The trajectory of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) into the 2030s is being shaped by a new generation of leadership. At the center of that shift is the board-approved promotion of Dr. Y.L. Wang (王英郎).
As China emerges as a major RISC-V hub shipping hundreds of billions of chips annually since 2024, Arm Holdings confronts heightened competition in a market where its architecture has powered over 300 billion chips across hundreds of licensees over 40 years. The trend is prompting Arm to accelerate efforts to secure its position in China's AI era.
On February 12, 2026, the United States and Taiwan finalized a structural "re-pricing" of their economic relationship. The Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) is not a traditional free trade agreement; it is a strategic pact that reshores semiconductor manufacturing to the US while anchoring Taiwan within a "non-red," or non-China, supply chain.
The US-Taiwan reciprocal tariff negotiations officially concluded on February 12, 2026. Notably, tariffs on information and communication technology (ICT) and semiconductors remain at zero, and even if tariffs arise in the future, Taiwan will face the lowest rates.
A Citi analyst said the next phase of artificial intelligence (AI) memory demand will extend beyond high-bandwidth memory (HBM), pointing to emerging opportunities in physical AI devices and high-capacity flash architectures.
Industry analysts indicate that Samsung Electronics' non-memory division is expected to return to profitability in the fourth quarter of 2026, with a full-year turnaround projected for 2027.
The Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) between Taiwan and the US has been officially signed, reducing Taiwan's average export tariffs to the US by 23.45pp and boosting export competitiveness across many industries. The average tariff rate for Taiwanese exports to the US now stands at 12.33%.
Due to low production efficiency and intense price competition, major panel makers like AUO, Innolux, and LG Display are selling older LCD factories. Semiconductor companies such as TSMC, Micron, ASE, and SK Hynix have shown strong interest in acquiring these high-spec cleanroom facilities to accelerate expansion amid rising AI demand.
China's semiconductor equipment makers are advancing rapidly even as the global chip supply chain undergoes restructuring and geopolitical decoupling.
SEMICON Korea 2026, held in Seoul from February 11–13, brought senior executives from Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix to outline their AI-era memory R&D strategies. Samsung focused on cross-domain semiconductor integration to address bandwidth and energy-efficiency limits, while SK Hynix detailed a platform-based and AI-driven approach to compress development cycles.
Amazon Web Services' (AWS) Trainium 3 servers, slated for mass production in the second quarter of 2026, have sharply reduced their planned use of liquid cooling, supply chain sources say, reversing an earlier 50:50 air‑to‑liquid split to roughly 90% air‑cooled and 10% liquid or less as production nears. This change could slow broader adoption of liquid cooling in AI server fleets.
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