Obscure material supply is tightening
Reports say supply of a critical chip material—ironically tied to a food‑flavouring company—is running dangerously low, creating an obscure upstream bottleneck for chip makers. The story highlights that some semiconductor inputs come from a very small number of specialty suppliers. (wccftech.com)
A thin insulating film made by Ajinomoto, the Japanese company best known for monosodium glutamate, is emerging as a tight supply point for advanced chip packaging. (ajinomoto.com) Ajinomoto Build-up Film, or ABF, sits inside the substrate that links a chip to the circuit board, and Ajinomoto says it is used in high-performance central processing units and servers. The company’s own materials call ABF a benchmark component in most personal computers and a key insulator for complex substrates. (ajinomoto.com) The new pressure is coming from artificial intelligence servers. DigiTimes reported on April 8 that larger artificial intelligence and high-performance computing chips are pushing up substrate size and layer counts, while upstream materials including glass fiber cloth remain constrained. (digitimes.com) Ajinomoto has already moved to add supply. A March 2025 Nikkei report, cited by TrendForce and other outlets, said the company plans to invest at least 25 billion yen, about 166 million dollars, by 2030 to raise ABF capacity by 50%. (trendforce.com) Ajinomoto told investors that demand is being driven not just by personal computers and conventional servers, but by artificial intelligence, communications, and other high-performance computing uses. In the same briefing, the company said it is making growth investments aimed at stable ABF supply through 2030. (ajinomoto.co.jp) The bottleneck is obscure because ABF is not the finished substrate and not the chip itself. It is one specialty layer inside the packaging stack, but without that layer, the high-density wiring used by advanced processors cannot be built to spec. (ajinomoto.com) The supply chain is also narrow after the film leaves Ajinomoto. Industry tracking cited by Intel Market Research says Unimicron, Ibiden, AT&S, Nan Ya PCB, and Shinko Electric Industries collectively account for 74% of the ABF substrate market. (intelmarketresearch.com) Ajinomoto has described ABF as the de facto standard in this segment, and outside analysts have put its share of ABF film for advanced processors above 95%. That concentration means even modest demand errors or factory disruptions can ripple into chip output months later. (ajinomoto.com) (jakotaindex.com) That is why a company associated with soup stock and seasonings keeps showing up in semiconductor supply discussions. The next constraint on artificial intelligence chips may not be silicon at all, but the insulating film buried underneath it. (wccftech.com)
