According to the report from South Korean media, inews24, citing industry sources, considering that HBM4E is scheduled for mass production next year, customer validation and optimization efforts must be carried out in the second half of this year, making sample supply imminent. Sources reveal that SK hynix is preparing to provide HBM4E samples to major customers. The shipments may start as early as this month and will begin no later than next month.

According to South Korean media reports, OpenAI's Sam Altman has postponed his planned visit to Asia, including South Korea, originally scheduled for the 14th and 15th, due to personal reasons. Altman planned to meet sequentially with executives from major South Korean companies, including Samsung Electronics, Naver, and Kakao, to discuss potential collaborations. OpenAI stated that South Korea is a very important country and strategic partner for OpenAI, and cooperation with domestic partners in South Korea will continue as planned. They added that they look forward to Altman visiting South Korea again in the near future to meet and engage in discussions. The specific reason for Altman's postponement of the visit to South Korea, as well as his future schedule, has not yet been disclosed.

MediaTek has released its revenue data for May 2026. Consolidated revenue for May reached NT$47.434 billion, up 1.49% month-over-month and 4.99% year-over-year, marking the second-highest level for the single month in both this year and historically for the same period. Revenue for the first five months of 2026 totaled NT$243.321 billion, with a 1.59% decrease compared to the same period last year. Regarding the outlook for the second quarter, MediaTek CEO, Rick Tsai previously pointed out that global demand for smartphones remains relatively conservative, and as a result, the handset chip business is expected to show a sequential decline quarter-over-quarter.

According to South Korean media citing SK hynix and fire authorities on the 12th, a fire broke out around 9:55 a.m. (local time) on the second floor of Building M15X, located within SK Hynix's Cheongju plant in Heungdeok District, Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province. After the fire broke out, employees from M15 and M15X were immediately evacuated outdoors. Reports indicate that the company's firefighting team extinguished the fire in its early stages. Cheongju issued a disaster alert, advising nearby residents to avoid the area and vehicles to take detours due to concerns over potential fluoride leaks. According to the latest news, the fire department stated that the investigation found no gas leakage. SK hynix stated that initial control has been completed, and the company is investigating the specific circumstances, adding that production equipment is operating normally. A fire also broke out at SK hynix's Cheongju Site 4 on the 1st of this month.

According to foreign media reports, Google is developing its tenth-generation TPU, codenamed "Icefish", which is expected to enter mass production as early as 2028. Previously, most of Google's TPUs were manufactured by TSMC. However, Google plans to use TSMC's 1.4nm process for the core compute chip of the tenth-generation TPU, while adopting Samsung's 2nm process for the memory I/O Die. This move is interpreted as a strategy by Google to diversify its supply chain amid TSMC's near-full capacity utilization driven by surging AI demand.

According to reports by Korean media citing industry sources, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman will visit South Korea on the 14th and 15th. It is said that he will hold a discussion with executives and employees of Samsung Electronics' DX Division on the 15th, and is expected to deliver a speech on the theme of "Changes by the Development of AI Technology and Directions for Work Innovation Using AI," as well as engage in exchanges with Samsung Electronics executives and employees.

AWS has announced that Amazon EC2 M9g and M9gd instances powered by new AWS Graviton5 processors are now available. Both of them are powered by Graviton5, the most powerful and most energy efficient processor AWS has ever built. With 192 cores, a 5x larger L3 cache, up to 33% lower inter-core latency, and DDR5 memory delivering high bandwidth, Graviton5 helps agents spend less time waiting on CPU-bound steps, processing more instructions, handling large numbers of concurrent environments, and keeping accelerators moving. As the first CPU in the AWS fleet to support the latest generation of PCIe Gen6 and DDR5-8800 memory, AWS Graviton5 instances deliver the fastest memory of any processor instances in the cloud, and 5 times more L3 cache compared to the previous generation. 

According to media reports, Huawei has officially issued a price adjustment notice to its full-channel partner customers, stating that due to changes in global chip industry chain supply and demand, the rapid development of technologies such as artificial intelligence has significantly driven up chip demand. Since the second half of 2025, prices of core components for smart collaboration products have risen sharply. After careful consideration from multiple aspects, the company will make appropriate price adjustments to its smart collaboration products effective July 1, 2026, in order to alleviate rising cost pressures.

