SMIC

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation was founded in Shanghai in 2000 by Richard Chang, a Taiwanese Texas Instruments veteran. The business model was lifted straight from TSMC and UMC: build other people's designs, own none of your own.

In December 2020 it landed on the US Entity List, and the Netherlands had already stopped ASML from shipping it EUV scanners. The idea was to freeze SMIC on older nodes. Then in 2023 a 7 nm chip turned up in Huawei's Mate 60 Pro, made with older DUV tools and multi-patterning — expensive, lower-yield, but working. The sanctions had made it harder, not impossible.