DigiTimes综述国产设备厂扎堆并购混合键合资产：北方华创4.05亿收诺合键维、拓荆25亿重组草案、中微小额入股，但多为已公开旧闻且量级微小

China's largest chip equipment makers are buying their way into hybrid bonding, the advanced packaging step that global players from Besi to ASML are also chasing. For Chinese firms, analysts say, the stakes are different: with US export controls limiting access to the tools needed for leading-edge transistor scaling, stacking and connecting chips more densely has become one of the few routes left to narrow the performance gap, an approach Huawei has framed as its Tau scaling law.

A week of bonding deals
Naura Technology Group said on October 15 it would pay CNY405 million (US$60.39 million) in cash for all of Nuohe Jianwei, a Beijing-based hybrid bonding equipment developer, Securities Times reported. The seller is a Beijing equipment M&A fund whose investment committee includes Naura chairman Zhao Jinrong, making the acquisition a related-party transaction.
Nuohe Jianwei, founded in April 2025, booked losses in 2025 and the first half of 2026, but its shipped tools have achieved nanometer-level alignment, and the company has won repeat orders while validating equipment with several leading customers, the report said. Naura had already shown a 12-inch hybrid bonding system, the Qomola HPD30, at SEMICON China in March.
Piotech, a thin-film deposition equipment maker, disclosed a CNY2.5 billion share-and-cash deal to acquire 82.97% of Shangji Semiconductor Technology and full ownership of two other companies, with CNY1.82 billion in matching funds, China Fund News reported. Piotech said the deal would give it a full 3D integration tool line covering deposition, etching, bonding, and metrology. Separately, Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment Inc. China (AMEC) said on October 12 that a subsidiary would invest up to CNY35 million in iSABers, a bonding equipment maker, lifting its stake to about 7.07%.
Packaging as the workaround
The deals come months after Huawei's push to shift attention from geometric scaling to system-level speed. He Tingbo, a Huawei director and president of its semiconductor business, introduced the Tau law at IEEE ISCAS 2026 on May 25, describing it as continuously reducing the time constant τ through optimization at the transistor, circuit, chip, and system levels, according to Wallstreetcn . Huawei said its high-end chips based on the law are expected to reach a transistor density equivalent to 1.4nm processes by 2031.
Chinese brokers have tied that roadmap directly to bonding. CITIC Securities said the law uses system topology optimization to make up for a near-term gap in process nodes, and that reorganizing chips in three dimensions depends on hybrid bonding and through-silicon vias, Wallstreetcn reported.
Western analysts see export controls behind the shift. Brendan Burke, research director at Futurum, wrote that export restrictions pushed Huawei toward this approach, but cautioned that "Huawei's architectural claims rest on a toolchain and ecosystem that remain immature" and that "TSMC and Intel's process-node leads will extend through the forecast period." A June 2026 report by DSET, a Taiwan think tank, described China as "integrating the best available domestic dies at high density to narrow gaps at the system level."
Chasing an entrenched leader
The domestic push targets a market Besi dominates. China Fund News put the Dutch company's global share at about 70%, while Dongxing Securities expects demand for related equipment to grow several-fold before 2030. Competition is also coming from front-end giants. ASML has begun designing a hybrid bonding system with long-time suppliers Prodrive Technologies and VDL ETG, TrendForce reported in March, citing Korean outlet The Elec . However, ASML said it had not officially started a hybrid bonding business.
A gray zone in export controls
Whether bonding tools themselves will be restricted remains an open question. The DSET report said that "certain back-end tools such as laser drilling, grinding, and automated inspection still face control gaps." It recommended that controls set quantitative thresholds for capabilities including hybrid bonding. Futurum likewise asked whether controls would further restrict Huawei's access to advanced packaging equipment.
For now, China's bonding startups remain at an early stage. Nuohe Jianwei had no revenue in the first half of 2026, China Fund News reported, and its losses stem from core products still in technology iteration, validation, and market entry, according to Securities Times .