We have already come back, "sighed Zhang Qiuming, CEO of Anshi China, on August 22, 2026.

On this day, Anshi China released multiple power semiconductor products developed based on 12 inch wafers and established sufficient inventory and supply reserves.

But 11 months ago, Anshi China was deeply embroiled in the "guaranteed delivery" controversy.

On September 30th last year, the administrative and judicial intervention by the Dutch side caused Anshi China to face a shortage of 6-8 inch wafers from overseas, resulting in great uncertainty in the delivery of related chip products.

At that time, the outside world was worried about whether we could survive. Today, our three product lines have landed on a 12 inch wafer platform, answering this question, "Li Dongyue, Chief Business Officer of Anshi China, told Economic Observer reporters. In the past 11 months, Anshi China has successively completed multiple tasks, including the intergenerational leap of its product line from 8-inch wafers to 12 inch wafers, the shift of its supply chain from overseas dependence to domestic independent control, and the increase in localization ratio from less than 20% to 100%

Zhang Qiuming said that the change of Anshi China is not for confrontation, but more for protecting customers, employees, industries, and ensuring that globalization can continue.

Surviving in a desperate situation

Anshi Semiconductor is a typical example of global division of labor in the semiconductor industry.

Anshi Semiconductor first manufactured 6-8 inch wafers in production bases such as Hamburg, Germany and Manchester, England, and then shipped these wafers to production bases in China to complete large-scale packaging tests, and produced various vehicle scale semiconductor chip products, including diodes, transistors, MOSFETs (metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors, referred to as "MOS"), logic IC (chips) and ESD (electrostatic protection) devices.

In recent years, Anshi Semiconductor has delivered over 110 billion automotive grade chip products worldwide annually. Among them, the automotive grade PowerMOS chip products rank second in the world, and the global market share of automotive grade power semiconductors exceeds 30%.

However, under administrative and judicial intervention in the Netherlands, the global division of labor model in the semiconductor industry came to an abrupt end.

At the end of October last year, after Anser Semiconductor decided to stop supplying wafers to its packaging and testing factory in Dongguan, Anser China could not continue to obtain stable 6-8 inch wafers for packaging from production bases in Hamburg, Germany, Manchester, England, and mass produce vehicle scale chip products.

Zhang Qiuming referred to that period as the "darkest moment" for Anshi China: the supply of 6-8 inch wafers from overseas was cut off, the system was disconnected, the overseas data platform was lost, and even though the company had orders and customers, there were no wafers available for processing, production, and delivery.

Faced with the wafer supply crisis, downstream companies are also anxious and come to inquire every day, "Can Anshi China continue to supply

Zhang Qiuming told the Economic Observer reporter that during this period, the company took stock of all available inventory, reorganized industry personnel, and made every effort to maintain chip shipments.

In less than a month, we have delivered over 11 billion chips to more than 800 customers, finally stabilizing them, "Li Dongyue told Economic Observer reporters. During the most tense period of ensuring delivery, Anshi China once launched a wafer processing mode, in which downstream automotive and industrial equipment manufacturing companies provide compliant wafers themselves, Anshi China assists in packaging production testing, and then delivers them to them for use.

However, inventory will eventually run out. How to find a sustainable way to supply production capacity has become an urgent challenge for the management of Anshi China.

At that time, Anshi China did not choose to resume production lines based on 6-8 inch wafers, but decided to upgrade all product technologies accumulated over the past 60 years from 6-8 inch platforms to 12 inch platforms.

This is not an emergency plan that we hastily activated, "Pang Yibing, General Manager of Anshi China Bipolar Business Unit, told Economic Observer reporters. We chose the 12 inch platform because it conforms to the future development trend of the automotive grade chip research and development industry. Several years ago, Anshi China began to promote the migration of automotive grade chip products such as power MOS, IGBT (Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor), logic IC, etc. to 12 inch platforms.

Pang Yibing revealed that in terms of product standards, Anshi China can fully choose to produce 5-6 inch automotive grade chip products. However, with the increasing demands of downstream enterprises for the performance, reliability, and consistency of automotive grade chips, the upgrade space for these old size chips is clearly limited; In terms of manufacturing conditions, domestic partners already have a 12 inch wafer manufacturing platform and sufficient supply. Anshi China has the opportunity to directly place its production line on the new platform, without the need to continue repairing the old 6-8 inch wafer production line; In terms of product portfolio, Anshi China has the ability to develop and produce power MOSFETs, logic ICs, and discrete devices on a 12 inch platform, quickly unleashing the economies of scale in production capacity.

