Hi everyone! This is Cheng Ting-Fang, your #techAsia host for this week.

In just the past few days, I found myself at two groundbreaking ceremonies for chip suppliers. One was down in southern Taiwan in Kaohsiung, close to TSMC’s most cutting-edge 2-nanometer plants. The other was in Taipei, near where new offices are being taken over by Nvidia and AMD. Despite the celebratory mood, both events carried the same underlying message: Demand is still outpacing supply.

Under the tropical April sunshine, with temperatures climbing over 30 C in Kaohsiung, ASE, the world’s largest chip packaging and testing service provider, broke ground on a $3.4 billion project to build an advanced chip testing facility. The site is expected to start production in 2027.

Kaohsiung mayor Chen Chi-mai said he was astonished by how fast the company was moving. “I asked my team: Is it real? ASE secured and finalized the land transaction on the last day of March, and they are breaking ground and starting construction only 10 days later.”

ASE CEO Tien Wu told reporters that his company’s capital spending would likely be higher than the originally planned $7 billion for 2026. “This year, we are constructing six plants all at once,” he said. “It’s indeed record-breaking in the company’s history. Something we have never seen before.”

While it is well known that speed is of the essence in warfare, Wu said, the same holds true in business.

“We are racing to build this [plant],” he said. “We aim to start production in just one year. We’re moving up the speed.” This week, ASE also bought an existing facility from display maker Innolux for $470 million to expand its cleanroom capacity.

“In this new wave of AI, competition isn’t just about hardware capabilities,” Wu added. “It’s about the strength of industrial clusters, the depth of the semiconductor workforce, and very crucially, overall administrative efficiency.”

Back in Taipei, I visited the construction site of Nasdaq-listed Silicon Motion, which develops NAND flash controller chips. Excavators crowded the grounds. President and CEO Wallace Kou said the market is still facing significant shortfalls in memory supply.

“Prices for NAND flash of varying capacities have surged four to tenfold since last year,” said Kou, who was just back from meeting clients in the U.S., Japan and China. “It’s unprecedented.” The company has also just moved into a new headquarters in Hsinchu and is leasing additional space to support hiring.

“Some people are concerned about an AI bubble, but the near-term risk looks low,” he said. “As more enterprises adopt AI, the demand for storage for their own data grows. The supply gap is likely to widen further in 2027!”

Supply chains, retooled

China continues to buy chipmaking equipment from Japan, the Netherlands and the U.S. to support the smooth ramp-up of domestic production, but the supply chain is shifting.

This exclusive Nikkei Asia analysis of Chinese customs data shows imports from Southeast Asia, particularly Singapore and Malaysia, surged to record levels in 2025. Industry experts say much of this growth reflects the expanding manufacturing presence of U.S. chip tool makers such as Lam Research, Applied Materials and KLA in the region.

Meanwhile, Japan and the Netherlands, home to leading chip equipment makers such as Tokyo Electron and ASML, remain the primary foreign suppliers for China’s chip plants. Combined shipments from the two countries totaled more than $77 billion between 2020 and 2025, according to the analysis by Cheng Ting-Fang and Lauly Li, even as China’s domestic equipment champions continue to report record earnings and profits in 2025.

The success of China’s localization push has prompted U.S. policymakers to propose the MATCH Act, calling on allies to tighten export controls on critical “chokepoints” in the chipmaking equipment and components supply chain.

A bigger role for Haas

Arm boss Rene Haas is in line to lead a swath of SoftBank Group’s international business in order to accelerate Masayoshi Son’s ambitions in semiconductors and AI, writes the Financial Times’ David Keohane.

The new role, which Haas would take on alongside his position as head of Arm, will have oversight of operations including semiconductors, AI and possibly robotics, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

The intention was to enable Haas to push forward Project Izanagi, SoftBank’s AI chip strategy to compete with established rivals such as Nvidia, the people said. They warned the new role was yet to be approved by the boards of SoftBank or Arm and could yet change.

Haas was expected to take a title reflecting his role at the top of SoftBank Group International, but was not expected to run SoftBank’s Vision Fund investment vehicles or its energy business, the same people said.

Son, the billionaire founder of SoftBank, wants the group to play a central role in AI through power, robotics, data centers and chip design.

He has mobilized the conglomerate toward that aim, which he believes is the next stage in humanity’s development, pouring tens of billions into OpenAI while buying up chip companies such as Graphcore and Ampere — both of which Haas intends to utilize for the group’s semiconductor plans.

SoftBank and Arm declined to comment.

Order oversight

China is preparing to fine major e-commerce platforms including Pinduoduo, ByteDance’s Douyin, Alibaba’s Taobao, JD.com and Meituan over food delivery issues, writes Nikkei Asia’s Cissy Zhou.

Pinduoduo could face a fine of up to 1.5 billion yuan ($219 million), while other platforms may be penalized between roughly 50 million and 700 million yuan, sources said, though the final amount is subject to change. The move reflects Beijing’s push to hold digital platforms more accountable for food sourcing and safety.

The move followed routine on-site inspections of the companies by the market regulator late last year. This is not the first time Beijing has imposed big fines on its leading tech companies. In 2021, for instance, Alibaba was slapped with a record 18.23 billion yuan antitrust fine.

Tesla’s next step in China?

Tesla’s China president, Wang Hao, said the company’s Shanghai Gigafactory could potentially be adapted to produce humanoid robots, Nikkei’s Shunsuke Tabeta reports, a move that would further elevate the plant’s strategic role. The facility is already one of Tesla’s most cost-efficient and has helped build out China’s EV supply chain.

The comments referred to the factory’s “strong, scalable mass production capabilities and significant future potential.” However, Tesla’s China unit later clarified that there are no concrete plans as of yet to build humanoid robots in Shanghai.

Nikkei previously reported that Tesla is working to build a separate supply chain outside of both China and Taiwan to serve global markets to mitigate geopolitical risks.

Suggested reads

1. Auntie AI: China’s chatbot makers cultivate senior users (Nikkei Asia)

2. China shock 2.0: the flood of high-tech goods that will change the world (FT)

3. Japan’s Cybozu bets on Malaysia, Thailand for software growth, says CEO (Nikkei Asia)

4. China’s Alibaba shifts towards revenue over open-source AI (FT)

5. TSMC Q1 profit surges 58% to record on AI boom despite Middle East tensions (Nikkei Asia)

6. The chips chokehold that could end the AI investment boom (FT)

7. Will Google’s TurboQuant algorithm hurt AI demand for memory chips? (FT)

8. TikTok, Sea, Alibaba-owned e-commerce corner ASEAN markets (Nikkei Asia)

9. Asian start-ups evolve to reshape industries with AI (FT)

10. Singaporean data center provider opens AI testing hub for businesses (Nikkei Asia)

Podcast: Tech Latest

Taiwan chip industry looks to avoid energy and helium shortages

Welcome to the Tech Latest podcast. Hosted by our tech coverage veterans, Katey Creel and Shotaro Tani, every Tuesday we deliver the hottest trends and news from the sector.

In this episode, Shotaro speaks with Taipei tech correspondent Annie Cheng Ting-Fang about the Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association calling on the government to stockpile strategic raw materials and voicing support for the reopening of nuclear power plants amid concerns that conflict in the Middle East could disrupt critical supply chains and energy sources.

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