Electronics Supply Chain Weekly Digest 3-27-26.
Auto/Transportation
- Chinese EV makers outpace Tesla in Europe’s budget segment as BYD surges 162% Y/Y in February, according to ACEA data
- GM announces plans to invest $600M in South Korea unit to modernize plants and boost small-SUV production
- Hyundai Motor announces plans to target 500K annual China sales and 36 new NA models by 2030
- Cox Automotive forecasts US new-vehicle sales SAAR of 15.8M in March, down ~12% Y/Y on tough tariff-era comparisons
- Zoox announced plans to expand robotaxi service to San Francisco and Las Vegas while launching testing in Austin and Miami
Datacenter
- Meta announces it has raised its El Paso datacenter investment to $10B, with facility expected online in FY28
Connectivity
- Broadcom expects optical communication supply chain constraints to ease by 2027 as capacity expansions ramp up
- Broadcom completes 400G single-lane PAM4 DSP development, targets mass production in 2027 with $12B market by 2030
- CPO mass production bottlenecks threaten to delay large-scale cloud AI data center adoption until 2029 according to DigiTimes
- Credo Technology clears legal overhang with back-to-back AEC patent settlements against TE Connectivity and Molex
Semiconductors
- Alibaba unveils XuanTie C950 RISC-V CPU optimized for cloud inference and agentic AI workloads
- Allegro MicroSystems raising prices at least 10% across full product portfolio starting April 27, according to SemiMedia
- Arm launches AGI CPU targeting agentic AI, projects $15B in annual revenue from chip within five years
- GlobalFoundries sues Tower Semiconductor over 11 patents covering smartphone and electronics chip manufacturing
- Google’s TurboQuant algorithm cuts LLM memory needs sixfold, according to Bloomberg
- Huawei’s 950PR AI chip wins over ByteDance and Alibaba with planned orders as 750K-unit shipment target set for 2026, according to Reuters
- Infineon launches XDPP1188-200C digital power controller targeting 800V AI data center architectures
- Mitsubishi Electric, Rohm, and Toshiba in talks to merge power chip operations, targeting 10% global market share, as reported by Nikkei
- Monolithic Power Systems to raise prices on select products from May 1 amid rising supply chain costs
- Nvidia designs server racks to host rival chips while keeping its networking tech at the center, The Information reported
- Renesas launches industry-first bidirectional 650V GaN switch targeting single-stage power conversion for solar, EVs, and data centers
- Renesas to hike product prices from July 1 as rising material and transport costs squeeze margins, according to SemiMedia
- Samsung advances plans for a second wafer fab in Taylor, Texas as total site investment hits $37B, Korea JoongAng Daily reported
- Samsung set to launch GaN power semiconductor foundry in 2Q, with SiC samples planned for later this year, per The Elec and ZDNet
- STMicro reportedly notified customers on price increases across multiple product lines effective April 26, says ijiwei
- STMicroelectronics announces it has begun shipping locally made STM32 MCUs in China through Huahong foundry partnership
- PLA-linked Chinese universities bought Super Micro servers loaded with restricted Nvidia A100 chips, as reported by Reuters
- Musk announces Terafab, two advanced chip factories in Austin for Tesla EVs, Optimus robots, and AI satellites
- Tower Semiconductor to take full ownership of Japan 300mm fab via TPSCo restructuring, targeting April 2027 close
Consumer/Other
- Xiaomi’s 4Q adjusted net income falls 24% Y/Y amid smartphone headwinds and EV safety setbacks