Chips & Supply · United States

GlobalWafers to issue US$500m in bonds to Micron

Credited to Taipei Times · taipeitimes.com · 2h ago

CORPORATE RELATIONS: The 10-year convertible bonds would be issued to bolster ties between the companies following an agreement to collaborate

GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s third-largest silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said it plans to issue unsecured convertible bonds of up to US$500 million in a private placement, with US memory chipmaker Micron Technology Inc as the sole subscriber.

Hsinchu City-based GlobalWafers said in a statement that its board approved the bond issuance plan at a meeting yesterday.

The 10-year convertible bonds would be issued to Micron to bolster ties with the US chipmaker following an agreement reached by the two companies in July to collaborate under a 10-year agreement.

The bonds would carry an annual coupon rate of 0.5 percent, GlobalWafers said.

The agreement is designed to combine long-term supply commitments with strategic financial cooperation to support the development of GlobalWafers’ US operations and enhance its capacity to supply advanced semiconductor wafers.

Under the arrangement, Micron is to subscribe to the bonds, providing GlobalWafers with US$500 million in financing.

“Our deeper collaboration with Micron reflects both the trust developed over many years and a broader industry shift from traditional supplier relationships toward sustained strategic partnerships,” GlobalWafers chairwoman and CEO Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said in the statement.

“By aligning customers’ future needs with timely manufacturing investment, we can reinforce supply chain resilience across market cycles and create sustainable value for the global semiconductor industry,” Hsu said.

The private placement plan is subject to shareholder approval, GlobalWafers said.

Ahead of the planned bond issuance, GlobalWafers completed a US$1.432 billion global depositary receipt offering in September to finance raw material purchases and overseas production expansion and enhance its financial structure. The offering was the third-largest global depositary receipt issuance by a Taiwanese company on record.

GlobalWafers said it posted net profit of NT$7.18 billion (US$219.2 million) in the first nine months of this year, or earnings per share of NT$15, close to the NT$15.29 recorded for the whole of last year.

Consolidated sales during the nine months fell 4.4 percent from a year earlier to NT$44.07 billion, the company said.

The board also approved a cash dividend of NT$6 per share based on earnings per share of NT$11.87 in the first half of the year.

GlobalWafers is to distribute a total of NT$3.169 billion in cash dividends on Jan. 22, after its shares go ex-dividend on Jan. 4, the company said.

GlobalWafers, which has expanded its operations significantly through mergers and acquisitions, operates 18 facilities in nine countries: Taiwan, China, the US, Japan, Denmark, South Korea, Italy, Malaysia and Singapore.

RESERVES ADEQUATE: The central bank governor rejected claims that Taiwan was facing a cash shortage, saying that its financial system had ample savings The New Taiwan dollar’s 3 percent fall this year despite record exports and a widening trade surplus stems from foreign investors cashing in on the local stock market’s technology-driven rally and moving funds overseas, central bank Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) told lawmakers yesterday. The NT dollar has become one of Asia’s weakest-performing major currencies this year. Foreign investors have reaped substantial gains from Taiwan’s surging stock market, prompting them to sell shares and rebalance their portfolios, Yang told a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee in Taipei. Their withdrawals have added to downward pressure on the NT dollar, offsetting support

‘ON SCHEDULE’: Chief executive officer Rick Tsai said that TSMC ‘remains our most important partner’ as MediaTek seeks to meet robust customer demand Chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday said it has secured a second customer for its customized artificial intelligence (AI) accelerator for data centers, while volume production of a second-generation chip for an existing customer is on track for early 2028, potentially easing market concerns about possible delays. This is a new customer and, crucially, not from China, MediaTek said. The remarks were meant to dismiss speculation that ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動), the parent company of TikTok, was the second customer for MediaTek’s new customized AI application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) business. “It is on track, on schedule. We understand there is some noise about the

ROOM TO GROW: The company’s biggest bottleneck is still space, chief financial officer Joseph Tung said, adding that it was scouting existing factories to acquire ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控) yesterday raised its annual capital expenditure budget for the third time to US$11.5 billion, driven by expectations that customer demand next year would continue to outpace capacity, particularly for its leading-edge advanced packaging (LEAP) technologies used in artificial intelligence (AI) chips. ASE, the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, plans to add US$1 billion to its US$10.5 billion outlay on capacity expansion. About 60 percent of the US$500 million equipment budget would be allocated for LEAP and 40 percent for mainstream packaging technology capacity, ASE chief financial officer Joseph Tung (董宏思) told an online investors’

OUTLOOK: Tech stocks worldwide have come under selling pressure ever since last month, and Taiwan’s stock market is not expected to be spared, an analyst said The TAIEX is expected to face heavy downward pressure today after American depositary receipts of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) on Friday plunged 5.95 percent, tracking a broader sell-off in US tech stocks on Wall Street amid concerns over massive artificial intelligence (AI) spending. Disappointing sales at some US technology companies spurred the worst drop for stocks since June, with the tech-heavy NASDAQ Composite Index falling 2.86 percent on Friday, while the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index plunged 7.20 percent and the S&P 500 fell 1.8 percent, breaching its 100-day moving average. Chipmaker Intel Corp and social media firm

Chips & SupplyUnited States

Bosch creates semiconductor division to expand in robotics, external chipmaking

Credited to DigiTimes$ · digitimes.com2h ago

Useful

Bosch plans to create a dedicated semiconductor division as it seeks more business in robotics, AI infrastructure, and manufacturing for external customers, extending a chip strategy rooted in automotive electronics into additional markets.

