Nvidia’s Jensen Huang Visits China Amid US ‘Advanced Semiconductor Export Controls’
According to the social media account ‘Weiyuantantian’ affiliated with China Central Television (CCTV) on the 17th, CEO Huang arrived in Beijing that day at the invitation of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT). It has been three months since CEO Huang visited China in January of this year.
He visited NVIDIA branches in Taiwan and China in January. On January 19, the day before the inauguration of US President Donald Trump, he attended the Beijing branch’s Spring Festival event and gave a speech on the topic of artificial intelligence (AI), and later visited Shanghai.
Earlier, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced that it would apply new export licensing requirements when exporting Nvidia’s H20 chips to China.
SK Hynix to Appease ‘Super Eul’ Hanmi Semiconductor
According to industry sources on the 18th, SK Hynix executives have recently visited Hanmi Semiconductor’s headquarters in Incheon to seek a restoration of cooperative relations, as they are wary of the growing conflict with Hanmi Semiconductor. It is reported that SK Hynix discussed the return of Hanmi Semiconductor engineers who left the HBM production site and future equipment purchases.
An industry insider said, “SK and Hanmi are believed to have discussed upgrading HBM manufacturing equipment and placing additional orders for TC bonders for manufacturing the 5th generation HBM (HBM3E).”
TSMC, Q1 net profit up 60.3% YoY… Expectations for Q2 as well
On the 17th, TSMC announced that its sales for the first quarter of this year were NT$839.25 billion (KRW 36.65 trillion), and its net profit was NT$361.56 billion (KRW 15.79 trillion).
Sales increased 41.6% year-on-year, and net profit increased 60.3%. In particular, net profit exceeded market expectations (354.6 billion NT$). TSMC’s operating profit margin also exceeded the same quarter last year (42.0%) at 48.5%.
TSMC’s strong performance in the first quarter of this year is interpreted to be due to the strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) and pre-orders ahead of Trump’s tariffs in the United States.
Cynic Solution passes preliminary examination… Aims for KOSDAQ listing within the year
System semiconductor design solution partner Cynic Solution announced on the 16th that it had passed the preliminary screening for listing on KOSDAQ by the Korea Exchange. The company has selected Daishin Securities as the lead manager for the listing and will begin full-scale public offering procedures with the goal of listing this year.
Established in 2005, Cynic Solution is the only domestic design house for SK Hynix System IC and works closely with many global foundries, including SK Key Foundry, Taiwan’s PSMC, and VIS.
Intel Sells 51% of FPGA Subsidiary Altera… Business Restructuring Begins in Full Swing
Intel has handed over the management rights of Altera, its programmable gate array (FPGA) subsidiary that it spun off early last year, to Silver Lake Partners, a U.S. private equity fund. The two companies announced this in a joint press release on the 14th (local time).
Intel valued Altera’s enterprise value at $8.75 billion (approximately KRW 12.4591 trillion) and sold 51% of its total stake for $4.46 billion (KRW 6.3434 trillion). Altera will also be excluded from Intel’s earnings announcements starting in the second half of this year when the stake sale is completed.
Intel chose to sell some of its shares rather than the initial public offering (IPO) or full sale that was initially discussed. Last September, Lattice Semiconductor, an FPGA company headquartered in Hillsboro, Oregon, showed interest, but it did not lead to an actual acquisition.
Opening of Gwangju Fabless Company ‘Aegic Land Gwangju Office’
Aegic Land Co., Ltd., the first fabless startup in Gwangju, held an opening ceremony for its Gwangju office at the Gwangju Virtual Content Cube (GCC) on the 15th.
Aegic Land is the only domestic company among the eight global partners of Taiwan’s TSMC, the world’s largest foundry, and possesses unrivaled semiconductor design capabilities.
As a fabless design house company that coordinates the entire semiconductor process, including semiconductor design, mass production, packaging, and inspection, it is expected to play a key role in establishing a semiconductor ecosystem in the Gwangju area by cooperating with fabless companies attracted to Gwangju.
Furiosa AI, 2nd generation NPU ‘Renegade’ launched on MS Azure Market
Furiosa AI, a fabless company specializing in neural processing units (NPUs), announced on the 17th that it has released its second-generation NPU, ‘Renegade,’ on Microsoft’s Azure Marketplace.
Renegade is an NPU for data centers specialized in inference of LLM (Large Language Model) and multimodal foundation models. It has recorded performance exceeding NVIDIA’s H100 in lightweight AI inference tasks and power consumption efficiency. A Furiosa AI official explained, “We have expanded our sales channels by allowing Renegade chips to be purchased through the MS Azure Marketplace.”
FuriosaAI also released an API (Application Programming Interface) utilizing Meta’s LLM, Llama 3.1 model, to allow users to experience the performance of the Renegade chip. This allows enterprise customers to immediately test Renegade’s inference performance. Renegade said it will sequentially increase support for other models in addition to Llama.
