Chip Industry Week in Review

The U.S. government will grant licenses to NVIDIA and AMD to again sell some AI chips — NVIDIA’s H20 GPU and AMD’s MI308 — to Chinese companies. TrendForce projects that the availability of NVIDIA chips, in particular, will create a surge in demand from Chinese AI firms and cloud service providers, and boost high-bandwidth memory (HBM) consumption. The move could raise China’s share of foreign AI chip procurement to 49% and reestablish the H20 as the country’s dominant high-end AI accelerator, despite ongoing geopolitical risks and competition from domestic players like Huawei.

Think tank CSET examined China’s steady technology and market share gains in semiconductor manufacturing equipment, noting gains in CMP tools, dry etch and deposition tools. But formidable barriers remain for more complex technologies, especially lithography.

TSMC is accelerating its  volume production schedule by several quarters at its Arizona fabs due to soaring demand from its U.S. customers.

Synopsys completed its long-awaited $35 billion acquisition of Ansys, boosting Synopsys’ multi-physics simulation capabilities that will be essential for complex SoCs and multi-die designs. Synopsys expects to deliver the first set of integrated capabilities in the first half of 2026, which ultimately will encompass the full EDA stack.

Nikon will start accepting orders for its DSP-100 Digital Lithography System for advanced packaging and panel-level semiconductor manufacturing this month. The maskless system offers 1.0μm resolution, high throughput, and support for 600mm² substrates.

Proofpoint concluded that three Chinese state-sponsored targeted phishing campaigns against the Taiwanese semiconductor industry were most likely espionage.

EDA and silicon IP revenue grew almost 13% in Q1 2025, totaling ~$5.1 billion. IP revenue alone surged 29% year-over-year, according to the ESD Alliance’s Electronic Design Market Data report.

75 startups raised $1.9 billion in Q2 2025, with investors drawn to a wide range of innovative approaches, including superconducting logic, big data processors, novel power semi architectures, photonics, and more.

This week’s financial releases:  ASML, TSMC (Q2), Sivers Semiconductors.

Quick links to more news:

Global
In-Depth
Markets and Money
Security
Product News
Automotive
Quantum
Research
Events and Further Reading

Global

Americas:

• The CHIPS for America Extreme Ultraviolet Accelerator, an NSTC facility, opened in New York at the Albany NanoTech Complex.
• The Idaho National Laboratory was selected to serve as the chief digital officer for Semiconductor Manufacturing and Advanced Research with SMART USA, providing expertise in digital twin, HPC, AI, and advanced manufacturing.
• Stony Brook University and onsemi will build a $20 million SiC facility in New York.
• The Vermont GaN Tech Hub received $3.4 million to build the nation’s first publicly accessible lab for testing high-power and high-frequency GaN and wide bandgap devices.
• Air Liquide is building a new $50 million semiconductor gas plant in the southeastern U.S.
• Sandisk scrapped plans for a semiconductor fab in Michigan, citing “massive economic uncertainty” and stalled federal CHIPS Act incentives.
• Georgia Tech and partners were awarded $20 million to host a new supercomputer for scientific AI workloads.

Europe:

• Broadcom canceled its planned ~$1 billion microchip plant in Spain after negotiations with the Spanish government broke down, reports Reuters.
• British analyst firm Chatham House says the UK can outcompete other middle powers by attracting and supporting the AI workforce, although access to capital remains a barrier.
• Think tank Interface discussed the political will and enforcement that’s needed for successful European AI regulation, in “From Code to Compliance: The EU’s Bid to Regulate General-Purpose AI.”

Asia:

• CSIS highlighted the expanding threat of China’s restriction on gallium, warning the U.S. urgently needs to find alternative sources.
• Japan’s government-backed JS Foundry, a power semiconductor producer, filed for bankruptcy.
• Hudson Institute released Embodied AI: How the US Can Beat China to the Next Tech Frontier, a report on AI opportunity, robotics, and policy.
• Softbank announced that its AI agents will carry out human tasks on a large scale, including tasks like research and negotiations for the company.

