Taiwan’s chipmakers walked into the 2026 helium supply shock more exposed to Qatar than any other major buyer, sourcing nearly 88% of their rare-gas imports from the Gulf state in 2025, up from 46% four years earlier. With war disrupting the Strait of Hormuz, that concentration leaves fabs vulnerable and the outlook uncertain.

The AI boom is reshaping global supply chains and accelerating manufacturing’s shift toward smarter operations. Tong Ming, the world’s largest single stainless-steel fastener maker, said it will invest about NT$140 million (US$4.4 million) in the second half of 2026 to automate a semi-finished goods warehouse at its Changsheng plant, while strengthening automation, digital management, and precision services to boost competitiveness and address challenges from the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) and supply-chain restructuring.

Applied Materials announced a new equipment platform aimed at addressing the memory bandwidth and energy-efficiency bottleneck confronting AI computing, unveiling tools across DRAM, advanced packaging, and process control to help chipmakers boost yields and accelerate mass production. The company said the platform combines materials engineering with process integration to support high-bandwidth memory (HBM), chiplet architectures, and multi-layer 3D stacking on advanced production lines.

Advantest said it has partnered with OpenLight to develop a scalable silicon photonics (SiPh) test solution for mass production environments. The announcement comes as artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing workloads increase demand for silicon photonics and co-packaged optics in data centers.