Surging AI demand turns CoWoS into a headache; securing packaging capacity becomes top priority, says MediaTek deputy GM

MediaTek's elevation of CoWoS capacity to top priority reveals a structural shift: AI chip competition has migrated from design capability to packaging access rights. TSMC's CoWoS lines function as a scarce bandwidth allocator—NVIDIA and AMD have already consumed the bulk of 2025 capacity, leaving MediaTek as a structurally disadvantaged late entrant. The bottleneck cascades upstream into ABF substrates (Ibiden, Unimicron) and HBM stacking, while downstream it compresses scheduling for conventional mobile SoC packaging. Designed but unbuildable is becoming the operating reality for second-tier AI chip players. Strategically, if MediaTek fails to secure sufficient CoWoS slots by Q3 2025, its AI accelerator roadmap slips, and the head-on collision with Qualcomm in data-center inference chips gets pushed to 2026. TSMC's capacity allocation has effectively become the industry's hidden pricing mechanism. Over the next 12 to 24 months, CoWoS-L and SoIC ramp-up will partially ease the constraint, but large-format ABF substrates remain the hard ceiling. Expect MediaTek to accelerate long-term agreements with Unimicron and Ibiden, while quietly evaluating Intel's Foveros as a secondary supply source despite meaningful yield risk.