Critical and emerging technologies news coverage, globally in May of 2025 obviously covered a huge range of applications, concerns, challenges and successes.
These included, for instance: Europe’s $78 billion tech fundraise; TSMC targets new facility for Germany; Vietnam’s Danang City’s $69 million semiconductor industry bid; SpaceX and OneWeb for South Korea’s satellite communications; China’s new modules for the Tiangong space station; and many more, covering supply chains, critical minerals, logistics, sanctions and more.
MIT Quantum Index Report 2025
- European Investment Bank is working on a project to boost European capabilities on artificial intelligence and semiconductors, aiming to raise $78BN by 2027 / full item
- imec semiconductor R&D firm proposes reconfigurable chip architectures to avoid bottlenecks for future generations of artificial intelligence systems / full item
- Indonesia’s investment mgmt agency, Danantara, and Indonesia Investment Authority ink MoU with France’s Eramet mining firm to explore nickel sector strategic investment platform / full item
- ‘China’s dying EV batteries, solar cells are powering a circular economy in new-energy era’ / full item
“BeiDou, China’s version of GPS, now being used over 1 trillion times per day” / full item
- ‘China’s SMIC may have used older lithography gear to build Huawei’s new 5nm chip’ / full item
“The Trump administration has told US companies that offer software used to design semiconductors to stop selling their services to Chinese groups…” Via the Financial Times: / full item
- Taiwan’s TSMC is to open a chip design centre in Germany ‘which could at a later date help develop chips for applications including artificial intelligence’ / full item
- China: Sugon ‘supercomputer’ maker and Hygon chip designer, leading entities in the computing supply chain, have announced merger plans / full item
Video: Every Orbital Rocket Launch – 1957-2024 / on YouTube
- China: Huawei is pushing its Ascend AI chip-based, high-performance ‘Supernode 384’ architecture as a rival to NVIDIA system for alleviating data center processing bottlenecks / full item
- China: Xiaomi tech giant claims new Xring 01 mobile phone chip rivals Apple on some performance metrics, whilst delivering a complete phone at a lower price / full item
China “could take legal action against any individual or organisation assisting or implementing US measures that advise companies against using advanced semiconductors from China.” / full item
- China: Xiaomi is reportedly preparing to invest up to $6.9BN over the next 10 years to develop its own mobile processors, following on from recent roll-out of Xring O1 chip / full item
- Vietnam: Danang city seeks investors for $69.3M semiconductor chip lab, focusing on advanced packaging / full item
- ‘India’s Semiconductor Aspirations: Scanning the Horizon’ from the Observer Research Foundation / full item
Vietnam: “The Ministry of Education and Training has issued a decision on the Standard Curriculum for Semiconductor Microchip Training at the undergraduate and master’s levels.” / full item
- NVIDIA CEO outlined plans to allow customers to deploy rival chips in data centers built around NVIDIA technology, recognizing in-house chips from clients including Microsoft / full item
- NVIDIA is to send 18,000 of its top AI chips to Saudi Arabia’s Humain, a company owned by the Saudi Public Investment Fund / full item
- NVIDIA has unveiled the Blackwell Ultra AI chip, developed for the ‘age of AI reasoning’ / full item
- China: Xiaomi smartphone giant is to launch its self-developed XringO1 mobile chip in late May, moving further into advanced chip production / full item
RISC-V tech: “…an expected flip from license-driven revenue to royalty-driven revenue from RISC-V around 2027, and even sooner if penetration into data centers intensifies.” / full item
- South Korea: Samsung is reportedly close to securing major 2nm chip orders from majors including NVIDIA and Qualcomm as a result of yield improvements / full item
- “Meet China’s newest and most powerful Chinese domestic solution, the CloudMatrix 384 built using the Ascend 910C… in some metrics is more advanced than NVIDIA’s rack scale solution” / full item
Video: ‘How ASML Makes Chips Faster With Its New $400 Million High NA Machine’ / on YouTube
- Huawei CloudMatrix 384: Built using the Ascend 910C, competing directly with NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 and, on some metrics, more advanced than NVIDIA’s rack-scale solution / full item
- Taiwan: Government approves 6 semiconductor industry investment cases including $81M injection by ASML and NT$2.27 billion increase by Japan’s Sumitomo Corp / full item
- SpaceX and Europe’s OneWeb partner to launch satellite communication services in South Korea / full item
- China: Space Epoch, aka Beijing Jianyuan Technology, completed China’s first sea-based vertical landing of a reusable rocket / full item
- China: MinoSpace commercial satellite manufacturer wins major contract to build remote sensing sat constellation for Sichuan Province / full item
“Chinese researchers have cracked a barrier to the home-grown production of advanced chips by building an extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light source platform…” / full item
- South Korean satellite launch firm, INNOSPACE, inks MoU with US firm, Saturn Satellite Networks, to jointly develop next-gen sats, commercialise complementary products, and more / full item
- Western Australian Government invites local organisations in the space industry to submit an EOI to join its delegation to the International Astronautical Congress in Sydney in September / full item
- India: Space agency mission to launch new Earth observation satellite into orbit failed after the launch vehicle encountered a technical issue during the third flight stage / full item
- China is to launch new modules for the Tiangong space station, believed to be in preparation for expanding science activities, and international partnerships / full item
- China launched the first 12 of 2800 satellites intended for on-orbit ‘AI space computing’ constellation / full item
- China Academy of Launch Vehicle Tech moves ahead with development of prototype 5-meter and 10.6-meter-diameter stainless steel propellant tanks for super heavy-lift rockets / full item
- Taiwan: Chunghwa Telecom is in talks with Project Kuiper and Canada’s Telesat around satellite communications, building on OneWeb and Astranis deals – but has ruled out Starlink / full item
- Taiwan: Government launches 2025 edition of ‘Run Space Innovation Challenge’ to gather solutions and creative ideas for the space and satellite industries – submissions by June 30th / full item
Int’l Energy Agency: Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2025
- Malaysia: Port Klang Free Zone unveils PKFZ 2.0 masterplan, outlining vision to transform into a future-ready, smart logistics and industrial hub / full item
- PepsiCo unveils 10 startups selected for the 2025 Greenhouse Accelerator APAC Accelerator Program, each focused on aspects of the F&B ecosystem / full item
“China has launched its first commercial 10-Gigabit broadband network in Sunan County, Hebei Province, in collaboration with Huawei and China Unicom…” / full item
- Australia: NSW Government is calling on the state’s companies and research organisations to take part in the International Astronautical Congress 2025 – details here / full item
- Former Google CEO and Relativity Space look to place data centres directly into orbit, powered by solar energy / full item
Indonesia: “From China’s BYD to Vietnam’s VinFast, foreign EV investors in Indonesia are reportedly facing disruption from shadowy local enforcers” / full item
- “Samsung struggles with 3-nanometer process as China’s SMIC gains ground in 5-nanometers” / full item
- Can Huawei Take On NVIDIA’s CUDA, the Compute Unified Device Architecture? / full item
- India’s Dixon Technologies electronics manufacturer enters JV with Taiwan’s Inventec Corp to make notebook and desktop PC products including components and servers in India / full item
Cushman & Wakefield: Global Data Center Market Comparison 2025