In-Depth

Semiconductor Engineering published its Low Power High Performance newsletter this week, featuring these top stories:

• Can Today’s Processor Architectures Be More Efficient?
• Often Overlooked, PHYs Are Essential For High-Speed Bandwidth
• When Can I Buy A Chiplet?

More reporting this week:

• Startup Funding: Q2 2025
• AI In Chip Design: Tight Control Required
• Cognichip: Using AI To Speed Complex Chip Design
• Video: Silent Data Corruption
• Opinion:  Data Center CPU Dominance Is Shifting To AMD And Arm by Geoff Tate

Markets and Money

Deals/Collaborations:

• SK Keyfoundry and LB Semicon jointly developed and validated a Direct Redistribution Layer (RDL) technology for 8-inch wafers, achieving automotive-grade reliability and high-density wiring for advanced packaging.
• Tata and Bosch inked a deal to collaborate on chip packaging and manufacturing at Tata’s upcoming assembly and test unit in Assam, and its foundry in Gujarat.
• Infineon and Thailand’s Embedded Systems Association signed an MoU to develop a national secure AIoT platform with Thai government investment.
• Microchip and Delta Electronics are teaming up, leveraging Microchip’s SiC technology in Delta’s power electronics solutions.

Reports:

• Counterpoint Research expects the market for on-board, near-packaged, and co-packaged optics to increase rapidly, with a CAGR of 50% through 2033.
• Major Korean and U.S. memory suppliers plan to significantly reduce or halt LPDDR4X production in 2025 and 2026, creating a supply crunch as many entry-level and mid-range processors remain incompatible with LPDDR5X, according to TrendForce. This mismatch is driving a surge in LPDDR4X prices, placing cost pressure on budget smartphones and accelerating efforts to validate and adopt LPDDR5X, with price reversals expected once supply stabilizes in 2026.
• Other reports: Quartz parts (TECHCET); global smartphone shipments (Counterpoint), and practical quantum technology (CSIS).

Funding:

• Q.ANT raised €62 million (~$72M) to scale production of its photonic processors for AI and HPC that are built on a thin-film lithium niobate process.
• GigaIO raised $21 million for its AI memory fabric, which provides direct memory-to-memory communication between GPUs and AI computing platforms.
• RealSense, a maker of depth cameras and computer vision technology for robotics and biometrics, spun out of Intel with $50 million in funding.
• U.S. rare earth refining company, Phoenix Tailings, plans to expand and pursue an IPO.

Security

Research:

• Rowhammer Attack On NVIDIA GPUs With GDDR6 DRAM (University of Toronto)
• Toward LLM-based Root Cause Analysis of Hardware Design Failures (UNSW Sydney)
• Security Enclave Architecture for Heterogeneous Security Primitives for Supply-Chain Attacks (University of Florida)
• Bit-Flip Fault Attack: Crushing Graph Neural Networks via Gradual Bit Search (George Mason University)
• Key Recovery from Side-Channel Power Analysis Attacks on Non-SIMD HQC Decryption (University of Toulouse)

CISA issued a number of alerts/advisories.

Product News

ProteanTecs rolled out a solution to provide parametric visibility during functional test, leveraging its on-chip telemetry to monitor performance and reliability in real-time.

Cadence debuted its Xcelium Distributed Simulation app, which enables multiple partitions to operate as independent executables to improve simulation efficiency and optimization.

JNTC unveiled a proprietary through-glass via (TGV) glass substrate designed for AI and high-performance computing, offering extreme flatness, thermal stability, and high-yield manufacturing.

CDimension introduced ultra-thin 2D semiconductor materials using a proprietary low-temperature process compatible with standard silicon workflows.

Fujifilm developed a PFAS-free negative-type ArF immersion resist for use in advanced semiconductor manufacturing processes.

