A test for chip testing and SoftBank's stumble

Nikkei Asia | March 19, 2026, 5:57 a.m. | Original

Hello everyone, it's Cissy, bringing you another AI-heavy #techAsia newsletter from Hong Kong this week.

Everything is about artificial intelligence these days, and you're seen as lagging behind if you aren't talking about it. Earlier this week, I had dinner with a fellow journalist visiting from the mainland, and we discussed how our overlapping beats have shifted. He even suggested that interest in sectors like e-commerce is starting to fade as AI takes center stage.

Despite having zero coding experience, he got swept up in the recent OpenClaw craze in China . Using Claude as his guide, he successfully installed OpenClaw on his devices and even built a personal Telegram bot that delivers the day's freshest tech news straight to him. He instructed the bot to assign a score to each story based on its importance and explain why it matters. I tried the bot he made, and honestly, I have to say I was very impressed.

Even at this week's Hong Kong FILMART, Asia's largest entertainment marketplace, the spotlight belonged almost entirely to AI. From panel discussions to exhibition booths, the presence of the technology was overwhelming. Leading video-generation platforms like MiniMax's Hailuo AI and Kuaishou's Kling AI hosted packed sessions on how studios can slash costs and boost efficiency by deploying their user-friendly tools. For example, if you type in a prompt like "generate a short promotional video/ad of a dog choosing its own dog food in a pet store," within moments, you'll have a 15-second promotional clip localized into multiple languages.

But while the applications of AI keep evolving and the global appetite for more powerful chips keeps growing, the supply chain of the semiconductor industry, from chip testing to memory chip production, is scrambling to keep pace.

Test, test ...

Chip testing companies are scrambling to keep pace with a surge in demand, as the AI boom fuels global appetite for more powerful semiconductors, industry executives told Nikkei Asia's Cheng Ting-Fang .

Testing is essential to ensure that each step of the chip manufacturing process meets strict quality standards. With chip structures becoming increasingly complex, quality control is becoming more important than ever, several senior chip executives say, leading to an increase in the number and sophistication of testing steps .

The result: a windfall for the testing ecosystem. Advantest, the world's largest chip testing equipment supplier, expects record results for the fiscal year ending March 2026, forecasting a 37% jump in revenue and more than a doubling of net profit. U.S. peer Teradyne has posted a strong revenue rebound, while Taiwan's Chroma ATE reported record revenue and earnings for 2025.

Shares of all three companies have more than tripled over the past year.

School's in

At a new 12,000 sq. meter facility in Wuhan, young Chinese graduates spend their days piloting humanoid robots serving steamed buns, wiping down tables and folding laundry, writes the Financial Times' Ryan McMorrow .

Every movement the machines make inside the 200 million yuan ($29 million) laboratory's mock kitchens and bedrooms is tracked and recorded by cameras and sensors. The Hubei Humanoid Robot Innovation Center is one of dozens of state-funded robot training farms that have popped up across China to build a vast pool of robot-specific training data .

"We're like teachers and the robots are our students," said Zhang Jia, a 21-year-old program manager at the site. "When you teach a human, they get it after a few repetitions. But teaching a robot is different, you have to repeat actions hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of times."

Officials hope that amassing such data will help the country's nascent humanoid robotics industry overcome key challenges facing AI as it moves beyond software into the physical world.

The push is part of President Xi Jinping's drive to make China the world's foremost science and technology superpower. Earlier this month, Beijing identified "embodied intelligence" as one of six future industries to foster in its 2026-30 five-year plan, calling for the development of training centers, AI models and hardware to accelerate the rollout of humanoid robots.

SoftBank's stumble

As a major investor in ChatGPT developer OpenAI, SoftBank Group was thought to be at the forefront of the artificial intelligence boom. But in recent months, that relationship has become its Achilles' heel, leaving Masayoshi Son's conglomerate struggling to keep up with both the global tech sector and Japanese equities lifted by the "Takaichi trade," writes Nikkei Asia's Jada Nagumo .

SoftBank shares have stumbled in recent months , falling nearly 50% after hitting a record high in October and missing out on the global AI-driven tech rally. By contrast, Japan's broader market has edged higher; the Nikkei 225 is up over 4% over the same period.

Experts say the quick reversal is due to concerns over OpenAI's potential overextension and rising competition from Gemini. The race among U.S. chatbots has also been impacted by the growing battlefield role of AI amid the Iran conflict.

The crunch goes on

A global memory chip shortage could persist through 2030, as suppliers struggle to keep up with surging AI-driven demand, according to Tae-won Chey, chairman of SK Group, who added that the industry will need at least four to five years to expand wafer capacity .

Rising demand for AI chips has already driven up memory prices, with SK Hynix prioritizing higher-value products such as high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for customers including Nvidia.

When asked by Nikkei Asia's Yifan Yu on the sidelines of Nvidia's GTC event in San Jose, California, if the chipmaker was planning to expand its overseas manufacturing footprint, Chey said the company will focus on new plants in South Korea for now, as finding enough electricity and water resources remains the main hurdle for overseas expansion.

Podcast: Tech Latest

China prepares for AI-powered economy in new 5-year plan

Welcome to the Tech Latest podcast. Hosted by our tech coverage veterans, Katey Creel and Shotaro Tani, every Tuesday we deliver the hottest trends and news from the sector.

In this episode, Shotaro speaks with Shanghai correspondent Wataru Suzuki about the growing role of AI and other tech in China's new five-year plan .

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