Semicon Briefing

Samsung and AMD have signed a Memorandum of Understanding: Samsung will supply HBM4 for AMD's Instinct MI455X GPUs and DDR5 for EPYC CPUs, with foundry capacities for AMD to be evaluated. The deal is strategically significant as AMD has previously relied heavily on TSMC and SK Hynix, and Samsung Foundry is entering AMD's supply chain seriously for the first time.

Meta reportedly signed a five-year contract with AMD worth up to $100 billion – the largest semiconductor partnership in history to date. This signals massive diversification away from Nvidia and significantly strengthens AMD's position as the second force in the AI chip market.

Startup Frore Systems, a manufacturer of liquid cooling systems for AI chips, has raised $143 million and is valued at $1.64 billion. Given the thermal bottleneck in high-density AI accelerators, chip cooling is becoming a standalone investment field.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang doubled his forecast for AI chip demand to $1 trillion by 2027 at GTC 2026 – just months ago the estimate was $500 billion. This revision puts massive capacity pressure on the entire semiconductor supply chain.

The European Commission officially granted the Italian chiplet fab Silicon Box in Novara the status of 'Open EU Foundry' – the first concrete funding decision under the EU Chips Act for chiplet manufacturing. This is a new operational milestone beyond the previously reported policy framework discussions on Chips Act 2.0.

China's second-largest chipmaker Hua Hong has reportedly begun 7nm production for AI chips despite being denied access to ASML EUV machines. Analysts warn this undermines the entire US export control strategy for advanced semiconductors as China develops alternative manufacturing pathways.