Chip Industry Week In Review

Deals:

NVIDIA inked a $20B non-exclusive licensing deal with Groq for its inference technology. The startup’s founder, Jonathan Ross, and some other employees will join NVIDIA to assist in scaling and advancing the technology. The non-exclusive licensing deal, versus an outright purchase, is a tool other companies have used to avoid antitrust regulation.

Samsung Ventures made a strategic investment in ChipAgents, creator of an agentic AI platform for chip design and verification. Details of the deal were not made public.

ROHM and Tata Electronics are teaming up to build a power IC manufacturing framework in India, with Tata delivering advanced chip packaging and test to support ROHM’s devices.

Geopolitics:

The U.S. Trade Representative 301 investigation concluded, finding that “…for decades, China has targeted the semiconductor industry for dominance and has employed increasingly aggressive and sweeping non-market policies and practices in pursuing dominance of the sector.” Nevertheless, tariffs on semiconductors from China will be delayed until mid-2027. China plans to retaliate.

U.S. lawmakers asked the Pentagon to add DeepSeek, Xiaomi, Hua Hong Semiconductor, BOE Technology, and other companies to the list of Chinese military companies.

A recent teardown showed Chinese-made parts in Huawei’s new smartphones grew nearly 60%, demonstrating the headway the country has made, Nikkei reported.

South Korean authorities indicted former Samsung employees for transferring DRAM trade secrets to ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT).

The U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security amended regulations to formally eliminate the H-1B lottery and changing the visa program to prioritize higher-skilled, higher-paid workers. The caps set by Congress remain the same — 65,000, plus another 20,000 for U.S. advanced degree holders — as does the $100,000 per visa fee, which was announced in September.

Automotive:

MediaTek and Denso are co-developing a custom automotive SoC for ADAS and cockpit systems.

HARMAN, a subsidiary of Samsung, entered into a definitive agreement to acquire ZF Group’s ADAS business for €1.5B.

Wingtech Chairwoman Ruby Yang warned that “global chip supplies remain at risk unless the Chinese company’s control over Dutch chipmaker Nexperia BV is restored,” reports Bloomberg.  The continuing spat has led Nexperia China to seek alternative sources of wafer supplies, and carmakers like Honda are going so far as to suspend output.

EV battery maker CATL and Unigroup Guoxin Microelectronics will form a new automotive chip company in Beijing.

Europe’s first joint initiative for an open automotive chiplet ecosystem, CHASSIS, is now live, led by Bosch and supported by its 18 members, including Arteris, Fraunhofer, Imec, and Siemens.

Quick links to more news:

In-Depth
Global
Reports and Deals
New Technologies
Security
Automotive and Batteries
Research
Events and Further Reading

In-Depth

Semiconductor Engineering published its Systems and Design newsletter recently, featuring:

Special Report:

• Programmable Chips Evolve For Shifting Needs: Designers are utilizing an array of programmable or configurable ICs to keep pace with rapidly changing technology and AI. DSPs remain key.

Top Stories:

• When To Move To Multi-Die Assemblies: Multiple factors are involved in deciding when and whether to disaggregate a planar SoC.
• 2025 – A Year Of Change And Anticipation: Unexpected change rewards those who are quick to adjust, but all aspects of a system must be adjusted to keep growth going.

Opinion and Tech Talk:

• Tracking Your Preferences: What did you want to read about in 2025? While most of it was fairly predictable, there were some surprises.
• Reliability And Traceability In Advanced Packages: How to find the root cause of a failure in a multi-die assembly.

Global

Europe:

• UK-based Paragraf produced its first six-inch wafer of graphene FETs (GFETs), with graphene grown directly on silicon at its new Huntingdon facility.

Asia:

• India’s Centre for Development of Advanced Computing introduced a homegrown 1.0 GHz 64-bit dual-core microprocessor based on RISC-V.
• ASE subsidiary USI plans to expand its Hai Phong, Vietnam, plant to reach a monthly capacity of 100,000 units of 800G/1.6T silicon photonic-based optical transceivers.
• Foresight Technologies is expanding its Penang, Malaysia, campus by 80,000 square feet to increase production of high-purity components and chemical distribution systems.

Americas:

• SEMI provided feedback to the U.S. Dept. of Commerce on the American AI Exports Program, encouraging a broader AI tech stack definition to include IC manufacturing, mature-node ICs, and alignment with CHIPS for America requirements.
• Prairie View A&M University received ~$2M through a Texas Semiconductor Innovation Fund grant to support a semiconductor workforce development initiative focused on 3D heterogeneous integration.

Reports and Deals

More deals:

• Weebit Nano secured a licensing deal with Texas Instruments for its ReRAM technology.
• Fuji Electric and Bosch announced an agreement to collaborate on SiC power semiconductor modules for EVs that feature package compatibility.
• Alphabet will spend $4.8B to buy Intersect, a large-scale renewable energy provider for data centers.

Funding:

• Galatek raised $30M for its AI-driven inspection and advanced packaging platform, including automated overlay measurement, automatic optical inspection, and wafer dicing.
• NanoXplore raised €20M (~$23.4M) to produce high-reliability, radiation-hardened FPGAs for space and defense.
• Lucidean raised $18M to develop coherent-class optical interconnects for data centers that are compatible with existing intensity-modulation direct-detection lasers and DSPs.
• Enlightra raised $15M to demonstrate its chip-scale multi-color laser technology for ultra-high bandwidth optical links to connect chips in AI clusters and data centers.

