Intel’s EMIB advanced packaging technology has cleared yield and performance validation in a Google TPU project, according to DigiTimes, citing supply-chain sources. The report said the result has strengthened Google’s willingness to keep using EMIB in future TPU generations and has also pushed MediaTek, Google’s main ASIC design partner for the TPU program, to move faster on packaging diversification. The shift comes as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s CoWoS capacity remains under long-running supply pressure, leaving major chip customers looking for additional advanced packaging routes. The report described MediaTek as a key bridge between Google and Intel in the project, saying the company’s integration work was central to making the EMIB solution viable. It also said MediaTek’s U.S. ASIC team includes several senior executives with Intel backgrounds, which helped lower coordination costs in the first phase of cooperation. For MediaTek, the significance goes beyond a single Google order. Having experience with both TSMC CoWoS and Intel EMIB could improve its position when bidding for ASIC projects from cloud service providers such as Amazon, Microsoft and Meta, all of which are expanding in-house AI chip efforts.

Kioxia plans to spend more than ¥1 trillion, or about $6.27 billion, on a third advanced NAND Flash wafer fab in Kitakami, Iwate Prefecture, according to a report cited by ABMedia. The expansion comes as generative AI drives stronger demand from data centers for high-capacity, high-performance enterprise SSDs. The report said the project also has support from Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, fitting into Tokyo’s broader semiconductor push alongside support for Rapidus and efforts to draw TSMC to Kumamoto. ABMedia said the move has implications across the Taiwan-Japan memory supply chain, especially for Phison Electronics. The Taiwanese controller chip maker has long-standing ties with Kioxia dating back to 2001, when Toshiba, Kioxia’s predecessor, invested in the company. The two companies now work across NAND procurement, SSD module development, joint development manufacturing, and ODM work for Kioxia’s consumer and enterprise SSD brands. Phison CEO K.S. Pua has warned publicly that the NAND Flash shortage has no visible end. He said AI is reshaping demand patterns, and argued storage is harder to cut than DRAM because the amount of data a customer can process and keep directly affects revenue. He also said new memory capacity typically takes four years to bring online, and projected tighter shortages in the second half of 2026 and a wider gap in 2027.

A new TrendForce report says DRAM and NAND Flash are on track to account for 68% of total capital expenditure by major cloud service providers in 2027, overtaking GPUs and other server components as the biggest cost center in the AI buildout. The report projects capex by hyperscalers including Amazon, Microsoft, and Google will rise 98% in 2026 and another 50% in 2027, with memory contract prices driving much of the increase. Server DRAM prices rose 64% in the second half of 2025 and are expected to climb another 270% in 2026, while enterprise NAND Flash increased 35% over the same period and may jump a further 235% in 2026. TrendForce also said HBM prices could still rise 70% to 140% in 2027 even where long-term agreements cap part of the pricing. The report argues that memory vendors are gaining more pricing power across the AI supply chain, while cloud providers may have to choose between spending more, passing costs to customers, reducing memory configurations, or shifting to in-house AI ASICs.

A guest on PANews’ 168X program said he has stayed mostly in cash since cutting positions in May and June, arguing that several AI and semiconductor trades are no longer attractive at current levels. Speaking on Aug. 19, the guest, identified as "QihongF44102" and referred to in the show as an industry insider active in both AI development and markets, said Korea, Japan and A-share names tied to the theme have likely already topped out. He also argued that, outside Coding, the market still lacks a second large AI use case that can scale quickly enough to support current expectations. The discussion centered on rising pressure across the AI value chain. The guest said top AI labs face a short-term bubble risk, open-source models are advancing fast, and downstream monetization remains the key variable for whether extreme upstream margins can hold. He pointed to 86% gross margin at SK Hynix and questioned whether such levels are sustainable if application-layer profitability weakens. He also described the current cycle as closer to a real-estate-style financing structure than a replay of the 2000 bubble, with leverage, data-center buildout and expectations for sustained high growth all tightly linked. The program also touched on robotics, Neoclouds, memory names, IPO timing and crypto. The guest said humanoid robotics is unlikely to see mass adoption within five years, called leverage-heavy AI infrastructure plays the most fragile part of the trade, and said retail investors may be better off waiting in cash or buying put protection if they already hold chip exposure. His most bearish call: if no new application breakthrough appears, 2027 could be a year of large index declines.

