01/01/2026

BIZ & FINANCE THURSDAY | JAN 1, 2026

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TSMC starts mass output of ‘most advanced’ 2nm chips

Indian steelmakers soar after New Delhi imposes import tariffs MUMBAI: Shares of major Indian steel companies climbed between 2% and 5% yesterday after the country imposed a three-year import tariff on select products to curb cheap shipments from China. The levy, locally known as a safeguard duty, will be imposed at 12% in the first year followed by 11.5% in the second year and then 11% in the third year. Tata Steel and JSW Steel rose 2.4% and 5%, respectively, leading gainers on the benchmark Nifty 50 index. Steel Authority of India and Jindal Steel also added 2.5% and 3.5%. “Post announcement of the safeguard duty, the domestic steel prices are currently at about 13% to 15% discount to the landed cost of imports from China, providing sufficient headroom for price hikes by domestic manufacturers,“ said Sunny Agrawal, head of fundamental equity research at SBICAPS Securities. The move follows the Directorate General of Trade Remedies’ findings of a sharp surge in imports causing injury to domestic producers. Earlier, the government had implemented a temporary 12% duty for 200 days in April 2025. While that shorter duration caused investor uncertainty, the new three-year window provides long-term protection for local players, according to the analyst. The metal stocks hit a record 11,189.8 points on the day, gaining as much as 1.7%. The sectoral gauge has risen in 12 of the previous 14 sessions, supported by firm prices for copper, aluminium and silver. The domestic metal index has jumped roughly 29% in 2025. – Reuters SHANGHAI: Hong Kong stocks jumped nearly 30% in 2025 in their best showing since 2017, while the Shanghai market logged its best year in six as excitement toward Chinese artificial intelligence overcame worries about a slowing economy. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index lost 0.9% in a shortened session yesterday, but for the year, the benchmark surged 28%, the best performance in eight years. The Shanghai Composite Index edged up 0.1% yesterday, capping its best year since 2019 with a gain of 18%. China’s blue-chip CSI300 Index lost 0.5% for the day but for the year is also up 18%. Chinese markets have weathered a Sino-US trade war and rising geopolitical tensions in a volatile year, with share prices supported by government stimulus, rising confidence in Chinese technology, and an appreciating yuan. China’s yuan breached the psychologically important 7-per-dollar level for the first time in 2½ years this week, and is on track for its biggest annual rise since 2020. Western Securities expects the market’s upward trend to continue in 2026, underpinned by the appreciating Chinese currency. “Yuan appreciation is driving offshore capital flow back to China, solidifying the foundation of China’s bull market,” the brokerage said. Guotai Haitong Securities also said in a report that a steadily rising yuan will “provide favourable conditions for loose monetary policies in early 2026”, and expected investor risk appetite to increase. In China, defence and navigation satellite stocks jumped yesterday but consumer electronics and chipmaking stocks fell. In Hong Kong, most sectors dropped yesterday, with drugmakers and tech stocks among the biggest decliners. – Reuters Hong Kong stock market logs best year since 2017

More than half of the world’s semi conductors, and nearly all of the most advanced ones used to power AI technology, are made in Taiwan. TSMC has been a massive beneficiary of the frenzy in AI investment. Nvidia and Apple are among firms pouring many billions of dollars into chips, servers and data centres. AI-related spending is soaring worldwide, and is expected to reach approximately US$1.5 trillion (RM6.08 trillion) by 2025, according to US research firm Gartner, and over US$2 trillion in 2026 – nearly 2% of global gross domestic product. Taiwan’s dominance of the chip industry has long been seen as a “silicon shield” protecting it from an invasion or blockade by China – which claims the island is part of its sovereign territory – and an incentive for the United States to defend it. TSMC has invested in chip fabrication facilities in the United States, Japan and Germany to meet soaring demand for semiconductors, which have become the lifeblood of the global economy. Nvidia said in response to a request for comment that it continuously manages its supply chain. “Licensed sales of the H200 to authorised customers in China will have no impact on our ability to supply customers in the United States,” a spokesperson said. “China is a highly competitive market with rapidly growing local chip suppliers. Blocking all US exports undercut our national and economic security and only benefited foreign competition.” TSMC declined to comment and China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Reuters spoke to five people for this story, who declined to be named as the discussions are private. The potential order would mark a significant expansion of H200 production at a time when Nvidia has been focused on ramping up its newer Blackwell and upcoming Rubin chip lines. The H200, part of Nvidia’s previous-generation Hopper architecture, uses TSMC’s four-nanometre manufacturing process. – Reuters

