Samsung, SK, LG vie for glass substrate market in AI era

South Korea’s household names Samsung, SK and LG have entered a new race to win the glass substrate market set to surge in the artificial intelligence era, with its massive data processing demands.

According to semiconductor industry sources on Monday, Chey Tae-won, the chairman of SK Group, which controls multiple companies across industries including SK Hynix Inc., toured the world’s first glass substrate-manufacturing factory owned by Absolics Inc. in Covington, Georgia, during his business trip to the US last week.

Absolics is a US subsidiary of SKC Ltd., a chemicals unit of Korea’s second-largest conglomerate. The company was set up by SK in 2021 to develop and manufacture glass substrates.

Chey is said to have met potential customers to market Absolics’ glass substrates, which are expected to be verified in the latter half of this year.   

Meanwhile, Samsung Electronics Co. Chairman Jay Y. Lee visited the headquarters of Samsung Electro-Mechanics Co., Korea’s leading electronics parts maker, late last month to check on the development of glass substrates.

The visits by the two chairmen to their glass substrate-developing sites coincided with growing expectations for the next-generation substrate, which is forecast to play a crucial role in boosting AI chips' performance.

The Insight Partners, a global market research firm, project that the global glass substrate market will grow to $4.2 billion in 2034 from $23 million in 2024 at a compound annual growth rate of 5.9%.  

NEXT-GENERATION SUBSTRATE

The glass substrate is considered a game changer for advanced chip packaging. It is more durable and stable than existing resin substrates thanks to its distinctive properties such as ultra-low flatness and better thermal and mechanical stability, thus ensuring much higher interconnect density in a substrate.

Such benefits enable high-density, high-performance chip packages for data-intensive workloads such as AI and data centers.

Last year, Intel Corp. vowed to invest 1.3 trillion won ($943.1 million) to commercialize glass substrates by 2028.

SK’s Absolics is ahead of its rivals at home and abroad in commercializing glass substrates. It opened its first glass substrate-manufacturing plant earlier this year and in May became the first Korean chip materials, parts and equipment company to receive a $75 million subsidy from the US government under the CHIPS and Science Act.

It is striving to become the world’s first to commercialize glass substrates.

Samsung Electro-Mechanics also plans to build a manufacturing facility this year to produce its glass substrate prototype by next year in order to begin mass-producing glass substrates in 2026.

Korea’s other major electronics parts maker, LG Innotek Co., is preparing to launch a task force to produce glass substrates and join its two crosstown rivals.

Traditional resin substrate and chip players from the US, Japan and Taiwan are also reviewing plans to leap into the market.

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) and US special glass leader Corning Inc. are among them, of which Corning is seeking to venture into the glass substrate market through its Korea operation.

Japan’s Ibiden, a global leading resin substrate player, is also actively reviewing a plan to enter the glass substrate market.

Write to Chae-Yeon Kim at why29@hankyung.com
Sookyung Seo edited this article.