Samsung

Samsung’s AI Strategy Hits Variscite

Posted on by Techtime

Photo above: Variscite production floor at Kiryat Gat, Israel. Credit: Techtime

Samsung Electronics’ primary focus is currently on competing with Korea’s SK Hynix for manufacturing orders of memories for NVIDIA’s AI computers. As part of this effort, it is even diverting the output of memory production lines from industrial products toward manufacturing of HBM memory devices needed in the largescale AI data centers. This move is being carried out quietly, without public press releases or announcements to investors. Nevertheless, it is already being felt keenly in the industry. The manufacturer of Industrial System on Modules, Israel-based Variscite, is now dealing with a memory shortage as a result of Samsung’s clandestine move.

The Sales Engine of Telsys

Variscite isa fully-owned subsidiary of Telsys. In its Q2 2025 earnings report published last week, Telsys explained that Samsung supplies Variscite with about 20% of the memory components it uses. “Due to delays in the supply of memory components,” a Samsung memory supplier explained to Variscite’s management, “the company has decided to divert its memory production line in favor of manufacturing products for the AI market.”

Samsung has not released an official statement on the move, but the information was received verbally in July 2025 from Samsung’s Israeli supplier. “This obliges Variscite to purchase memory from other manufacturers, including Micron, which even today supplies a large portion of the memory components used by the company.”

Variscite specializes in the development and manufacturing of System on Modules (SoMs) intended for integration into its customer’s systems, along with Development Kits and Expansion Boards for these modules. The company’s SoM manufacturing facility is located in Kiryat Gat (south of Israel). It currently accounts for the majority of Telsys Group’s sales. In the first half of 2025, its sales totaled approximately NIS 142 million (compared to NIS 146.7 million in the first half of 2024).

Samsung Woos NVIDIA

Samsung is currently concentrating a major effort on manufacturing large, high-speed memory components (HBM3E) for NVIDIA, and on gaining an advantage in the production of the next-generation components, HBM4. These new memories are intended for use in large data centers running primarily AI applications and AI Large Language Model (LLM). In the coming weeks, it is expected to receive final approval that its HBM3E memories have successfully passed NVIDIA’s qualification tests.

Morgan Stanley’s research department estimates that upon receiving certification, it will begin mass production for NVIDIA as early as November 2025. Telsys clarified that Variscite still has a stock of memory components that should be sufficient to fulfill short-term customer orders. However, if Samsung’s decision does not change, “Variscite may be required to extend delivery times for some of its customers, while simultaneously securing the purchase of memory components from other manufacturers.”

Teramount Raises $50 Million to Accelerate Silicon Photonics Manufacturing

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Israeli startup Teramount, headquartered in Jerusalem, announced the completion of a $50 million funding round to support its global expansion and transition to large-scale industrial production. The round was led by Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT), the investment arm of the Koch conglomerate, and joined by several of the world’s leading technology players: AMD, Samsung Catalyst, Hitachi, Wistron, and existing investors such as Grove Ventures, founded by tech entrepreneur Dov Moran.

This is one of the most notable hardware rounds in Israel this year—not only in size, but especially in the caliber of the strategic partners involved, which represent the full value chain of the semiconductor and data center industries: chip manufacturers, hardware integrators, industrial firms, and tech giants.

The Vision: Seamlessly Connecting Fibers to Chips—Automatically and at Scale

Teramount was founded by Dr. Hisham Taha and Dr. Avi Israel with a mission to solve one of the most complex challenges of the data era: creating fast, reliable, and automated connections between optical fibers and silicon chips. The company is developing the TeraVerse platform, which enables precise, automated alignment between fibers and chips while maintaining full compatibility with existing semiconductor manufacturing processes.

In other words, Teramount does not manufacture photonic chips themselves. Instead, it offers a connectivity solution—a comprehensive platform that bridges the gap between fibers and chips using two key components: the PhotonicPlug and PhotonicBump. These are miniature optical connectors that allow fibers to be aligned and connected with high precision to photonic chips, all while being compatible with standard semiconductor fabs. The process is fully automated, eliminating the need for manual, microscope-guided alignment—a major bottleneck in the photonics industry today.