TAIPEI: Taiwanese tech titan TSMC has started mass producing its cutting-edge two nanometre (2nm) semiconductor chips, the company said in a statement seen by AFP yesterday. TSMC is the world’s largest contract maker of chips, used in everything from smart phones to missiles, and counts Nvidia and Apple among its clients. “TSMC’s 2nm (N2) technology has started volume production in 4Q25 as planned,” TSMC said in an undated statement on its website. The chips will be the “most advanced technology in the semiconductor industry in terms of both density and energy efficiency”, the company said. “N2 technology, with leading nanosheet transistor structure, will deliver full-node performance and power benefits to address the increasing need for energy-efficient computing.” The chips will be produced at TSMC’s Fab o They perform better and are more energy-efficient than past types TAIPEI: Nvidia is scrambling to meet strong demand for its H200 artificial intelligence chips from Chinese technology companies and has approached contract manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) to ramp up production, sources said. Chinese technology companies have placed orders for more than two million H200 chips for 2026, while Nvidia currently holds just 700,000 units in stock, two of the people said. The exact additional volume Nvidia intends to order from TSMC remains unclear, they said. A third source said Nvidia has asked TSMC to begin production of the additional chips, and work is expected to start in the second quarter of 2026. The moves raise concerns over whether there could be further tightening in global AI chip supplies as Nvidia now has to strike the right balance between meeting robust Chinese demand and addressing constrained supplies elsewhere. They could also intensify risks for Nvidia, as Beijing has yet to greenlight any shipments of H200 chips. The administration of US President

20 facility in Hsinchu, in northern Taiwan, and Fab 22 in the southern port city of Kaohsiung. Advanced 2nm chips perform better and are more energy-efficient than past types, and are structured differently to house even more of the key components known as tran sistors. The new chip technology will help speed up laptops, reduce data centres’ carbon footprint and allow self-driving cars to spot objects quicker, according to US computing giant IBM. For artificial intelligence (AI), “this benefits both consumer devices–- enabling faster, more capable on-device AI – and data centre AI chips, which can run large models more efficiently”, said Jan Frederik Slijkerman, senior sector strategist at Dutch bank ING.

But in an interview with AFP this month, Taiwanese Deputy Foreign Minister Francois Chih-chung Wu said the island planned to keep making the “most advanced” chips on home soil and remain “indispensable” to the global semiconductor industry. – AFP Nvidia sounds out Taiwan firm on new H200 order

Donald Trump only recently allowed exports of the H200 to China. The talks between Nvidia and TSMC and details of the Chinese demand have not been reported before. The pricing has also not been reported earlier – Nvidia has decided which H200 variants it will offer to Chinese clients and price them around US$27,000 (RM109,500) per chip, the sources said.

ChangXin Memory Tech plans Shanghai IPO to raise 29.5b yuan BEIJING: China's leading maker of DRAM chips, ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) Corp, plans to raise 29.5 billion yuan (RM17.1 billion) through an initial public offer ing (IPO) of 10.6 billion shares in Shanghai. The company, which directly challenged South Korean and US rivals by unveiling its latest DDR5 DRAM chips last month, will use the listing proceeds to upgrade production lines and technologies, it said in a prospectus on Tuesday. Some will also be allocated towards research and development of advanced dynamic random access memory (DRAM), it added. South Korea's Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, and US-based Micron Technology. With investors such as Alibaba and Xiaomi after nine funding rounds, it has developed four generations of DRAM technology. It runs three 12-inch DRAM fabrication plants in Beijing, the capital, and at its headquarters at Hefei in the eastern province of Anhui. CXMT held a share of 4% of the global DRAM market in the second quarter, while Micron, SK Hynix and Samsung together controlled more than 90%, according to data from research firm Omdia cited in the prospectus. Nvidia's graphics processing units used in generative artificial intelligence applications. It aims to begin production by end-2026 at an HBM back-end packaging facility it is building in the commercial hub of Shanghai. The company expects revenue to surge as much as 140% year-on-year in 2025, driven by rising memory prices and higher sales volumes since July. CXMT projects it could turn profitable as early as 2026 depending on wafer shipments and average prices, after losses of 8.32 billion yuan in 2022, 16.3 billion yuan in 2023, and 7.1 billion yuan in 2024.

The chipmaker is also investing heavily in high-bandwidth memory (HBM), a specialised DRAM critical for advanced processors such as

Founded with state backing in 2016, CXMT spearheads China's efforts to gain a foothold in the global DRAM market, dominated by

It had a 2.3-billion-yuan loss in the first half of this year, the prospectus showed. – Reuters