View the article · $DigiTimes

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Chips & Supply · United States

Innolight Begins NPO Production on Tower Semiconductor’s Silicon Photonics

Credited to Converge Digest · convergedigest.com · 10h ago

Photograph · Converge Digest

Innolight has begun early production of its first near-package optics (NPO) device using Tower Semiconductor’s PH18M silicon photonics process at the foundry’s Newport Beach, California facility. The milestone moves Innolight’s NPO portfolio from development into initial manufacturing, while the company has also completed tape-outs of multiple additional NPO products on Tower’s 300mm silicon photonics platform. The two companies are extending their manufacturing relationship to support higher-density optical interconnects for AI and hyperscale data centers.

The collaboration addresses a significant architectural transition in AI networking: moving optical interfaces closer to the processors and switching silicon they serve. NPO architectures position optical engines near the main ASIC package, potentially reducing the electrical signaling distances associated with conventional front-panel pluggable transceivers. These designs typically require substantially higher optical channel counts, often integrating 16 or more channels within a single device. Tower’s silicon photonics platforms support monolithic integration of multiple optical functions, including wavelength-division multiplexing and demultiplexing, allowing designers to combine more functionality within compact photonic integrated circuits.

Innolight is now a manufacturing customer across four Tower Semiconductor facilities: Newport Beach, California; San Antonio, Texas; Israel; and Japan. The initial NPO production uses Tower’s 200mm PH18M process, while the additional 300mm tape-outs establish a development path for subsequent product generations. The companies have not disclosed shipment volumes, device-level bandwidth, customer deployments, or a schedule for volume production of the newly taped-out designs. The announcement follows Tower’s November 2 earnings update, in which management outlined expanding silicon photonics capacity and expectations for NPO demand during 2027.

Key Technical and Manufacturing Highlights

First NPO device — Early production on PH18M silicon photonics

300mm roadmap — Multiple additional NPO products taped out

Channel density — NPO architectures commonly use 16 or more optical channels per device

Photonic integration — Monolithic WDM multiplexing and demultiplexing

Manufacturing footprint — Newport Beach, San Antonio, Israel and Japan

Deployment status — Early production; no disclosed shipment volumes or hyperscaler deployment

Market application — High-density AI and cloud data center optical interconnects

“Our collaboration with Tower provides us with industry leading capabilities enabling us to accelerate the development of NPO solutions to meet the evolving needs of hyperscale and AI data center customers.”

The importance of this announcement is the transition from NPO design activity to initial foundry production at a major optical transceiver supplier. Conventional pluggable optics remain central to AI data center networking, but NPO offers an alternative packaging approach for higher channel densities and shorter electrical connections. The production milestone establishes that Innolight has progressed beyond design tape-out on Tower’s 200mm platform, although commercial shipment volumes and system-level performance remain undisclosed.

The manufacturing roadmap is equally significant. Tower’s 200mm PH18M process supports the first Innolight device, while its 300mm platform provides a separate path for additional designs. Scaling photonic integrated circuits requires consistent wafer-level process control, optical performance and manufacturing yield, particularly as more channels and WDM functions are integrated onto a single die.

The announcement also adds context to Tower’s broader AI optics expansion. Its recent collaborations with NewPhotonics, OpenLight and Semtech span laser-integrated photonic ICs, advanced photonic design platforms and high-speed analog interfaces. Innolight’s early NPO production represents another manufacturing milestone within that ecosystem. The next indicators to watch will be volume production qualification, customer adoption, channel configurations and the progression of Innolight’s 300mm designs into manufacturing.

Company Profile — Tower Semiconductor

Core technologies — Silicon photonics, SiGe BiCMOS, RF CMOS, CMOS image sensors, power management and mixed-signal

SiPho platforms — PH18M; PH18DA; 300mm silicon photonics

Manufacturing — 200mm and 300mm fabs in the U.S., Israel, Japan and Italy

AI optics ecosystem — Innolight, NewPhotonics, OpenLight, Semtech and Marvell

Applications — AI optical interconnects, data center networking, coherent optics, NPO and CPO

Related Converge Digest Coverage

Nov 2, 2026 | Silicon Photonics Tower Semi Targets $2B in 2026 Revenue as Silicon Photonics Surges Capacity expansion, NPO demand and 2027 manufacturing targets.

Oct 13, 2026 | Analog / SiGe Tower and Semtech Secure SiGe Capacity for AI Optical Interconnects Dedicated capacity for TIAs, drivers and equalizers.

Sep 17, 2026 | Photonic ICs NewPhotonics and Tower Move 800G/1.6T Laser-Integrated PICs into High-Volume High-volume PIC shipments on the PH18DA platform.

Aug 11, 2026 | NPO / CPO Tower and OpenLight Target 1.6T, NPO and CPO with Cadence Integrated photonics design ecosystem.

Jun 18, 2026 | Coherent Optics Tower + Marvell Milestone: 5 Million Coherent PICs Shipped Commercial scale in coherent silicon photonics.

🌐 We’re tracking the latest developments in optical networking and AI infrastructure at Converge Digest.