Put simply, Teramount has developed the “socket and plug” that finally makes it possible to integrate optical fibers into chips at industrial scale and low per-unit cost. Currently, fiber-to-chip alignment in silicon photonics is manual, expensive, slow, and fragile—severely limiting adoption.

According to the company, its solution can significantly reduce energy consumption in high-performance systems, increase bandwidth, cut latency, and simplify photonic integration—all while enabling full compatibility with traditional chip manufacturing workflows.

The New Backbone of AI Infrastructure

Teramount’s innovation is part of the rapidly growing field of silicon photonics—a technology that integrates optical communication elements with standard silicon chips. Instead of transmitting data via electrical current over copper wires, silicon photonics uses light carried through optical fibers, enabling much higher bandwidth, reduced energy use, and less heat.

This technology is becoming essential in the AI era: artificial intelligence systems consume massive amounts of data in real-time, and traditional electrical connections are increasingly a performance bottleneck.

The future—well understood by AMD, Samsung, and Hitachi—belongs to optical communication inside computing systems. Analysts project that the silicon photonics market will grow at a double-digit CAGR, reaching tens of billions of dollars within five years, with rapid adoption in data centers, high-performance computing (HPC), autonomous vehicles, 6G communication, and more.

According to Dr. Taha, “This funding round brings together top-tier players from across the entire ecosystem and represents an extraordinary vote of confidence in the platform we’ve built. The capital will support team growth, manufacturing scale-up, and global expansion.”

Samsung installs Elspec’s Power factor correction systems in the world’s largest pharma manufacturing plant

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Samsung’s biotech division, Samsung Biologics, which provides production services to pharmaceutical companies, has installed Elspec’s new line of voltage stabilization systems in her plant in Songdo, South Korea. The new Medium Voltage Equalizer is designed to stabilize medium voltages (1000 to 25000 Volts). It corrects voltage drops, harmonics, and reactive power in real-time, thus eliminating the risk of damage to equipment and power supply irregularities, caused by voltage disturbances.

Considered the world’s largest commissioned pharma manufacturing center, Samsung’s plant in Songdo boasts a 360,000-liter production capacity. It is the first public customer Elspec reports as embracing their new product line, which presents new market opportunities for them in the industrial sector, including water utilities, infrastructure, and ports.

The Medium Voltage Equalizer, typically installed in a standard electricity cabinet, or near machines operating at high loads, consists of capacitors, reactors, and a switching & monitoring system, that apply corrections whenever a mismatch appears between current and voltage, caused by overloads or power supply irregularities. According to Elspec, what sets their products apart from their competitors’ solutions is the Equalizer’s quick response time (measured in tenths of a second), and a remarkable 99.2% energy efficiency score.

In addition to the power factor correction capability, many plants are integrating similar systems to avoid penalties. Heavy industry plants consume reactive energy, in addition to their active consumption (known as Watt). Reactive energy is considered waste by the utilities. Violating standard regulations could lead to penalties, which vary by country. 

Among Elspec’s customers are power and water utilities and renewable energy companies, automobile, plastic, and steel mills, as well as applications vulnerable to power quality disturbances, such as hospitals and data centers. 

Along with power quality solutions, Elspec offers a wide product range of power quality meters and analyzers, that continuously records waveforms at high resolution (up to 1024 samples per cycle), and for long periods of time (up to 2 years) – compared to typical metering devices whose storage capacity does not allow saving data in such a high resolution for long periods of time. This data facilitates fault diagnosis and preventive maintenance.

Renewable Energy producers are integrating these products at their substations, where the production plant meets the national grid. These systems serve as both analyzers and “Black Boxes”, that monitor all relevant grid parameters continuously and at high resolution, so that when failure occurs, a precise root cause analysis is conducted of its nature and origin, and preventive maintenance can be planed accordingly.

Elspec estimates that 25% of the world’s wind farms have already installed their analyzers and metering devices, following successful collaborations with the world’s leading wind turbine manufacturers.