Nvidia Signs Six Suppliers to Expand Chip Substrates, Packaging and Testing
At GTC Berlin the chipmaker named Ibiden, Samsung Electro-Mechanics, Unimicron, Amkor, KYEC and SPIL, with prepaid reservations and a plan to raise substrate capacity 2.5 times.
Outspoken Digest Technology Desk
Friday, October 23, 2026/2 min read
The scarce part of an AI accelerator is no longer only the silicon. Nvidia said on 21 October, at its GTC Berlin event, that it is working with six suppliers to expand the slower, less glamorous steps around the chip: the substrates the dies sit on, advanced packaging, final testing and the optical engines used for co-packaged optics, according to Nvidia's announcement.
Chief executive Jensen Huang called it "the largest infrastructure buildout in human history" and said capacity, not demand, is the limiting factor. The stated aim is also a more resilient and redundant supply chain.
Which companies did Nvidia name, and what will each build?
The release lists six partners. Ibiden of Japan gets what Nvidia calls a multibillion-dollar capacity reservation advance for its Ono plant, with a target of three times today's capacity and extra output ramping from the first quarter of 2028. Samsung Electro-Mechanics of South Korea joins Nvidia's substrate supply chain, starting with existing Korean capacity and adding new factories in Sejong and Busan. Unimicron of Taiwan has a reservation agreement for its expansion, with new capacity starting in the second quarter of 2027 and reaching full output by mid-2028.
Amkor Technology plans to raise its interposer wafer capacity in South Korea by more than 300 percent by the end of 2028. King Yuan Electronics (KYEC) will build new test facilities in the United States, backed by a $1.1 billion reservation advance from Nvidia, with high-volume production targeted for April 2027. SPIL, the Taiwanese packaging firm, aims for a 15-fold rise in optical-engine capacity by mid-2027 and a further doubling by the end of 2028.
How big is the planned expansion?
Nvidia says the three substrate deals are part of a 2.5-fold increase in substrate capacity over three years. It expects total semiconductor testing capacity to double from calendar 2026 to 2027, with build-outs in the United States, Taiwan and Singapore, and says Singapore testing volume starts in February 2027. The release does not name the Singapore operator.
The KYEC piece fits an earlier move. In July, KYEC said it would invest up to $1.4 billion in a United States facility, Reuters reported through The Star, without disclosing the site or a construction timetable. Nvidia's release does not say how its $1.1 billion advance relates to that figure, and neither does the earlier report.
Why do substrates and testing matter for AI chips?
A leading-edge accelerator is a package of several dies, memory stacks and an interposer, mounted on a substrate and tested at length before shipping. A shortage at any of those steps holds up finished systems however many wafers a foundry turns out. By paying in advance to reserve capacity, Nvidia is trading cash for supply certainty, and by naming several suppliers per step it is also trying to avoid depending on one.
The release gives no financial terms beyond the KYEC figure, and the Ibiden advance is described only as multibillion-dollar. The dates that matter run from February 2027 in Singapore to April 2027 at KYEC and mid-2027 at SPIL. Whether those suppliers hit them will say more about the pace of AI hardware next year than any single chip announcement.
Published in The Outspoken Digest
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Outspoken Digest Technology DeskSoftware, hardware, artificial intelligence and what they change for everyone else.
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