AI boom, profit surge fuel China’s ambitious chip assembly buildout

China's leading semiconductor packaging and testing firms are investing billions of dollars in capacity expansion, buoyed by surging artificial intelligence demand, impressive first-half profit growth, and Beijing's drive for technological self-sufficiency. In the first half of this year, China's three top outsourced chip packaging companies - Jiangsu Changjiang Electronics Technology, Tongfu Microelectronics, and Huatian Technology - announced investments totaling more than 15 billion yuan (US$2.2 billion) to scale their advanced packaging for AI accelerators.

This surge reflects how advanced packaging techniques, such as 2.5D, 3D stacking and chiplet architectures, have become crucial as physical limitations restrict traditional silicon scaling under Moore's Law. China's domestic champions are also gaining an advantage from Beijing's push for self-reliance. These firms are reaping strong pricing power due to the high value of advanced packaging, with analysts noting that in Nvidia's B200 AI processor, the combined cost of CoWoS (Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate) packaging and testing is now comparable to advanced node wafer manufacturing.

Smaller domestic players are also capitalizing on this momentum, with SJ Semiconductor raising funds through an initial public offering and Forehope Electronic announcing a massive investment for its phase-three facility.