How Intel's EMIB-T Could Challenge TSMC: Why MediaTek Is Making a US$5 Billion Bet

Hello everyone,

Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. (PSMC，力積電) founder and chairman Frank Huang（黃崇仁） passed away in his sleep around noon last Friday at the age of 77.

In the five trading days since the news broke, PSMC shares have surged 23%, outperforming even the broader rally in memory-related semiconductor stocks.

Out of respect for the deceased, I will not speculate on the reasons behind the market’s reaction. What is clear, however, is that the “key-man risk” so often associated with technology companies does not appear to have materialized at this long-established semiconductor manufacturer.

In fact, judging from Huang’s daily routine in recent years, he had already stepped back from the company’s day-to-day operations.

A PSMC executive told me that Huang routinely stayed up reading until around 5 a.m. and slept until noon. On the day he died, he simply never woke up, and it was a household employee who discovered him.

But why would he sleep until noon on a workday?

According to the executive, Huang had always been a night owl. He also lived in a luxury residence opposite Taipei Arena, just a few minutes’ drive from PSMC’s Taipei office. Whenever something urgent came up, company staff could reach him quickly, allowing him to maintain that schedule for many years.

A veteran semiconductor executive told me that Huang’s management style was defined by an exceptional willingness to take bold, high-stakes bets—an approach that would be difficult for a conventional professional manager to replicate.

That helps explain why longtime PSMC executive Brian Shieh（謝再居）, speaking at his first press conference after becoming acting chairman, emphasized that Huang had always maintained an “optimistic and open-minded” attitude toward market opportunities. As Huang’s deputy, Shieh said he had typically focused more on risk assessment and often served as the voice of caution.

Now that he has taken over, Shieh says PSMC’s management style will become “more conservative” and “less aggressive.”

PSMC’s management stressed that the company will continue to focus on three core business pillars: memory wafer foundry services, logic foundry services, and a third business developed over the past several years—semiconductor components used in advanced AI packaging, such as silicon interposers.

“This will become a very important new growth engine for the company,” management said.

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A senior semiconductor industry executive, however, cautioned that advanced packaging manufacturing requires equipment configurations that differ significantly from those used in conventional logic and memory foundry production.

As a result, some tools may become bottlenecks while others sit idle, meaning that taking on new orders can sometimes prove uneconomical. Existing wafer fabs may therefore not be well suited for such a transition.

Meanwhile, PSMC’s largest shareholder is Powerchip Innovation Investment Holding（力晶創新投資控股）, which owns a 17.73% stake and is controlled primarily by the Huang family. The family has already stated that it will not participate in the company’s management.

As a result, one venture capital executive believes the next chairman could prove difficult to find.

“I doubt anyone would dare take the chairman’s position,” he said, noting that the role involves personal guarantees tied to the company’s debt—responsibilities few professional managers would be willing to assume.

Back to this week’s newsletter.

One of last week’s biggest developments was that MediaTek（聯發科） and Unimicron（欣興）—the second- and eighth-largest listed companies in Taiwan by market capitalization—both broke with their longstanding reluctance to discuss EMIB-T, an advanced packaging technology with major implications for their future businesses.

During their earnings calls, both companies openly addressed the topic, revealing an extraordinary amount of new information.

Simply put, EMIB-T is Intel’s answer to CoWoS. Backed strongly by Google, the technology has rapidly gained momentum and is increasingly viewed as the most credible challenger to TSMC’s dominance in AI advanced packaging.

This week’s newsletter examines the latest developments surrounding a technology whose name may be even harder to pronounce than CoWoS—but which could reshape the global AI semiconductor landscape.

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