Think Tanks, Opinions

• ASML EUV Dominance & China’s Semiconductor Equipment Push (TrendForce).
• Genesis Mission: Can the U.S.’ Bet on AI Revitalize U.S. Science (CSIS)
• What is California’s AI safety law? (Brookings)
• Ditch textbooks and learn how to use a wrench to AI-proof your job (Economist)
• Analysing China’s 2025 Rare-Earth Export Controls (NTU)

Reports:

• Revenue for pure-play foundries, non-memory IDMs, OSATs, and photomask suppliers rose 17% YoY in Q3 2025 to reach a combined $84.8B, according to Counterpoint Research.
• Silicon Wafers: Navigating Diameter Shifts and Demand Drivers (TECHCET)
• ADAS, AD Sensors Market to Reach $61B by 2035 (Counterpoint)
• Two-Phase D2C Cooling in Data Center Thermal Management Cost Analysis (IDTechEx)

Trending Video

Challenges In Testing Photonics In Chips: The impact of combining electrical and optical test in a single device.

New Technologies

Cadence taped out a UCIe IP subsystem with 64Gbps per-lane speeds on TSMC’s N3P process.

Fujifilm introduced its new magnetic data storage tape cartridge with a maximum recording capacity of 100TB per cartridge.

Toray Industries developed a negative photo-definable polyimide sheet for glass core substrates that makes it possible to simultaneously fabricate the RDL and fill through-glass via electrodes with resin.

LG Innotek introduced a new IC substrate material for mounting chips on smart cards, which the company says reduces the carbon emissions generated in its production by half while increasing durability.

Research

CEA-Leti’s advanced sensing platform and STMicroelectronics’ R&D prototype project for solid-state electrochemical sensors were combined to create a system for continuous sweat monitoring.

MIT researchers developed a framework called EnCompass that automatically backtracks if LLMs make mistakes.

More research bits:

• 2D CMOS electronics with high-performance p-type transistors (MIT et al.)
• Gradient Electronic Landscapes in vdW Heterostructures (TU Denmark)
• Scaled crystalline antimony ohmic contacts for 2D transistors (Nanjing U.)
• Do we really need big data centers for AI? (EPFL)
• Ultrathin ferroelectric capacitors for next-gen memory devices (Science Tokyo, Canon)
• GHz-frequency acousto-optic phase modulation of visible light in a CMOS-fabricated photonic circuit (U. of Arizona, CU Boulder)
• A Novel Disaggregated Approach of Assembling Integrated Heat Spreader for Advanced Packages (Intel)

Security

Arm announced a new bug bounty program aimed at Trusted Firmware, initially covering four open-source projects.

Deals:

• ServiceNow plans to buy cyber firm Armis for $7.75B in cash, furthering an end-to-end security solution for its customers.
• NIST and MITRE are collaborating to advance and accelerate AI solutions through two new centers focused on manufacturing and cybersecurity for critical infrastructure.

Specific motherboard models from ASRock, ASUSTeK Computer, GIGABYTE, and MSI are affected by a security vulnerability that leaves them susceptible to early-boot DMA attacks across architectures that implement a UEFI and IOMMU, reports Carnegie Mellon’s Software Institute.

Reports:

• DL-Based Side-Channel Attacks on Secure and Conventional Cryptographic Circuits Using FinFET and TFET Technologies (Illinois Tech)
• Breaking ECDSA with EM Side-Channel Attacks: Challenges and Practicality on Modern Smartphones (Fraunhofer et al.)
• Quantum-Safe Bridge Architecture for Blockchain Interoperability (Penn State)
• A Performant Side-Channel-Resistant RISC-V Core Securing Edge AI Inference (Northeastern)
• Practical Microarchitectural Attacks on the Stack Engine (ETH Zurich)
• An Integrated STRIDE, ATT&CK, and D3FEND Model for Threat Modeling Against Real-world Adversaries (UNSW et al)

CISA issued new alerts/advisories.

Automotive and Batteries

The U.S. NHTSA opened an investigation into Tesla’s Model 3 for a possible defect in the mechanical door release, after an owner reported “the mechanical door release is hidden, unlabeled, and not intuitive to locate during an emergency.”  According to Bloomberg, 15 people reportedly have died from crashes in which Tesla doors wouldn’t open.

Innoviz launched a new automotive-grade lidar solution with slimmer dimensions and lower power consumption, specifically designed for mounting behind the windshield or on the roof of a vehicle.

Honda is buying LG Energy‘s share of their joint EV battery facility in Ohio for $2.9B.

Volkswagen will cease exporting its electric bus to the U.S. next year due to a sharp decline in sales.

The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association reported that revealed that new EU car registrations increased by 1.4% compared to the same period last year, but still below pre-pandemic levels. Hybrid-electric vehicles were the most popular power type choice among buyers.

Rivian created the Rivian Scholars program to support Georgia Tech engineering students with partial tuition scholarships starting in 2026.

Vehicles and battery research:

• Sandia National Lab researchers used computer modeling and lab experiments to invent new ways to quickly assess new thermal protection materials for hypersonic vehicles.
• Research from The Chinese University of Hong Kong proposed a change in lithium-ion battery design that involves swapping chemicals in the existing electrolyte solution to make the process more fire-resistant.
• UT Austin found a major reason why batteries deteriorate over time.

Events and Further Reading

Upcoming webinars are here.

• Advances in ATPG: From Power and Timing Awareness to Intelligent Pattern Search with AI, Jan. 14
• Physics-Based Foundations for Power Supply Design, Jan. 14
• Accelerate IC Layout Parasitic Analysis with ParagonX, Jan. 15

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

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Systems and Design
Low Power-High Performance
Test, Measurement and Analytics
Manufacturing, Packaging and Materials