AI Chip Concept Stocks Watch | SMIC (00981.HK) down 1.16%, Intel and two other processor makers raise prices in succession

NewTimeSpace News, on 13 October 2026, AI chip shares traded with volatility while SMIC (00981.HK) weakened. As of 13:25, the company quoted HKD 55.550, down 1.16%.

On the news front, on 12 October 2026, supply chain sources indicated that Intel, Qualcomm and AMD, three major processor makers, are raising prices in succession, with CPUs at the centre of this round of increases. Intel has applied differentiated price increases to PC processors since 1 September, with top-end Panther Lake products seeing the largest rise of 15% to 20% and Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake up about 5% to 10%; Qualcomm has raised shipment prices for PC processors including Snapdragon X/X2 Elite by about 10% since 1 October; and AMD plans to raise chip prices by about 10% in the fourth quarter of 2026, covering AI accelerator chips, consumer GPUs and motherboard chipsets. The report noted that this round of increases stems from a combination of the AI infrastructure construction boom, surging AI PC demand, rising advanced-node costs and higher wafer foundry quotes.

In addition, on 12 October 2026, at the integrated circuit exhibition set up for the first time as a standalone show at the 26th China International Industry Fair, Huahong Group signed strategic cooperation agreements with NAURA, AMEC, ACMSH and HWATSING respectively. The four companies cover core front-end equipment segments including deposition, etching, single-wafer cleaning and chemical mechanical polishing. Among them, AMEC exhibited its newly released ultra-high-aspect-ratio etching equipment and a 12-inch atomic layer deposition molybdenum tool.

CCSC believes that, with the successive launch of several personal AI agents, workloads are shifting from compute-intensive to control-intensive, branch-intensive and input/output-intensive, and that the CPU-to-GPU ratio is moving from 1:4-1:8 towards close to 1:1; the semiconductor industry remains in an upcycle, with strong server CPU demand and tight supply likely to usher in a new round of price increases.

CSC believes that the localisation rate of complete semiconductor equipment in China is already about 35%, that components and materials have become the "last mile" of the industrial chain, and that, with about 70% of the third phase of the integrated circuit industry investment fund directed to equipment and core materials, import substitution is entering an accelerating phase.

SMIC (00981.HK) provides IC wafer foundry and related technical services. It is the largest pure-play wafer foundry in China by capacity and offers the broadest coverage of process nodes. Its mature and select advanced process lines address applications including smart terminals, IoT, and computing chips. Based on its periodic disclosures, wafer shipments, capacity utilization, and revenue are at historically high levels.