TSMC's large US bed and China's Chip Tool Challenger

Hello! This is Lauly and says hello from the nice and cozy weather in Taipei.

I can't imagine that it has been weeks since I returned from Barcelona over the annual Mobile World Congress, certainly one of the largest Tech exhibitions for a yr. As my colleague Annie Cheng Ting-Fang mentioned in her newsletter, we needed to take three nights in our hotel attributable to a software problem, took greater than 10,000 steps on the Expo after which endured the subway disorders for 2 days in a row.

And that wasn't all. I keep in mind that I used to be on my way from the exhibition to the hotel once I was aware that CC Wei, chairman and CEO of TSMC, the world's largest contract, would announce an enormous investment within the White House. My jaw fell and I wrote Annie and her also fell off. When I arrived on the train station, I jumped out of the train, quickly bought two baguettes (vital because this is able to be our only meal for the night) and ran back to the hotel to write down. In the meantime, Annie left a media meeting for a Chinese smartphone manufacturer and hurried to hitch me. It had been such an extended day, but because of the assistance of our US colleagues we were capable of cover TSMCs 100 billion USD investment announcement.

Back in Taiwan, we spent two weeks to talk to greater than a dozen people and analysts to know what this brave bet on the USA would mean economically and politically. The announcement has develop into one Political saga at home. I used to be amazed that politicians suddenly became linguists at each ends of the spectrum and that each word by President Donald Trump and deciphered when he said that the USA still had a “large part” within the chip industry if conflicts were to interrupt out within the Taiwan road. From social networks to political talk shows, TSMC dominated public discourse greater than per week.

And then there was GTC, the annual Tech event of Nvidia, the world's largest AI chip company.

I went with a manager of a Nvidia supplier a day before flew to San Francisco for the event. We talked concerning the investments of TSMC within the US and Nvidia appearances since China's Deepseek appeared. Like many within the NVIDIA AI Server Supply chain, the manager assured me that the robust demand from Cloud service stays and that each one AI servers hope that NVIDIA will give them more orders.

“Lauly, you realize why I even have to participate on this yr's GTC. Why every high-ranking manager of all suppliers on the GTC visits? It is as if she was participating within the Matsu-Göttin pilgrimage to catch up with to Matsu,” he joked. “If you go and pray, you’ve got the possibility to be blessed.”

TSMC's biggest bet

Taiwan, which offers the second largest semiconductor industry on the earth, has in his “silicon sign”, which has long had a certain degree of comfort for the United States, in order to not defend it if China should ever penetrate it. But what if the sign Is weakened?

This query has increased over time and it was much more urgency when the TSMC chairman and CEO CC Wei along with US President Donald Trump and announced plans to take a position a further $ $ 100 billion more investments within the country, write Nikkei Asia Asia. Cheng Ting-Fang And Lauly Li.

The planned investment of TSMC within the USA in 2022 rose from USD $ 65 billion in 2022 in 2024 and at last to $ 165 billion, greater than ten times its original engagement and its biggest investment in overseas.

The Taiwanese contract -Chip -Making -Titan can be even busy at home.

“We don't see how the tides are going overnight,” said an extended -standing chip equipment towards Nikkei Asia. “But in five to 10 years, when US investments occur completely, they’ll weaken the role of Taiwan as the highest hub for advanced chips worldwide. You cannot expect TSMC to duplicate these costly facilities in two places.”

The Deepseek effect

This week Deepseek released an update for the open source model V3, which was highly ranked for independent benchmarks for the performance of the model. Once again, developers praised the small start-up for the free parts of their secret sauce with the AI ​​community, write the Financial Times. Eleanor OlcottPresent Ryan McMorrow And Zijing Wu.

The research laboratory shakes the worldwide AI competition with its powerful and free open source models. Has its success requested some seek for soul Among the local competitors who solid money into the model training without the identical results.

Moonshot, owner of the favored Kimi Chatbot, has shortened his marketing budget for concentrate on model training. In the meantime, Baichuan released his sales team, which was dedicated to the sale to financial institutions in February, and decided

Investors in ZHIPU are wondering why the start-up burns a lot money. Last yr ZHIPU, once Beijing's favored start-up with a big language model, made 300 million RMB within the losses and a couple of billion RMB. It has held its hopes for an IPO to keep up its bar-intensive growth, but Deepseek's newly discovered popularity could make its method to an inventory.

The one based in Beijing 01.ai stands out from the gang after he has fully accepted the “Deepseek age”. The Kai-Fu Lee-found start-up stopped the pre-LLMS at the top of 2024 and has concentrated previously few weeks to sell tailor-made AI business solutions using deepseeks models.

A AI for a AI

In Mandarin there may be a saying that resembles “a foretaste of her own medicine” in English. Artificial intelligence used as fraudsters around the globe to forestall victims AI to counter the fraudstersNikkei as Asia Shaun Turton writes.

The Australian start-up uses AI Bot to create “victims” to benefit from the time of the fraudsters and to realize insights into their activities. Your Apate Voice product creates KI -Personas who calls Field and get in contact with fraudsters, whose tactics range from employees and dealers to fraudulent investment programs. The company has also created Apate text that does the identical for the text exchange.

The global fraud industry has been booming in recent times. A world report on the worldwide anti-scam alliance 2024 estimated that folks around the globe lost 1.03 participants in 2023. Only 4 percent of the victims capable of fully regain their money. Southeast Asian countries resembling Cambodia and Myanmar have developed as hotspots for fraud operations which are also connected to human trafficking.

In this environment, Apate.ai sees many opportunities for its product that may address tens of hundreds of calls and are already utilized in Australia, Great Britain and Singapore with cooperation with governments, cryptocurrency exchanges and financial institutions.

An alternative to ASML

Shenzhen Sicarrier Technologies, a Chinese chinese chipmaking tool manufacturer connected to Huawei, has tacitly developed a big selection of devices Replace tools Manufactured by ASML, applied materials and LAM research as a part of the national efforts to find out essentially the most painful Choke -Point -Point of the US export control from Nikkei Asia Cheng Ting-Fang And Lauly Li.

The company was founded in 2021 and supported by the Shenzhen government and develops machines that affect lithography, chemical vapor separation, measurement, physical steam separation, etching and nuclear layer separation, all fields which are currently dominated by corporations from the Netherlands, within the USA and Japan, said several people who find themselves familiar within the situation.

Sicarrier worked closely with the growing team of specialists in chip production and chip devices from Huawei. Several sources with knowledge of the matter.

In a recent article about Wechat, Sicarrier said that this week she would introduce a big selection of machines for the industry equipment of chipmaking devices through the Semicon China Industry Fair, including a brand new tool for Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) named Aldan, after a famous mountain in Taiwan.

Proposed reading processes

1. Nvidia's sales in China are faced by Beijing's environmental components (Ft)

2. Vietnam approves the Starlink service within the 5-year pilot plan (Nikkei -Shings)

3. Malaysia to survive against Nvidia -chip flows under US printing (Ft)

4. The automotive manufacturers concentrate on hybrids as Thai EV market fights (Nikkei -Shings)

5. The CEO of Samsung, Han Jong-Hee, dies of cardiac arrest (Nikkei -Shings)

6. China suffers from his own “China -Schock” (Ft)

7. Trump Administration meets China with plenty of technical export controls (Nikkei -Shings)

8. US investors in bytedance explore TikK Deal to appease Donald Trump (Ft)

9. Espinosa, CEO of Nissan Incoming, has “No Tabus” on partnerships (Nikkei -Shings)

10. Japan is out of the chip race, but still in the sport (Ft)