Li Dongyue told Economic Observer reporters that the reason why Anshi China chose the 12 inch platform is based on three practical considerations: firstly, 12 inch wafers reduce the production cost of unit chips by 20% -30%, and secondly, after the localization of the supply chain, cross-border freight, tariffs, and long-term inventory costs are significantly reduced, making products more competitive in price under the same performance; Secondly, compared with the overseas delivery cycle of 12-16 weeks, the production and delivery cycle of automotive grade chips based on the closed-loop supply chain in China has been reduced to 4-6 weeks, and the delivery efficiency has been more than doubled; The third is the combination of a 12 inch platform and a new generation of chip manufacturing technology, which provides better performance and more comprehensive specifications,It can meet the requirements of downstream enterprises for chip security and reliability.

Li Dongyue revealed that within Anshi China, the 12 inch platform is seen as a key cornerstone for companies to completely break free from overseas wafer supply dependence, achieve independent and controllable industrial chain, and restore production capacity.

Capacity Recovery

In Pang Yibing's view, transitioning to a 12 inch platform is not about replacing old products with a larger wafer for packaging and production. Behind this is a reconstruction of product standards, manufacturing efficiency, and supply chain capabilities.

The 12 inch platform requires more advanced lithography machines and polishing equipment to ensure a 30% increase in dimensional accuracy of automotive grade chip devices compared to 8 inches. If we want the yield of automotive grade chips produced on the 12 inch platform to outperform that of 8-inch chips, the former needs to significantly reduce the risk of particulate matter pollution and manual misoperation through fully automated handling and advanced process control from the beginning of planning and design.

In order to achieve high product consistency and reliability, the full process AEC-Q standard (a series of automotive certification standards developed by the Automotive Electronics Council) needs to be fully integrated into all aspects of 12 inch wafer production to ensure its quality meets the automotive industry quality management system standard - IATF16949 system developed by the International Automotive Task Force (IATF).

Li Dongyue frankly stated that the biggest challenge in mass producing high-performance automotive grade chips for the 12 inch platform is not a single technological breakthrough, but rather the indispensable platform, process, and system. For example, the continuous improvement of chip yield mainly relies on engineers repeatedly optimizing the platform and process, and debugging them.

The most difficult thing is to achieve high consistency in the quality and performance of millions of automotive grade chips, "said Li Dongyue. To address these challenges, Anshi China must first address the issue of stable supply of 12 inch wafers.

Starting from this year, Anshi China has carried out technology docking and sample verification with multiple domestic wafer production enterprises, gradually establishing a 12 inch wafer supply system consisting of main supply and backup.

This process is also full of twists and turns. The 12 inch wafers initially provided by multiple domestic wafer manufacturers are difficult to meet the production requirements of high-performance automotive grade chips. Fortunately, through technological integration with these wafer production companies, Anshi China has made the relevant 12 inch wafers compliant with the IATF16949 system.

While achieving stable supply of 12 inch wafers, Anshi China is increasing its packaging capacity expansion and process optimization for related automotive grade chip products.

The reporter learned that previously, Anshi China intended to free up half of a domestic factory building for the production of smart watch chips. But after the supply of 6-8 inch wafers was cut off overseas, Anshi China adjusted its business strategy and used all of these factories to expand its production capacity for automotive grade chip packaging based on 12 inch wafers. In addition, Anshi China has collaborated with other leading packaging and testing companies within the country to further expand production capacity.

However, how to quickly complete product performance consistency verification for downstream enterprises has become a major new obstacle for Anshi China to restore production capacity.

Li Dongyue told the Economic Observer reporter that whether the 12 inch high-performance automotive grade chip can be mass-produced depends on whether downstream enterprises dare to be the first to use it, and whether there are leading downstream industry enterprises accompanying you.

A chip industry insider bluntly stated that even if some companies are willing to "accompany", it often takes 6-12 months from importing to verifying the performance consistency and reliability of automotive grade chips, which will still greatly affect the mass production and delivery process of Anshi China.

Regarding this, Pang Yibing stated that many automotive companies are long-term customers of Anshi China, and they have a deep understanding of the performance of Anshi China's automotive grade chip products, which enables the consistency verification of various automotive grade chips developed based on 12 inch wafers to be completed in a relatively short period of time.

We spent 11 months gradually restoring mass production of automotive grade chip products, "said Li Dongyue. At present, Anshi China's automotive grade chip product standards have passed AEC-Q101 certification (Automotive Grade Discrete Semiconductor Device Reliability Certification Standard), with failure rates controlled at one billionth; The yield rate of mature process automotive grade chip products based on 12 inch wafers has reached 99%, which is 5-10 percentage points higher than that of 8-inch wafers.

