▲ AI PRISM* Personalized Economic Briefing
* Editor’s note: AI PRISM (Personalized Report & Insight Summarizing Media) is an AI-based personalized news recommendation and summary service developed with support from the Korea Press Foundation. It selects and provides six news items tailored to each reader type.
■ Memory Structure Innovation: Samsung Electronics (005930) has moved away from the race to stack chips ever higher, presenting technology that optimizes the placement of logic and memory as its decisive card for next-generation artificial intelligence chips. The plan is to change the paradigm of three-dimensional memory through structural innovation that fundamentally reduces data processing latency, and a product roadmap extending to eighth-generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM5) and zHBM was presented alongside it.
■ China’s Accelerating Pursuit: China’s largest memory company, ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), has begun producing HBM3E on a small scale, drawing assessments that it has narrowed the technology gap with the memory Big Three to a single generation. Restrictions on purchases of advanced equipment and low yields remain obstacles, however, and the actual gap with the front-runners is still cited at three to five years.
■ Weak Yen and Fiscal Concerns: Japanese government bond yields surged to their highest level in 30 years as market skepticism deepened over the Takaichi cabinet’s expansionary fiscal policy, described as spending without growth. With the yen-dollar exchange rate again crossing the 160-yen line, the United States has also begun pressing the Bank of Japan to raise rates as a means of defending the currency.
[News of Interest to Financial Product Investors]
1. Samsung Declares It Will Break AI Chip Limits Through Optimized Logic-Memory Placement
– Key summary: At SEMICON Taiwan 2026 in Taipei, Samsung Electronics presented technology for optimizing the placement of logic and memory semiconductors as its core card for breaking through the performance limits of next-generation AI chips. Choi Jang-seok, senior vice president and head of the product planning team at Samsung Electronics’ memory business division, announced the CUBE strategy — an acronym drawn from capacity, optimization, bandwidth and power-thermal efficiency — in a keynote speech at the Memory Executive Summit. The detailed strategy includes vertical expansion that does not increase circuit board area, shorter distances between dies, and minimized energy for data movement. Samsung is developing the eighth-generation HBM5, which doubles the performance of the seventh-generation HBM4E, and is also preparing zHBM, which cuts thermal resistance by up to 90%, and zNAND-O, a hybrid solution specialized for large language models (LLMs).
2. China’s CXMT Produces HBM3E in Small Volumes; Alibaba Affiliates Expected to Adopt It
– Key summary: China’s largest memory company, CXMT, has already begun producing HBM3E, an advanced HBM product, on a small scale, information technology outlet The Information reported on the 31st of last month. T-Head, a chip design firm under Alibaba, and Cambricon Technologies are testing the product in their own processors, and if plans hold, related products could reach the market early next year. CXMT plans to invest the $8.6 billion (about 11.8 trillion won) raised through its listing on the Shanghai stock exchange last month into expanding production. The United States has restricted exports of advanced HBM to China since 2024, however, and CXMT also faces low yields, leaving its technology gap with leading companies at a reported three to five years.
3. Skepticism Over Japan’s Spending Without Growth; Bond Yields Top 3% for First Time in 30 Years
– Key summary: Japan’s 10-year government bond yield reached 3% at one point on the 1st, its highest level since September 1996 and the highest in 30 years. Budget requests for fiscal 2027 total a record roughly 143 trillion yen (about 1,224 trillion won). Fiscal soundness concerns have grown as the Takaichi cabinet removed the budget ceiling and pushed a consumption tax cut on food, but no concrete plan has emerged to fund the estimated annual revenue shortfall of 4 trillion to 5 trillion yen. Real gross domestic product growth in the second quarter of this year, meanwhile, came in at an annualized 1.1%, below both the previous quarter and market expectations, with the yen weakening past the 160-per-dollar line again.
[Reference News for Financial Product Investors]
4. U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent Meets Japan’s Economic Chiefs: ‘Japan Needs a Rate Hike’
– Key summary: U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is reported to have met Japanese Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama and Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda in succession and called for an increase in the policy rate. The talks took place on the occasion of the Group of 20 meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors held in Asheville, North Carolina. Japan’s Ministry of Finance said on the 29th of last month that it had deployed a record 15.4 trillion yen (about 132 trillion won) over one month to defend the yen, but the supporting effect did not last long. In addition, with U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh delivering hawkish remarks at the Jackson Hole meeting, downward pressure on the yen from a widening U.S.-Japan rate gap could intensify.
5. Retail Investors Return to KOSDAQ, Filling the Space Foreigners Left
– Key summary: Retail investors net bought 2.1582 trillion won on the KOSDAQ market last month, shifting to net buying after net selling in June and July. Foreign investors, by contrast, net sold 1.8413 trillion won, moving in the opposite direction, and about 294.5 billion won of retail money concentrated in semiconductor-related stocks including Jeju Semiconductor (080220), Hana Micron (067310), VM (089970) and Tes (095610). The KOSDAQ index rose 15.91% from 719.76 at the end of July to 834.29 at the end of last month, outpacing the KOSPI’s 3.40% gain over the same period by 12.51 percentage points. Combined revenue at KOSDAQ-listed companies in the first half of this year rose 23.6% from a year earlier to 216 trillion won, with improving earnings cited as the backdrop for the strength.
6. Pension Money Grows Bond-Mixed ETFs Past 20 Trillion Won
– Key summary: Net assets of domestic bond-mixed exchange-traded funds (ETFs) totaled 20.5792 trillion won as of the 31st of last month, topping 20 trillion won for the first time. That is up 156.5% from 8.0239 trillion won at the end of last year, and roughly eight times the level at the end of 2024, in less than two years. Under current rules, defined contribution (DC) plans and individual retirement pension (IRP) accounts face a 70% cap on risky-asset investment, but bond-mixed ETFs with equity weightings of 50% or less are classified as safe assets and are not subject to a separate cap. As a result, a product lineup once centered on benchmark indexes is rapidly expanding into semiconductors, automobiles, space technology and commodities such as gold and silver.
