HANMI Semiconductor said on the 15th that it will make a full-fledged entry into the U.S. semiconductor market by establishing its local subsidiary "Hanmi USA" at the end of this year. The company also projected that, backed by steadily rising demand for global artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductors, its results will surge starting in the second quarter.
Chairman Gwak Dong-shin of HANMI Semiconductor said, "As mass production of HBM4 gets underway in earnest this year, orders for TC (thermo-compression) bonders are concentrating in the second quarter, and this trend will accelerate in the second half," adding, "HANMI Semiconductor's TC bonder, which holds the No. 1 global market share, will benefit even more as the AI Semiconductor market expands."
At the end of this year, HANMI Semiconductor will establish its local subsidiary Hanmi USA in San Jose, California, actively responding to U.S. market demand. HANMI Semiconductor plans to use the San Jose subsidiary as an integrated operations hub and provide rapid technical support.
The company said the establishment of Hanmi USA is meaningful in that it realizes, after half a century, HANMI Semiconductor's founding spirit of "serving as a bridgehead between Korea and the United States." HANMI Semiconductor's starting point traces back to the late founding chairman Gwak No-gwon, who began with the technology he built over 14 years at Motorola in the United States starting in 1967, and then founded HANMI Semiconductor in Korea, which at the time was barren ground for the semiconductor equipment industry.
The recent wave of large-scale semiconductor manufacturing investments in the United States is expected to enable HANMI Semiconductor to participate directly in the U.S. government-led AI Semiconductor supply chain and serve as a major tailwind going forward.
The company also said HANMI Semiconductor's establishment of a U.S. subsidiary is meaningful in building a direct collaboration framework with global hyperscaler corporations, which are the end users. Recently, as Microsoft, Google, Amazon (AWS) and Meta develop their own AI Semiconductors, there are more cases in which they directly review and designate the high-performance memory to be installed and the key equipment used in the manufacturing process. As a result, demand for packaging equipment for hyperscalers is expected to increase.
Beyond HBM TC bonders, HANMI Semiconductor plans to drive sales growth with a range of equipment. The "2.5D TC Bonder 40" and "2.5D TC Bonder 120," 2.5D packaging equipment for AI Semiconductors, are slated for supply this year to foundries and OSAT corporations, and the "BOC COB Bonder," launched early this year as a world first, has begun shipments to global memory corporations and is expected to contribute to sales growth alongside expanding demand from AI and data centers, the company said.
Chairman Gwak said, "Through the local U.S. subsidiary, we plan to provide proactive, close support for our customers' needs at short range," adding, "In the United States, which is emerging as a global semiconductor production base, we expect full-fledged equipment orders alongside new plant operations and foresee continued sales growth going forward."