According to reports by foreign media citing informed sources, China is planning to invest approximately 2 trillion yuan ($295 billion)  over the next five years to build a nationwide artificial intelligence data center network. The plan aims for at least 80% of the underlying technology, including AI chips, to come from domestic suppliers such as Huawei. The National Development and Reform Commission is responsible for planning the network, while two state-owned operators, China Mobile and China Telecom, will operate most of the facilities. They plan to connect all nodes into a unified computing grid by 2028. If power grid upgrades are also included, the total investment could exceed 5 trillion yuan. It should be noted that the number of chips available in the Chinese market will be constrained by SMIC's actual production capacity, and the production capacity of Huawei's Ascend series accelerators is constrained by the highly limited supply of domestic HBM.

The latest report from Counterpoint Research shows that persistent memory supply shortages caused global smartphone SoC shipments to decline 8% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2026. By vendor, MediaTek led the quarter with a 32% share, followed by Qualcomm at 23%, Apple at 19%, UNISOC at 14%, Samsung at 7%, and HiSilicon at 4%. Vendor performance diverged in the first quarter. MediaTek's shipments in the mainstream and entry-level markets were affected by continued memory shortages, compounded by pressure in the high-end market, leading to an overall year-on-year decline in shipments. Qualcomm saw its chip shipments decline year-on-year in the first quarter due to multiple factors including memory shortages, inventory buildup, the delay of Samsung's Galaxy S26 series, and Samsung's use of its own chips. Apple, benefiting from the launch of the iPhone 17e series and increased sales of the iPhone 17 series (especially the Pro models), saw its chip shipments increase in the first quarter.

According to media reports citing industry analyst insights, Apple is considering raising the price of the iPhone 18 Pro Max due to cost pressures from the global storage price hike, as part of its overall cost optimization strategy for the iPhone product line. It is reported that the starting price of the iPhone 18 Pro Max is currently expected to be $1,299, positioning it as Apple's most feature-packed mainstream smartphone yet. Furthermore, given Apple's active investment in on-device AI and Apple Intelligence, it is likely that entry-level and lower-tier models will adopt 12GB RAM paired with the technically newer M12+ display technology, rather than opting for  8GB RAM paired with a proven M14 OLED panel.  More memory unlocks larger AI models, better multitasking, and future-proofing for upcoming software features. The adoption of the M12+ OLED panel is primarily aimed at enhancing performance in the most critical areas, optimizing resource allocation to control costs, while maintaining display quality.

TSMC announced its revenue report for May 2026. Consolidated revenue for May 2026 was approximately NT$416.975 billion, up 1.5% month-on-month and 30.1% year-on-year. Cumulative revenue from January to May reached approximately NT$19,618.004 billion, with an increase of 30.0% compared to the same period last year. TSMC's revenue remained high in May, indicating that the momentum of AI supply chain shipments has not significantly cooled. In particular, demand for NVIDIA's Blackwell and Rubin platforms, AMD's high-end AI accelerators, custom ASIC chips from US-based cloud service providers (CSPs), and component stocking for new Apple products are all progressing simultaneously, continuing to drive capacity utilization rates for 3nm, 5nm, and advanced packaging technologies.

According to Korean media reports, Pemtron, South Korean semiconductor equipment company, announced today that it has recently received a new order from Micron Technology to supply inspection equipment for SOCAMM2 memory modules used in AI servers. In addition, Pemtron will also supply semiconductor packaging inspection equipment to Chinese semiconductor companies. Pemtron stated that this latest order came after passing a rigorous mass production line evaluation by a top-tier global customer, and the company has proven the reliability of its inspection equipment and the stability of its mass production capabilities.

On June 10, Montage Technology announced on its official website that it has successfully sampled its DDR5 sixth-generation Registering Clock Driver (RCD06) chip to customers. The chip is used in next-generation DDR5 RDIMMs and will significantly drive performance upgrades for upcoming computing platforms. The RCD06 chip supports data transfer rates of up to 9200 MT/s, with a 15% improvement over the previous generation, fully meeting the stringent high-bandwidth requirements of next-generation server platforms. The chip features a dual-channel independent architecture, where two sub-channels share the clock logic but operate independently, allowing each to perform parity checks without mutual interference. Additionally, the device integrates Continuous Time Linear Equalization (CTLE) and a low-jitter Phase-Locked Loop (PLL), enhancing signal integrity while ensuring precision and stability in clock distribution.

Vanguard International Semiconductor (VIS) reported consolidated revenue of NT$4.242 billion for May, up 5.35% from the previous month and 19.48% year-on-year. Cumulative revenue for the first five months of the year reached NT$20.8 billion, with an increase of 8.48% compared to the same period last year. The company stated that the revenue growth was primarily driven by an increase in wafer shipments, which boosted monthly performance.