Huawei’s Ascend and Kunpeng progress shows how China is rebuilding an AI compute stack under sanctions

Huawei used its New Year message to highlight progress across its Ascend AI and Kunpeng CPU ecosystems, pointing to the rollout of Atlas 900 supernodes and rapid growth in domestic developer adoption as “a solid foundation…

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UK company shoots a 1,000-degree furnace into space to study off-world chip manufacturing — semiconductors made in space could be ‘up to 4,000 times purer’ than Earthly equivalents

British startup Space Forge has just successfully turned on its first in-orbit furnace, reaching 1,000 degrees Celsius in space. This is a crucial first step for the company in studying the feasibility of manufacturing chi…

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China warns the Netherlands to ‘immediately correct its mistakes’ over Nexperia saga that has disrupted auto production — chip shipments remain suspended, auto industry suffering from undersupply

Beijing says that the Netherlands is not taking steps to resolve the Nexperia issue, thus extending the chip shortage affecting automotive makers across the globe.
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China tells chipmakers to use homegrown chipmaking tools for 50% of new capacity — decree designed to squeeze foreign suppliers out of supply chain

China has quietly mandated that at least 50% of equipment used for new semiconductor capacity be domestically sourced. However, as China’s industry cannot produce enough lithography tools, authorities tend to get flexible …

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TSMC begins quietly volume production of 2nm-class chips — first GAA transistor for TSMC claims up to 15% improvement at ISO power

TSMC has quietly begun volume production of its 2nm-class N2 process in Q4 2025 as planned, marking the company’s first GAA nanosheet node that will be ramping production at two new fabs to meet strong demand from various …

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TSMC’s average wafer prices increased by over 15% each year since 2019, report suggests — gross profit margins increase by 3.3x in 2025 alone, facing no real challengers

EUV lithography era in chipmaking began in 2019 and there are no signs that this is going to stop as process technologies are getting more complex. However, there are fundamental reasons why TSMC’s quotes are rising quicke…

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Nvidia’s $20 billion Groq IP deal bolsters AI market domination — hardware stack and key engineer behind Google TPUs included in bombshell agreement

Nvidia has announced a $20 billion deal to acquire Groq’s intellectual property, though not the company itself, and absorb key members of its engineering team.
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TSMC chipmaking factories rocked by magnitude 7.0 earthquake that was the strongest in 27 years, but facilities escaped unharmed — company’s earthquake protection measures pay off

Yesterday, the ground shook off the coast of Taiwan, slamming the country with the strongest earthquake in 27 years. The seismic wave registered 7.0 in Taiwan’s scales, or 6.6 to 6.7 according to the USGS standard. Thankfu…

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Nexperia China seeks new wafer suppliers amid legal standoff with Dutch parent, could take 6 months for qualification — chip shortages have suspended some automotive production lines as Nexperia faces wafer shortage

Nexperia’s China unit is moving to line up new wafer suppliers over the next six to nine months amid a deepening legal and operational dispute with its Dutch parent company.
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How reality crushed Ÿnsect, the French startup that had raised over $600M for insect farming

French insect farming company Ÿnsect was recently placed into judicial liquidation for insolvency, despite raising over $600 million.

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