Chinese electric vehicle overseas expansion also hit by tariff war
Chinese electric vehicle companies’ plans to build overseas factories due to tariffs imposed by the United States and the European Union (EU) are facing difficulties as the Chinese government has applied the brakes for security and geopolitical reasons, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported on the 17th.
Chinese authorities have put on hold plans by BYD and Geely to produce electric vehicles in Brazil and Mexico, warning of increased risks to trade and investment in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs, according to reports.
Experts said the tariff war will not stop Chinese electric vehicle companies from entering the global market, but the Chinese government wants them to be more careful about where they choose to enter the market.
Hyundai Mobis Discovers Technology to Prevent Electric Vehicle Battery Fires
Hyundai Mobis announced on the 14th that it has succeeded in developing a new technology that immediately puts out a fire in an electric vehicle battery.
Hyundai Mobis designed the battery system (BSA) to go beyond delaying thermal runaway from heat and flames by utilizing heat-resistant materials to block it at the source. This technology can prevent thermal runaway in advance by preventing heat from being transferred to adjacent battery cells. There have been no commercialized cases worldwide to date.
The BSA developed this time consists of hardware such as a battery management system (BMS), a fire extinguisher, a battery case, and software logic that controls them. The BMS analyzes the temperature, voltage, and internal pressure of the battery based on real-time data collected by sensors to determine abnormal signs, and when ignition is detected, it responds immediately by instructing the fire extinguisher to where to spray the agent.
Mintech Develops Equipment to Test Electric Vehicle ‘Used Battery’
Mintech, a company specializing in secondary battery inspection and diagnosis based on electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), announced on the 16th that it was selected as a joint research and development institution for the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport’s ‘Development of safety inspection technology for used batteries and safety management technology for remanufactured battery circulation system’ project.
Mintech is responsible for developing technology and equipment to test the performance and safety of batteries used in electric vehicles. The government subsidy for Mintech is a total of 3.6 billion won over 3 years and 8 months.
Through this project, the government plans to verify the safety inspection of used electric vehicle batteries and the safety management of the circulation system, and to enact related laws and regulations and make performance tests mandatory before removing electric vehicle batteries from 2027.
Electric vehicle separator market share in China approaches 90% in January and February… Korea at 3.3%
An analysis of separators used in electric vehicles (EV, PHEV, HEV) registered worldwide from January to February of this year showed that Chinese companies accounted for 88.9% of the market share. Domestic companies accounted for only 3.3%.
The separator is a key material that physically separates the positive and negative electrodes inside a lithium-ion battery while allowing lithium ions to move freely, and plays a role in determining the safety and performance of the battery.
Although Chinese companies still have a high market share in markets outside China, Japan’s Asahi Kasei, Toray, and Korea’s SK IE Technology (SKIET) and WCP are also found to have maintained relatively high markets.
LG, Indonesian Government Cancel 11 Trillion Won Battery Project
The 11 trillion won electric vehicle battery project that domestic companies including LG were planning to pursue in Indonesia has fallen through.
According to industry sources on the 18th, the LG consortium and the Indonesian government have agreed to withdraw the grand package project.
The LG consortium, consisting of LG Energy Solution, LG Chem, LX International, POSCO Holdings, and Huayou (a Chinese company), agreed to push forward a project with the Indonesian side in April 2022 to produce components such as precursors and cathodes through the mineral mining, smelting, and refining processes, and ultimately finished battery products. The total project size is known to be 9 billion dollars.
Sungil Hitech signs 20.8 billion won battery material supply contract
Sungil Hi-Tech, a battery materials specialist, announced on the 18th that it had signed a supply contract for cobalt sulfate and nickel sulfate worth 20.8 billion won.
The contracting party is ‘COBCO’ located in Morocco. The contract period is from the 1st of this month to June 30th, and there is a condition that 30% of the deposit is paid before the shipping date.
Battery Solutions postpones April listing plan… Concerns over duplicate listing controversy
According to the financial investment industry on the 17th, Battery Solutions notified investors on that day, “We have been collecting investors’ opinions on the application for preliminary review for listing up until the previous day,” and “As a result of the collection, there was opposition from shareholders, so we have decided not to proceed with this application for preliminary review for listing.”
Battery Solutions originally planned to go public within this year. The corporate value of Battery Solutions, a subsidiary of Keeps Pharma, was estimated to be around 200 billion won.
Meanwhile, KPS, a specialist in FMM (fine metal mask) sealing machines for OLEDs, changed its name to Keeps Pharma last month through a merger with Korea Global Pharmaceutical.
Seoul Robotics passes technology evaluation… Korea’s first autonomous driving company listed
Seoul Robotics, an industrial autonomous driving company, announced on the 15th that it had passed the technology assessment for a KOSDAQ technology special listing.
