Taiwan and South Korea's Chip Sectors Face Energy Crunch Amid Strait of Hormuz Disruption

Gate News message, April 29 — Taiwan and South Korea’s semiconductor industries, which account for 60% of global chip manufacturing and 70% of the memory chip market respectively, face a critical energy vulnerability as oil and gas shipments through the Strait of Hormuz remain disrupted since the start of the US-Iran conflict in February. Both countries import 95% and 94% of their energy respectively, creating a single point of failure that threatens production expansion even as global demand for AI chips accelerates. Chipmakers like TSMC and SK Hynix are simultaneously pressured by major tech buyers demanding carbon-neutral supply chains, forcing them to expand production while cutting emissions.

In funding news, Singapore-based ecommerce data firm Cube secured US$3.7 million in Series A funding led by Hong Kong’s Betatron. The company aims to solve fragmented sales data sharing between ecommerce platforms and brands by aggregating signals from public listings, receipts, and payments into sales estimates and category growth insights.

Elsewhere: OpenAI and Microsoft ended their exclusive partnership model, allowing OpenAI to offer services via other cloud providers including Amazon Web Services, while Microsoft ceases revenue-sharing arrangements on OpenAI products resold on Azure. Chinese chipmaker Montage posted record Q1 net profit of US$124 million, up 61% year-on-year, driven by increased AI infrastructure chip shipments. UK AI startup Ineffable raised US$1.1 billion in a seed round, reportedly the largest in Europe, founded by former Google DeepMind researcher David Silver. Autonomous vehicle firms WeRide and Pony AI are expanding robotaxi fleets globally, with WeRide planning to deploy approximately 200,000 autonomous vehicles worldwide over five years through a partnership with Lenovo.