SoftBank Group Corp

Ganfeng Lithium

Ganfeng Lithium Co., Ltd., established in 2000 and headquartered in Xinyu, Jiangxi, China, is the largest lithium salt producer in China and the third largest worldwide. The company operates across the lithium battery supply chain, including lithium resource development, refining, battery manufacturing, and recycling. Ganfeng is dual-listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (002460) and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (1772).

Arm

Arm is a Cambridge-based fabless chip designer whose CPU, GPU, and NPU blueprints are licensed to hundreds of semiconductor partners, powering roughly 99% of the world's smartphones, as well as an expanding range of data center, automotive and edge-AI devices.

SambaNova Systems

SambaNova Systems is a California-based startup building proprietary AI chips to compete with GPUs. The firm was founded in 2017 with the mission to deliver an enterprise-scale, full-stack AI platform that accelerates the development and deployment of state-of-the-art generative and deep learning workloads. It is known for creating the Reconfigurable Dataflow Unit (RDU).

Graphcore

Graphcore is a UK-based semiconductor chip designer that develops accelerators and data center systems for AI and machine learning. Its main innovation is a novel processor called the IPU (Intelligence Processing Unit), an architecture designed from the ground up to specifically tackle machine learning workloads. As of 2024, it is a subsidiary of Softbank.

1NCE

1NCE offers connectivity services for low-bandwidth IoT devices in industrial automation, healthcare, automotive, consumer electronics, and infrastructure applications. IDTechEx spoke with Reika Ina, Sales Manager for 1NCE, at NEPCON Japan 2025 in Tokyo.

Which AI Hardware Will Rise Above in the Wake of Competing AI Models?

The grip of AI has continued to hold, with strong competition to develop more powerful AI models, active innovation in the semiconductor industry, and continued investment in the High-Performance Computing (HPC) data center market. Artificial Intelligence has been a hot topic, particularly since generative AI's introduction with large language models (LLMs). In today's landscape, there is an ever-growing plethora of generative AI applications, not limited to generating images, videos, code, and data.

Road to 6G: The Emerging Low-Loss Materials Enabling Future Telecoms

As the world awaits the full take-off of the next generation of telecommunication technologies, 5G, important stakeholders are preparing for the future of future telecommunications - 6G. This may seem premature, given that deployment of 5G infrastructure and base stations are not nearly at their peak yet.

Wiliot

Wiliot offers battery-free smart tags and an associated software ecosystem for tracking objects both in supply chains and after purchase. IDTechEx caught up with Chief Marketing Officer Steve Statler to find out more about the latest developments.

MmWave Development in 2023: Where's It Going & What Are the Challenges

Three years after 5G was officially commercialized, while most of the deployments are primarily focused on 5G mid-band, the development of 5G mmWave technology has also been underway. 5G mmWave, operating in high-frequency bands between 24-100 GHz, offers faster data transfer rates, low latency, and higher bandwidth compared to the previous wireless technology.

Zume

Zume develops fully automated molded fiber manufacturing technology that is compatible with various plant fibers.