Seoul Robotics received an A grade and a BBB grade from two specialized technology evaluation agencies designated by the Korea Exchange.
The technology special listing system is a system that grants companies with excellent technology the right to apply for preliminary listing review if they secure a certain grade through a technology evaluation agency evaluation. Based on this technology evaluation, Seoul Robotics will be listed on the KOSDAQ market this year as the first domestic autonomous driving company.
China bans use of ‘smart, autonomous driving’ terms in car ads
The Chinese government is banning automakers from using the terms “smart driving” and “autonomous driving” when advertising driver assistance features, and is also stepping up scrutiny of technology upgrades.
On the 17th, Reuters reported, citing a recording of an attendee, that China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology conveyed these guidelines at a meeting held the previous day with representatives of about 60 automobile manufacturers.
The move comes after Xiaomi’s popular SU7 sedan was involved in a fatal accident in March, which raised public concerns about vehicle safety.
China’s Xiaopeng accelerates autonomous driving chip independence… Starts mass production in Q2
According to Chinese media outlet 36Kr on the 15th (local time), Xiaopeng will begin mass production of its self-developed artificial intelligence (AI) chip ‘Turing’ in the second quarter, and this chip will be first installed in one of its new vehicles.
The Turing chip offers 20 percent higher utilization than high-performance general-purpose automotive chips and can process large models with up to 30 billion parameters, the outlet reported. Xpeng has previously claimed that the Turing chip has three times the computing power of the existing Nvidia Drive Orin X.
Rainbow Robotics-CJ Logistics, MOU for Development of Humanoid Logistics Robot
Rainbow Robotics, a robot platform specialist, announced on the 17th that it signed a business agreement (MOU) with CJ Logistics to develop Korea’s first artificial intelligence (AI) humanoid logistics robot.
The two companies have decided to jointly develop an AI humanoid platform optimized for logistics sites and to promote phased commercialization. The plan is to implement an intelligent logistics robot system through this.
By combining Rainbow Robotics’ humanoid robot platform, which is the source of its technology, and CJ Logistics’ agentic AI technology, we are creating an advanced logistics robot that can make decisions and perform tasks on its own.
Robotis Unveils Work-Type Humanoid Robot ‘AI Walker’
Robotis announced on the 18th that it has unveiled the ‘AI Worker’, a domestically produced semi-humanoid robot with physical AI (PAI).
The AI worker that Robotis recently introduced is an optimized robot that can be quickly deployed to actual work, and was designed and manufactured by collecting the requirements of overseas AI companies. It is equipped with a function that can perform difficult tasks through movement learning from skilled workers, and thus has both technical perfection and practicality.
AI Walker is a product that uses original technologies from Robotis, such as the actuator product ‘DYNAMIXEL’ and the reducer product ‘DYD’.
Kookjeon Pharmaceutical Appoints Lee Seon-woo as New Director of Materials Technology Research Institute
Kookjeon Pharmaceutical announced on the 16th that it has hired a precision chemical materials and device system expert as the head of the Materials Technology Research Institute. The new head of the Materials Technology Research Institute, Lee Seon-woo, is a research and development (R&D) expert who received a master’s degree in organic chemistry and synthesis and a doctorate in display electronics engineering from Seoul National University.
This director has been in charge of synthesis and process development at Chong Kun Dang Pharmaceutical and Dow Chemical, and research and development of electronic materials and semiconductor chemicals at BASF Korea for several years.
LG Display lowers manufacturing cost of OLED for vehicles and takes on the market
LG Display is simultaneously targeting the OLED and LCD vehicle display markets. In particular, it is actively increasing the sales ratio of the vehicle OLED market and developing products and improving cost efficiency for this purpose. In fact, the company is known to have reduced manufacturing costs by more than half in just seven years since it began mass production of vehicle OLED.
Son Ki-hwan, LG Display’s Managing Director in charge of Auto Marketing and Product Planning, introduced the automotive OLED market strategy at the ‘OLED & XR Korea 2025’ event held at Yangjae L Tower on the morning of the 18th.
K-Display, last year’s sales up 13.3%… China’s offensive, broken through with OLED
According to the ‘Key Display Industry Statistics’ released by the Korea Display Industry Association on the 17th, domestic panel companies’ sales last year increased by 13.3% year-on-year to 44.2 billion dollars (approximately 63 trillion won).
By technology, OLED sales increased 15.1% year-on-year to $36.28 billion, while LCD sales increased 5.9% year-on-year to $7.93 billion. This is interpreted as a result of the first application of OLED to Apple’s iPad and increased demand for low-temperature polycrystalline oxide (LTPO) OLED due to increased demand for artificial intelligence (AI).
The shift to OLED is accelerating, with Korea’s overall OLED sales share increasing from 69% in 2021 to 82.1% last year.
Source: kipost.net