TSMC Bets 400 Trillion Won on U.S. in Chip Supremacy Gambit

*Editor's Note: 'AI PRISM' (Personalized Report & Insight Summarizing Media) is an AI-based personalized news recommendation and summarization service developed with support from the Korea Press Foundation. It selects and provides six customized news items by reader type.

1. TSMC: "We'll Build 12 Fabs in U.S. Even at 5 Times the Cost — Won't Cede Ground to Rivals"

- Key Summary: TSMC has confirmed its Arizona investment at a total of $265 billion (about 397.5 trillion won), deciding to build 12 facilities including 10 semiconductor wafer fabs (production plants), two advanced packaging facilities, and one research and development (R&D) center. TSMC Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Wendell Huang stressed, "We have no intention of ceding the market to any competitor," and said profitable growth is possible as long as the AI megatrend continues. A revenue structure in which North America accounts for 78% of total revenue, along with U.S. political concerns over national security regarding Taiwan-based chip production, is interpreted as having factored jointly into this investment expansion. Huang acknowledged that construction costs for U.S. plants are four to five times higher than in Taiwan, making initial margin dilution unavoidable, but maintained that it will ultimately contribute to the development of the U.S. semiconductor ecosystem.

2. Samsung-Nvidia 'NAND Alliance' Expands... "V10 Supply Begins"

- Key Summary: Samsung Electronics has begun supplying 10th-generation V-NAND (V10) to Nvidia, expanding its alliance to the NAND flash area following DRAM, High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), and foundry. As demand grows for large-capacity solid-state drives (SSDs, high-speed storage devices) amid a surge in "key-value (KV) cache" data during AI inference at AI server data centers, the industry forecasts that related NAND demand will explode from 35 million terabytes (TB) this year to more than 100 million TB next year, ahead of Nvidia's launch of its next-generation storage device CMX (Context Memory Storage). Samsung is assessed to have entered a stabilized mass-production stage, with V-NAND production capacity of more than 100,000 wafers per month and a V9 yield of over 80%. Samsung Electronics Chairman Jay Y. Lee is reportedly planning to meet Nvidia Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jensen Huang in San Francisco soon to discuss the supply of HBM and next-generation NAND, as well as cooperation on building data centers in Korea.

3. Authorities Ultimately Intervene in Chairman Terms... Financial Holding CEOs Barred from Third Terms

- Key Summary: The Financial Services Commission (FSC) is set to announce around next week a plan to advance financial company corporate governance, containing measures to limit third terms for financial holding company chief executive officers (CEOs). The improvement plan being prepared by FSC Chairman Lee Eok-won is known to include a measure to elevate CEO reappointment to a matter requiring special resolution at shareholders' meetings, and it also pursues the introduction of a clawback system that recovers executive incentives when financial incidents occur, as well as a say-on-pay system that has executive compensation reviewed at shareholders' meetings. However, in the market, there are criticisms that authorities' intervention in a matter that should be decided by boards and shareholders based on performance amounts to excessive government control. Even a figure participating in the corporate governance advancement task force (TF) is known to have expressed the view that terms should be left to companies' autonomous judgment, saying, "There may be cases where a CEO who has achieved special results or bears responsibility needs a third term."

4. Lee Hae-jin Heads to Canada... Discusses 'AI Factory' Investment with Brookfield

- Key Summary: Naver's core management, including board chairman Lee Hae-jin, CEO Choi Soo-yeon, and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Kim Hee-cheol, will visit the Toronto, Canada headquarters of global alternative investment manager Brookfield. The industry views this visit as a move to secure trillions of won in investment funds needed for the gigawatt (GW)-class AI factory being jointly pursued by Naver and Nvidia, and to firm up global AI infrastructure cooperation. An AI factory is a facility that integrates AI models and cloud technology atop graphics processing unit (GPU) servers, data centers, and power and cooling equipment to provide large-scale computing capacity. Brookfield launched an AI infrastructure investment program with Nvidia last year worth up to $100 billion (about 150 trillion won). An industry official predicted, "Given that the CFO is accompanying the group, the specific investment scale and method have likely effectively entered the final stage."

5. Gap with U.S. Narrowed to 'Weeks,' but China's AI Blocked by Power, Chip Walls

- Key Summary: Chinese startup Moonshot AI unveiled 'Kimi K3,' a large language model with 2.8 trillion parameters, but temporarily suspended new sign-ups as a surge in demand added strain to graphics processing units (GPUs). The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) analyzed that Kimi K3 outperformed top U.S. AI models in some benchmarks, narrowing the technology gap with the U.S. "from months to weeks." Meanwhile, there are also points that a shortage of computing power, due to restricted access to advanced chips and equipment as a result of U.S. export controls, is blocking the expansion of Chinese AI's global competitiveness. Competition in China's AI industry is growing fiercer, with Alibaba Group also previewing a new model 'Qwen3.8' with 2.4 trillion parameters.

6. [Exclusive] DL Group (000210.KS) Winds Down 50-Year Auto Parts Business

- Key Summary: DL Group is pursuing the sale of DL Motors, an auto parts affiliate whose predecessor was Daelim Industrial, founded in 1978. Holding company DL Co. is individually contacting some domestic auto parts manufacturers as potential buyers, with a sale price in the mid-100 billion won range being mentioned. DL Motors recorded 345.1 billion won in revenue last year, but struggled to secure profitability, with operating profit at just 6 billion won. DL Group plans to use cash secured from this sale to advance the businesses of its core affiliates. DL Group is also simultaneously pursuing the sale of Cariflex, a synthetic rubber and latex manufacturer, so if the divestment of non-core assets is completed within the year, the reshaping of its business toward specialty (high-value-added) products is expected to gain speed.