5 Samsung and SK Hynix appear to be delaying their DDR4 phase-out until 2026 due to continued demand for older DDR4 chips, which are more profitable than DDR5. Concerns have also been expressed that this move could lead to structural shortages of DDR4 and LPDDR4 in the second half of 2025, as the profitability of older generation products in the DRAM market has come under scrutiny, affecting market strategies.
5. Huawei Remains the Only Major Player in China ‘s AI Chip Sector Huawei continues to be the only major player in the AI chip sector in China. This suggests that Huawei is playing a central role in China’s move toward self-sufficiency in AI technology within the country, despite the impact of geopolitical factors such as U.S. export restrictions. While the Chinese government wants to weaken its dependence on the U.S. for AI chips, Chinese companies reportedly want to continue purchasing NVIDIA chips.
6. Google Seeks to Combine TPUs and NVIDIA GPUs to Reduce Costs and Expand Data Center Scaling Google is reportedly considering using a combination of its own TPU chips and NVIDIA GPUs in an effort to reduce costs and expand data center scaling This strategy is expected to help Google to meet the diverse needs of its AI workloads. This strategy is intended to build an efficient infrastructure to handle the growing diversity of AI workloads, and is notable as a move to explore the optimal combination of AI chips in data centers. The hybrid use of in-house chips and external GPUs has the potential to become an industry-wide trend.
7. Samsung EntersHBM4 Competition with AggressivePricing Strategy, Aimsto Win NvidiaSupply Contract Samsung is entering the HBM4 (High Bandwidth Memory 4) market competition with an aggressive pricing strategy, aiming to win a supply contract with Nvidia, a major AI chip supplier. Samsung’s move is expected to intensify the competition for market share in the HBM market, as HBM is an essential high-performance memory in the AI/HPC (High Performance Computing) space. This is critical to establishing a competitive edge in the industry.
8. China Completes Tape-out of 5nm GPUs, 6nm in Sample Stage A 5nm process GPU developed in China has reportedly completed tape-out, while a 6nm process GPU is currently in the sample stage. This indicates that China is making steady progress toward self-sufficiency in advanced semiconductor technology, and the move toward domestic production of components essential for high-performance computing, such as GPUs, is particularly noteworthy amid ongoing technological friction between China and the United States.
9. Qualcomm CEO Expresses Concern Over Intel Chip Production, Predicts Robotics and Physical AI as Next Big Markets Qualcomm’s CEO noted that Intel’s chip production capacity is “not yet sufficient” and that it is not an option for chip production at this time. On the other hand, the CEO expressed his company’s focus** on “robotics and physical AI” as a major market for the future. This suggests that Qualcomm is looking toward next-generation AI applications and the semiconductor technology that will support them, providing an important perspective on the industry’s future growth areas.
10. Asahi Kasei to Double Chip Insulation Material Production by 2030 to Meet Growing Demand for AI Data Centers Asahi Kasei plans to double its chip insulation material production capacity by 2030 to meet growing demand for AI data centers. Demand for insulating materials, which are essential for heat dissipation and signal interference prevention, is also increasing rapidly. This investment by Asahi Kasei illustrates how semiconductor materials suppliers are supporting the development of AI infrastructure and highlights the current spread of AI technology across a wide range of industries.

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