China advanced packaging maker SJ Semiconductor starts US$1.5bn 3DIC project for AI chips

SJ Semiconductor’s $1.5B 3DIC facility in Shanghai’s Yangshan marks China’s strategic pivot from packaging capacity expansion to technological self-reliance. This move will catalyze domestic demand for high-density interposers, TSV processes, and hybrid bonding equipment, forcing upstream material and inspection vendors to compress qualification cycles. With U.S.-Dutch export controls tightening on lithography tools, advanced packaging has become a critical bypass—but Washington may leverage CHIPS Act ancillary clauses to pressure overseas customers, inflating compliance overhead. TSMC and ASE will likely accelerate CoWoS/FOCoS capacity shifts to Arizona and Malaysia to reassure North American AI clients. Over the next 18 months, global 3DIC manufacturing will bifurcate: subsidy-driven localized clusters versus geopolitically neutral flexible supply nodes. Without parallel breakthroughs in EDA toolchains and thermal co-design, China’s scale advantage in packaging may not translate into system-level leadership.