ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it plans to launch a new high-end chip testing fab in the US next month to better serve its key customers based in North America, particularly California-based artificial intelligence (AI) customers.
The new US testing facility would be operated by the firm’s subsidiary ISE Labs Inc, it said.
ASE’s major customers, and high-ranking US officials and representatives from American Institute in Taiwan are to attend the fab’s opening ceremony on July 12, it said.
Photo: CNA
ISE Labs last year acquired a 5,942m2 facility in San Jose, California, for US$24 million to expand capacity, ASE said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
ISE Labs’ new testing fab would be part of ASE’s broader global expansion plans, ASE said.
ASE is scouting potential sites to deploy advanced chip packaging capacity in the US, Japan and Mexico, in response to customers’ growing demand to strengthen supply chain resilience amid mounting geopolitical risks, ASE chief operating officer Tien Wu (吳田玉) told reporters on the sideline of the company’s shareholders’ meeting.
“With this substantial US investment, we intend to demonstrate our goal to create a global deployment. Our purpose is to take good care of our North American clients, very important clients, especially our AI clients based in California,” Wu said.
Additionally, ASE has applied to the US government to create a free trade zone in the region, allowing customers from different countries to ship advanced wafers there for testing and simplifying tedious export procedures, Wu said.
In Mexico, ASE has acquired a plot of land to build an automative electronics and power units supply chain there, with its subsidiary Universal Scientific Industrial (Shanghai) Co (環旭電子), Wu said, targeting North America’s automative electronics used in autonomous vehicles and next-generation robots.
In Japan, ASE is looking for a location to build a larger-scale advanced packing facility than its operation in Yamagata, Wu said.
In Malaysia, ASE is looking to expand its capacity in Penang, where the company operates a major manufacturing site, to cope with increasing demand from a European automative chipmaker, he said.
The companies have inked a long-term supply agreement, he added.
ASE also raised its forecast for the revenue growth from advanced packaging technology, or chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS), this year, due to demand for AI chips.
“Earlier this year, we expected to have an additional US$250 million revenue increase from the CoWoS business. Now it looks like we will exceed that figure. AI demand will remain solid in the second half and through next year,” Wu said.
ASE is collaborating with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) to increase supply of CoWoS packaging capacity to catch up with strong AI chip demand, ASE said.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US