Semicon Briefing

Infineon has completed the acquisition of ams OSRAM's non-optical analog/mixed-signal sensor portfolio announced in February 2026 for €570 million. The acquired division brings approximately €230 million in annual revenue and strengthens Infineon's position in the automotive and industrial sensor markets directly.

The Dresden joint venture ESMC – founded by TSMC, Bosch, Infineon and NXP – is to produce 300-mm wafers on 12–28-nm FinFET nodes with up to 40,000 wafers/month, production start 2027. Meanwhile, an EU-funded report warns that Europe's semiconductor industry will fall structurally behind without rapid improvements to Chips Act funding policy.

The EU Commission has unveiled Chips Act 2.0, which goes beyond pure fab subsidies to target chip design, demand-side, and the lab-to-fab gap – industry representatives praise the direction but doubt the financing of the goals. ASML CEO Fouquet also warns that Europe must first create innovation demand before investing in manufacturing capacity.

Anthropic has announced a partnership with Samsung to develop its own AI chips, entering the market for customized AI accelerators alongside Google, Apple and Amazon. The move increases pressure on Nvidia and signals that frontier AI labs also want to actively reduce chip dependency.

SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron jointly demand that the US government refrain from direct intervention in the domestic memory chip market, and instead propose tax relief on consumer electronics. Public reaction is massively critical – the move is seen as an attempt to redirect government funds to historically profitable companies.

Prediction markets price a US-China tariff agreement by end of 2026 at 92% probability – a strong signal given ongoing export control escalations on both sides. For the semiconductor supply chain, an agreement would be relieving, as European equipment stocks (ASML, Lam Research) recently reacted sharply to new US proposals to tighten China export rules.