July 21, 2025

Round-up

Highlights

1. TSMC’s valuation enters the four-comma club. Taipei trading pushed the foundry past US $1 trillion on July 21, powered by a 30 % sales outlook upgrade and relentless AI orders.¹ In the same weekend, the company filed permits for four 1.4 nm “Fab 25” plants in central Taiwan—its most aggressive node bet yet.²
2. U.S. House China panel slams the White House over Nvidia’s H20 export reprieve. Lawmakers warned the July 18 license reversal “risks super-charging Beijing’s military AI.”³ Expect fresh pressure on Commerce to tighten the just-relaxed rules.
3. Japan’s Rapidus hits 2 nm tape-out milestone. The government-backed challenger produced its first gate-all-around wafers on July 21, keeping a 2027 production target alive and marking Japan’s first EUV tool installation.⁴

Other developments

• Nvidia’s China restart still faces substrate and HBM supply snags.⁵
• Synopsys finally closes its US$35 bn Ansys buy, ending 18 months of regulatory limbo noted in last Friday’s issue.⁶
• Philippine president Marcos Jr. flies to Washington to court U.S. chip investors for the Luzon economic corridor.⁷
• Short-seller Viceroy alleges Vedanta’s ₹2 500 cr. (≈US$300 m) chip unit is a “sham,” rattling India’s nascent fab ambitions.⁸
• TSMC fast-tracks its second Phoenix fab by “several quarters,” underscoring Arizona’s rising share of leading-edge capacity.⁹

Did you know? Rapidus is the first company to install EUV scanners on Japanese soil, ending a 20-year drought for domestic leading-edge lithography.⁴

In-depth

1. Government & Corporate Policy

• Congressional push-back on Nvidia export easing

  • House China panel says the July 18 license endangers U.S. “tech primacy.”³
  • Commerce faces calls to clarify guardrails before the H20 GPU ships in volume.
  • Nvidia argues continued access keeps Chinese developers on U.S. toolchains.

• Philippines seeks U.S. fab partners

  • Marcos Jr. will pitch the “Luzon Corridor” to Intel, SkyWater and Amkor this week.⁷
  • Manila dangles 0 % tax holidays and shared CHIPS-style grants to diversify from China.
  • Visit follows Japan-funded substrate plant announcements in Batangas.

• Vedanta under activist fire

  • Viceroy Research calls the Indian group’s silicon venture “a cash drain,” citing opaque cap-table shifts.⁸
  • Vedanta denies the claims but shares fell 6 % on Mumbai’s exchange.
  • New Delhi’s semiconductor task-force has sought a project status update.

• Synopsys–Ansys merger clears last hurdle

  • China’s SAMR gave conditional approval, demanding tool access parity for local firms.⁶
  • Synopsys closed the deal on July 18—just one newsletter cycle after we flagged the delay.
  • The combined EDA–simulation stack could pressure Cadence in multi-physics flows.

2. Economics, Finance & Business Outlook

• TSMC tops US$1 tn market cap

  • Share price has doubled YTD on AI server demand and better EUV yields.¹
  • CFO flags FX volatility as the next earnings swing factor.

• Four-fab “A14” complex approved in Taiwan

  • Fab 25 will start concrete in Q4; 2 nm risk production slated for 2028.²
  • Local officials estimate 7 000 direct jobs and NT$1.6 trn (≈US$49 bn) capex.

• Phoenix expansion accelerates

  • Second Arizona fab moves up “by several quarters,” with 30 % of TSMC’s top node output earmarked for the U.S.⁹
  • Total U.S. outlay now US$165 bn, up from US$65 bn pre-CHIPS Act.

• Nvidia’s China relaunch still bumpy

  • Reuters reports substrate allocation and license paperwork may cap Q3 volumes.⁵
  • Local integrators fear missing peak e-commerce season GPU demand.

3. Technology & R&D

• Rapidus 2 nm GAA prototype

  • Single-wafer processing plus AI analytics promise shorter learning cycles.⁴
  • Imec and IBM experts embedded on site to tune EUV resist stacks.

• TSMC’s 1.4 nm roadmap details

  • Announced Fab 25 lines will migrate to backside power delivery and CFET options.²
  • Management hints at 2026 risk builds on an interim 1.6 nm “N1.6” node.

• Nvidia adds CUDA support for RISC-V

  • Presented at the RISC-V China Summit on July 20, enabling open-ISA host CPUs for future AI accelerators.¹⁰
  • Positions Nvidia to hedge x86/Arm supply risk in HPC clusters.

• Neuromorphic + deep-learning crossover gains steam

  • UCSC researchers show SpikeGPT-style spiking networks can borrow quantization tricks to scale past 200 M parameters while slashing ops 20×.¹¹
  • Vendors of event-driven accelerators (e.g., BrainChip, Innatera) see validation for mixed-signal SNN silicon.

Footnotes