Why helium is the acute risk In front-end processing, steps including cleaning, film deposition, lithography, dry etching and inspection repeat 50 to 100 times or more per silicon wafer, sometimes over 1,000 steps in total. Helium and naphtha are the two materials a fab cannot do without. In dry etching, intense heat passes from plasma … Read more
What the evaluation found The panel concluded the project fills a core gap in China’s domestic multi-modal AI databases and offers a new paradigm for modernising basic-software architecture and fusing AI with the data layer. Targeting the strategic need for local substitution in critical fields, it tackles entrenched industry problems: rigid sharding in distributed databases, … Read more
A Huawei lifer’s bet Founder and CEO Yang Bin spent more than two decades at Huawei, building the company’s processor team from scratch in the US and later leading wireless baseband algorithms and chip work, with long experience in large-scale hardware scheduling and data architecture. He sums up entrepreneurship as ‘the realisation of everything you … Read more
Shenzhen has launched what its backers call China’s first thousand-qubit-scale quantum computing power platform, a step they say moves the country’s quantum effort from technical validation toward something industry can actually use. On 3 August, the Greater Bay Area, Guangdong, Quantum Science Center, the National Supercomputing Center in Shenzhen, and Entropec, Shenzhen, Technology unveiled the … Read more
Memory-chip giants have reported record results on the back of AI-driven price surges, yet their shares sold off, a split that captures a supercycle now balanced at a crossroads between real demand and priced-in perfection. Record numbers, priced for perfection Kioxia’s first quarter to June showed revenue up 415.5 per cent year on year and … Read more
Counterpoint Research reports that global smartphone SoC shipments fell 15 per cent in the first half of 2026, hit by surging memory prices, cautious inventory control and longer replacement cycles. MediaTek held the top share at 32 per cent, Qualcomm was second at 22 per cent, Apple 19 per cent, UNISOC 13 per cent and … Read more
Between 28 May 2025 and 30 July 2026, the controlling group sold a combined 6,208,552 A-shares, including 5.5 million from the holding entity and 708,600 from Wang Xiaodong. At the 864 yuan closing price, those 6.21 million shares are worth over 50 billion yuan. On the same day the company debuted in Hong Kong, issuing … Read more
On 9 July, RoboSense reported first-half 2026 LiDAR shipments of 719,200 units, up 170% year on year. The robot segment contributed 282,600 units, a 510% surge, while ADAS delivered 436,600 units, up 98%, further cementing a ‘robot plus vehicle’ dual-engine structure. In the second quarter alone, total shipments reached 388,900 units, with robot LiDAR at … Read more
Zeng Yi, founder of Shenzhen-based processor IP firm Sunzhan, speaks softly with a Teochew lilt, but on AI and RISC-V his excitement is uncontainable. His thesis: AI has toppled the old processor order, and RISC-V is the arch it drags forward. When the model decides the chip ‘The decision power over chip architecture has moved … Read more
This year at WAIC, the embodied-AI booths shared one unexpected keyword: touch. Two years ago tactile sensing barely registered; now, from sensor vendors to whole-robot companies, “touch” is on every placard, with some declaring it more important than vision. The race is not just over sensors but over the models, data and even the chips … Read more