According to its CEO, IBIDEN is a major supplier of chip kit substrates used in NVIDIA’s cutting-edge semiconductors and may need to call for increased production capacity to meet demand at a speed.
CEO Koji Kawashima said the 112-year-old company’s AI-using matrix sales are strong prices with purchases of all the same as everyone on the same page, adding that this demand may continue until at least next year.
Kawashima said Ibiden will build a new substrate plant in GIFU prefecture in central Japan, which is expected to go online at 25% production capacity around the last quarter of 2025, before reaching by March 2026. 50%. But that may not be enough. The company is talking about when to get the remaining 50% capacity online.
“Our clients are worried,” he said in an interview. “We have been asked about our next investment and our next capability expansion.”
Ibiden’s shares rose 5.5% in Tokyo on Monday, and they’ve seen the biggest intraday growth in more than a month.
According to data compiled by Bloomberg, Ibiden’s customers include Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, Samsung Electronics and Taiwan’s semiconductor manufacturing industry, and NVIDIA. Many of them consulted early on with Japanese companies because the substrate (which helps to transfer signals from semiconductors to circuit boards) needed to be tailored for each chip. The substrate must be made to withstand the heat of the NVIDIA graphics processing unit to form an AI chip package with components such as memory.
Founded in 1912 in 1912, Ibiden, through a partnership with Intel, waits daily in front of Santa Clara Company to stop engineers and executives. The semiconductor expertise was developed by the cessation of product feedback in the early 1990s. At one point, Intel accounts for 70% to 80% of Ibiden’s revenue suite of chips. In the fiscal year ending March, U.S. chipmakers struggled to execute a twist, recently ousting CEO Pat Gelsinger, which fell to around 30%.
Reliance on Intel has hurt Ibiden’s stock, down about 40% this year. In October, ibiden’s demand for components used in general servers slowly outperformed the growth associated with AI servers, thus modifying its profit outlook. But despite pointing out that it is important to expand business with chip makers outside of Intel, Kawashima said he is confident Intel will rebound.
“Intel’s overall technology is very complex,” the 61-year-old said. “Intel raised us and opened many doors. Our relationship with Intel will always be our treasure, and Intel will always be an important customer.”
Kavahima said that as many foreign chip makers are reluctant to transfer their latest technology to the U.S., Intel could play a key role in Washington’s goal to improve cutting-edge semiconductor production capacity. Ibiden itself has no manufacturing facilities in the United States. Kawashima said it has no plans to build any plans due to the costs of labor and logistics, regardless of the plans of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to impose tariffs on a wide range of products.
Now, all of NVIDIA’s AI semiconductors use Ibiden’s substrates, although Taiwanese competitors such as Unimicron Technology are focusing on the field. But, according to Toyo Securities analyst Hideki Yasuda, it is not easy to break the same-to-superior position.
“NVIDIA’s AI chips require complex substrates, and Ibiden is the only matrix that can be mass-produced with good production output,” he said. “Taiwan competitors will not be able to take a loose share.”
AI semiconductor revenue exceeds more than 15% of Ibiden’s sales of sales of about 370 billion yen (USD 2.3 billion or about Rs 19.6673 crore), and that percentage is expected to rise further. Nvidia’s said it has begun to fully produce its next-generation Blackwell chips after experiencing some initial technical challenges.
In the long run, NVIDIA may face competition from dedicated chips from Marvell Technology Inc. and Broadcom Inc. and internal silicon from Alphabet’s Google and Microsoft. In theory, looseness should be able to accommodate them, as the AI chip packaging is designed and materials may still be similar to Nvidia’s.
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