Chinese AI developer Z.ai has completed a giant data center running exclusively on domestically made chips, a milestone in Beijing’s drive to replace restricted Nvidia silicon for future AI development.
At the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, held July 17-20 across “three districts and four venues” with more than 1,100 exhibitors, one phrase recurred across vendor booths and keynotes: the “token factory”.
TSMC Chief Financial Officer Wendell Huang said the company expects AI chip demand to remain strong for years, prompting it to keep expanding investment in its Arizona site. After previously announcing an additional US$100 billion investment, TSMC has raised its total planned investment there to US$265 billion.
Befar Group has begun producing semiconductor-grade hydrogen fluoride gas with a claimed purity of 6N, or 99.9999%, expanding the Chinese chemical supplier’s presence in materials used for chip etching and chamber cleaning.
As AI server products accelerate their generational shift and demand higher-frequency, higher-speed transmission, the upgrade cycle for copper-clad laminate (CCL) materials in the PCB upstream supply chain has become firmly established. M7 and M8 specs are now mainstream, while M9 and M10 materials remain in the testing and validation stage, with mass production expected in 2027 or 2028.
Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are reportedly allocating additional or flexible DRAM production capacity to server DDR5 and other conventional memory products while maintaining high-bandwidth memory (HBM) volumes already committed to customers.
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