Memory finally hit a boiling point this week when Apple raised prices of its products. The consumer is taking the hit. Apple asks USG if they can source memory from China. DeepSeek is making more inference with less hardware. And more.
Let’s get into it. — Austin & Vik
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Apple Seeks US Waiver to Buy Chips From Blacklisted CXMT
Apple has applied to the US government for permission to purchase memory chips from ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), China’s largest DRAM maker, according to the Financial Times. CXMT was added to the US Entity List, which bars American companies from transacting with it without an explicit government waiver. The move marks a rare instance of a major US consumer electronics company seeking to source from a blacklisted Chinese chipmaker.
Vik: Memory makes companies do strange things. This week Apple raised prices on its products, and in what may be the first time for many outside the semiconductor sphere, people realized that memory is now a global problem. For the last two years, folks in the semi space have seen the rising demand for memory. Now the pot has boiled over.
For context, CXMT is in the Pentagon’s 1260H list of companies with alleged connections to the Chinese military. As a result, this company is on the Entity list which bars US companies from sourcing from them.
Many view this move as a publicity stunt, where Apple allegedly leaked this information to push the US government to open up trade with CXMT by taking them off the Entity list. The markets viewed Apple’s price increases as a sign that demand will finally show and start pulling back.
Austin: Interesting to see how AI is directly causing inflation.
“Inflation measures how much more expensive a set of goods and services has become over a certain period, usually a year” — IMF
Agility Robotics to go public via SPAC at $2.5 billion valuation
Agility Robotics will merge with Churchill Capital Corp XI, a SPAC, in a deal valuing Agility at $2.5 billion pre-money equity value. The transaction is expected to generate over $620 million in gross proceeds, including a $200 million PIPE at $10 per share. Agility has secured over $300 million in multi-year orders for its Digit v5 humanoid robot. (agilityrobotics.com)
Austin: Commercial deployments of humanoids, going public. Check out the video at Agility’s website.
OpenAI is limiting access to its new GPT-5.6 models after discussions with the Trump administration, making them initially available to a small, government-approved customer group. This follows a similar intervention with Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models due to their ability to discover software vulnerabilities. OpenAI hopes for general availability in weeks, viewing the current approval process as a temporary measure during the implementation of President Trump’s executive order on model oversight. (wsj.com)
Austin: Hey, look, we should all be outside splashing in the summer sun. That’s what I keep telling myself after they took my Fable away…
Will be interesting to see if the government’s export controls delay Anthropic and OpenAI IPOs, and if that ends up actually being a good thing. Maybe you can have too many massive IPOs in too short of a time right? (Not looking at you Cerebras, I’m talking about SpaceX).
Samsung, SK Hynix Pledge $880 Billion for Two New Chip Fabs
Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have committed a combined $880 billion to build two new chip fabrication facilities in South Korea, the companies announced. The investment represents record capital spending for the two Korean chipmakers, which together account for the majority of global memory chip production. The pledge covers construction of the new fabs as part of an effort to expand domestic semiconductor manufacturing capacity.
Vik: This is Korea’s way of retaining memory dominance. This represents 5% of Korea’s 2024 GDP, just to make memory. That’s how important it is. President calls SK Hynix and Samsung “national heroes” and says “Speed is the only way to survive.”
ShunSin Confirms TSMC COUPE Optical Packaging Partnership
Foxconn subsidiary ShunSin has confirmed a deal with TSMC under the COUPE (Co-Packaged Optics Using Photonics Ecosystem) program to provide co-packaged optics (CPO) and optical circuit switching (OCS) packaging services. ShunSin plans to commit NT$5 billion in capital expenditure to support the arrangement.
Vik: Shunsun (6451.TW) — according dnystedt on X, sees double digit revenue growth in 2026, and more in 2027. 51.2T CPO currently in production, 102.4T CPO is sampling, and 12.8T NPO / OCS in development.
DeepSeek Cuts AI Inference Latency 85% With New DSpark Framework
DeepSeek has released DSpark, a speculative decoding framework for its V4 model that increases per-user response speeds by up to 85%, reducing the load on inference chips. The upgrade targets serving costs and user experience as Chinese AI developers compete on operational efficiency rather than model capability alone.
Vik: Speculative decoding is a technique where there is a draft model that predicts tokens and the verifier model confirms that they are correct. This is a much faster way of token generation, and its usefulness depends on the accuracy of the draft model, and the acceptance rate of the verifier. This is not really a new technique, but good to see it in DeepSeek V4.
Austin: d-Matrix and Gimlet have a nice demo showing how speculative decoding on right-sized hardware can further improve the Pareto frontier.
Key Data
A large part of our reader/listener base on Semi Doped are professional investors, and on Austin’s and Vik’s substack too! We think this chart might be interesting. (h/t to The Kobeissi Letter on X)
Sector Watch
Memory
SK Hynix listing ADRs on Nasdaq to raise $29B, providing liquidity for its $194B ten-year capex program targeting HBM4 and advanced packaging supply constraints. (chosun.com)
CXMT projected to generate over $130B in gross profit over next 18 months with nearly all capital flowing back into capacity expansion, targeting 600k wafers-per-month by 2028. (substack.com) (DigiTimes)
Apple raised Mac and iPad prices citing unprecedented 40-year memory cost spike driven by AI infrastructure buildout, with CEO Tim Cook noting memory quotes nearing historic highs through 2027. (Bloomberg Tech)
Foundry & Logic
TSMC A14 node driving demand for Vera Rubin architectures with performance gains exceeding 20% while attracting orders from Nvidia and Apple, intensifying capacity constraints. (substack.com)
Intel promised SpaceX and Apple a toolkit this fall to test its 14A node before final commitments, a critical validation step for Intel Foundry’s process between 18A and next-gen nodes. (TechMeme)
Apple public roadmap for A-series SoC on 1.4nm node in 2027 confirms it will remain critical lighthouse customer for TSMC’s process technology leadership beyond immediate AI training boom. (DigiTimes)
Advanced Packaging
Applied Materials unveiled six new tools targeting epitaxy, CMP, deposition, and eBeam metrology to address yield bottlenecks in HBM and 3D stacking for AI accelerators. (Semiconductor Digest)
LG Chem planning to expand Copper Core Laminate (CCL) capacity to address supply constraints driven by AI chip demand, highlighting tightening bottleneck in backend packaging supply chain. (DigiTimes)
Earnings & Capital
U.S. equity indices fell across the board this week with S&P 500 and Nasdaq declining in every session, driven by mounting anxiety over sustainability of AI compute buildout and unit economics. (chosun.com)
Apple skipping high-end M6 Pro and Max chips, redirecting roadmap to launch base M6 this year followed by AI-focused M7 and M7 Pro/Max chips in 2027. (DigiTimes) (Toms Hardware)
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