Arm deployed Siemens EDA‘s Veloce CS emulation and software prototyping platforms for verification and validation of its Neoverse Compute Subsystems.

Keysight added a real-time gapless measurement capability into its PXE electromagnetic interference receiver, capable of up to 1 GHz measurement bandwidth.

Broadcom launched a 64B line-rate switching Ethernet switch for HPC and AI workloads.

Terra Quantum fabricated and validated a negative capacitance FET (NC-FET) prototype using a CMOS-compatible process, integrating ferroelectric materials into the transistor gate.

Thalia Design Automation added an AI engine, advanced electromigration compliance workflows, and streamlined Key Devices integration into its analog and mixed-signal IP reuse platform.

Research

A team at Chungbuk National University published Thermal Issues Related to Hybrid Bonding of 3D-Stacked High Bandwidth Memory: A Comprehensive Review.

Researchers at the USC developed an AI model that simulates the behavior of billions of atoms simultaneously, creating new possibilities for materials design and discovery.

Startup Polaris Electro-Optics created a prototype of a component that enables higher speed, more efficient and more cost-effective data transfer.

Researchers from the University of Minnesota synthesized a thin film of a unique topological semimetal material that has the potential to generate more computing power and memory storage in a more energy efficient way.

Automotive

The Chinese government announced trade restrictions on the transfer of eight key technologies for manufacturing EVs. This will make licensing a requirement for any kind of trade or investment of the tech, including in setting up EV manufacturing plants in other countries.

Several companies, including Waymo and Tesla, are testing robotaxis in select markets in the U.S., China, and beyond. A survey revealed that while 23 % of respondents feel excited, safety emerged as the biggest area of improvement.

Consumers in the U.S. are likely to be deterred from purchasing EVs due to the elimination of federal U.S. subsidies.

Siemens and SK Keyfoundry, along with Korea Siemens EDA, collaborated to launch a 130nm automotive power semiconductor PDK  using Calibre PERC.

Toshiba released an automotive photorelay that supports high-voltage automotive batteries.

Honda and Nissan have entered talks to standardize basic software that controls their vehicles in an effort to compete with Chinese EV makers and Tesla.

Motor Ai raised $20 million for Level 4 autonomous driving.

Quantum

Research and Breakthroughs:

• Rigetti Computing reached a milestone of 99.5% median two-qubit gate fidelity on its modular 36-qubit system.
• IQM introduced a new quantum computer powered by its 54-qubit superconducting quantum chip.
• Ames National Laboratory and Iowa State University researchers discovered an unexpected “quantum echo” in a superconducting material, with potential applications in quantum sensing and computing technologies.
• Harvard physicists created a microscope to probe the properties of supermoiré patterns in tri-layer graphene to an extent that was not previously possible, which could help researchers design next-gen materials.
• Northwestern University, Boston University, and UC Berkeley researchers built a tiny photonic quantum system into a traditional electronic chip for the first time.

Quantum Fundings/Deals:

• Demark’s EIFO and the Novo Nordisk Foundation established a new Nordic initiative, QuNorth, with €80 million (~$93M) to host a quantum computer developed by Microsoft and Atom Computing.
• QpiAI raised $32 million for its superconducting quantum computers and software for materials science and drug discovery.
• BQP raised $5 million for its quantum-accelerated digital twin platform for the semiconductor, energy, and aerospace & defense industries.
• Quantum computing company IonQ acquired Capella Space, which operates a satellite constellation, to develop a global space-based quantum key distribution network.

Events and Further Reading

Upcoming webinars are here, including:

• Quantum-Safe: Protecting Data and Systems in the Quantum Computing Era
• Powertrain Perfected: From Early Architecture to Optimized Design with Ansys ConceptEV
• Plasma Etching, ALE, and RIE (SEMI University)
• Expand the Impact of Materials Intelligence – Optimize, Automate, and Connect

Find upcoming chip industry events here, including:

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