Li Dongyue said that through this capacity recovery, Anshi China has achieved a 100% localization ratio, and products such as MOSFETs and logic ICs have built a closed-loop domestic supply chain. This means that Anshi China will no longer rely on the fragile mode of overseas wafer supply, and will completely switch to an independent and controllable domestic industrial chain system.

Reduce prices against the trend

With sufficient and stable supply of 12 inch wafers and chip production capacity, Anshi China has made a "countercyclical" decision to lower prices for automotive grade chips, as prices have generally increased by 15% to 20% this year.

On August 22nd, Anshi China launched 8 power MOS products with a price reduction of about 30% compared to last year, 4 general-purpose logic products with a price reduction of 20%, and some bipolar general-purpose devices with a price reduction of about 10% compared to mainstream products in the market.

Zhang Qiuming pointed out to a reporter from the Economic Observer that this is not a concession generated by subsidies, but a dividend brought about by the industrial upgrading of the 12 inch platform and the closed-loop of the local supply chain.

The large-scale production effect formed by the 12 inch platform and the improvement of chip yield have further diluted manufacturing costs, and the localized supply chain has significantly reduced cross-border transportation, warehousing, and other costs. This has allowed the benefits that were previously kept within the production chain to begin to be fed back to downstream enterprises through price reductions, "said Zhang Qiuming.

The reporter noticed that after the disconnection of the Dutch Anshi Semiconductor system and the loss of overseas data platforms, Anshi China has launched an independently operated e-commerce channel. Downstream enterprises can directly query the inventory, selection, and prices of various automotive grade chip products through the e-commerce channel, and the fastest delivery time after placing an order is 24 hours.

Yin Jun, the e-commerce director of Anshi China, told Economic Observer reporters that under the traditional distribution model in the past, chip manufacturers often had difficulty understanding the selection and price feedback of end customers, resulting in both buyers and sellers being in a state of price opacity. Nowadays, through independent e-commerce channels, Anshi China and downstream enterprises can quickly grasp each other's pricing and chip specification requirements, further improving transaction efficiency.

A procurement manager of a new energy vehicle company told the Economic Observer that the price reduction sales strategy is quite attractive to downstream car companies. Especially in the production process of new energy vehicles, power semiconductor devices are required for traction inverters, on-board chargers, battery management systems, and vehicle body control. The cost drop of purchasing these core components will bring greater pricing optimization space to new energy vehicles.

But the procurement manager is more concerned about the delivery cycle of automotive grade chip products. Since the beginning of this year, due to the explosive growth of AI (artificial intelligence) data centers squeezing a large amount of 8-inch wafer production capacity, the delivery cycle of automotive grade power semiconductor devices has generally been extended to 20-40 weeks, and the delivery cycle of some scarce models of automotive grade chips has been as long as one year.

Due to the shortage of stock, we had to adopt a business strategy of full prepayment and price increase stocking, which resulted in about 5% of the operating cash flow being occupied, affecting the capital turnover of other businesses of the enterprise, "said the procurement manager frankly.

Li Dongyue told reporters that by forming a stable and sufficient supply of 12 inch wafers with domestic strategic partners, the delivery cycle of mainstream automotive grade chip products in Anshi China has been compressed to 4-6 weeks.

The reporter learned that after the disconnection of the Anshi Semiconductor system in the Netherlands, Anshi China also rebuilt its financial system and fully introduced the RMB trade settlement system. This means that overseas downstream enterprises purchasing automotive grade chip products also need to use RMB payment.

The settlement in RMB is not difficult for us, "the head of the Asia Pacific procurement department of a foreign automobile company told reporters. They first convert foreign currency into RMB in Hong Kong, and then use cross-border trade RMB settlement payment methods to continue purchasing automotive grade chip products from Anshi China.

When asked why overseas car companies have not changed their chip suppliers, the head of the procurement department stated that car companies usually do not change chip suppliers at will. Once the automotive grade chips from other manufacturers are replaced, it will take at least 1-2 years to verify the safety and reliability of the chips, which will greatly affect the development process of the new car.

Li Dongyue told reporters that relying on the closed-loop of the domestic industrial chain and the 12 inch platform, Anshi China has the ability to continue serving both domestic and overseas markets.

A strong enough Chinese supply chain can not only serve China, but also serve the world, "he said.

(Author Chen Zhi)