Phison Electronics CEO K.S. Pua used the company’s Aug. 13 second-quarter earnings call to make two points at once: to publicly accuse Chinese memory module leader Longsys of copying technology, and to argue that investors should stop viewing Phison as only a consumer-focused module company. Pua pointed to Longsys’ recent work with UNISOC on an Edge Device general DRAM offload solution and its HLC+ SPU technology collaboration with AMD, saying he had already confronted Longsys executives earlier this year at China’s FMS event with a blunt remark: 「You are a big company and also an innovative company, so why do you only know how to copy?」 He also pushed back on claims that AMD had chosen Longsys, saying the cooperation was limited to AMD’s China team, while adding that Phison has cooperation with Intel and MediaTek that is still covered by NDA. On operations, Pua said Phison’s newly defined AI Ecosystem Solutions segment accounted for about 38% of second-quarter revenue, up about 68% quarter over quarter. He also said NAND supply, not just pricing, is the bigger problem and could remain tight for many years.

Hong Kong-based GF Securities said in its August technology sector report that the July pullback in AI-linked stocks is close to ending, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index seeing its forward P/E fall to 27x and crowded leveraged positions largely cleared out. The firm added AMD, Foxconn and Lumentum to its preferred list while removing United Microelectronics, MediaTek and ASML, arguing that current leadership is concentrated in GPU, CPU and optics rather than mature-node foundry, smartphone chips or front-end lithography. GF Securities also said supply-chain capital is rotating away from memory components toward optical interconnects, with near-packaged optics and co-packaged optics emerging as the next focus. It projected U.S. cloud service providers’ capital expenditure growth at 85% in 2026, 45% in 2027 and about 20% in 2028, while estimating debt issuance at $257 billion in 2026 and $419 billion in 2027. The report said net leverage should still stay around 0.5x by 2029. At the same time, it kept a cautious near-term view on smartphones and warned that NAND oversupply could begin to surface in the second half of 2027.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is set to hold a public meeting on Aug. 14 to consider a proposed "Regulation Crypto" framework that would let some crypto projects raise capital without completing a full securities registration process. If advanced for public comment, it would become the SEC’s first formal, durable rulemaking effort aimed specifically at the crypto sector. The proposal would also outline a route for projects to exit SEC oversight once developers stop actively managing the network and the project becomes decentralized. SEC Chair Paul Atkins has previously said the exemption period could last as long as four years, though no fundraising cap was disclosed. On the litigation front, a federal judge in Connecticut ruled that Kalshi’s sports-event contracts are not swaps under the Commodity Exchange Act, meaning the Commodity Futures Trading Commission did not obtain exclusive jurisdiction on that basis. The decision lands as Kalshi remains under pressure in New York, where the CFTC said it used “emergency powers” to require the prediction-market operator to continue operating after the company sought assistance following a lawsuit from New York Attorney General Letitia James. Elsewhere, the market snapshot showed broad declines among major tokens over the past 24 hours, while project, funding, security and AI headlines spanned Bitwise layoffs, a reported COLDCARD Mk3 wallet flaw, Hyperliquid and Robinhood Chain user metrics, and a string of new financings across crypto, AI and financial infrastructure.

Citrini analyst Jukan said on Aug. 8 that South Korean PCB and package substrate makers could extend their strong second-quarter momentum into Q3, with earnings expectations continuing to improve. He cited Daeduck Electronics, Simmtech, and TLB as examples. Daeduck Electronics reported Q2 revenue of 401 billion won, up 63% year over year, while operating profit jumped 3,599% to 70.3 billion won. Simmtech posted revenue of 514.6 billion won, up 51%, and operating profit of 62.9 billion won, up 1,035%. TLB recorded revenue of 88.2 billion won, up 38%, with operating profit rising 86% to 12.8 billion won. Jukan said Daeduck’s strength lies in FC-BGA, FC-CSP, and multilayer PCB products used in AI data centers. He described Simmtech as focused on package substrates and memory module PCBs, while TLB supplies PCBs tied to server DDR5 and enterprise SSDs. He also said a shift in BT substrate orders to Korean suppliers, along with rising SOCAMM demand tied to Nvidia’s next-generation Vera Rubin GPU and Vera CPU shipments, could support the next leg of growth.