Tokyo Electron Ltd. said it’s fired an employee at its Taipei unit, making its first public statement since the island’s government arrested six people suspected of stealing trade secrets from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. The Japanese chip gear maker said in a statement it’s cooperating with the ongoing investigation, though it remains unclear if any data had been shared with third parties. Taiwan prosecutors arrested the six suspected of intellectual property theft at TSMC this week, including an individual that local media identified as a former Tokyo Electron staffer. The Japanese company is one of the largest suppliers of semiconductor-fabrication tools and gear to TSMC, which in turn uses the equipment to make Nvidia Corp. AI accelerators and Apple Inc. iPhone processors. Investigators haven’t disclosed many more details of the case, which coincides with a quickening race by the likes of Meta Platforms Inc. and DeepSeek to develop artificial intelligence in the post-ChatGPT era.

Full story : Tokyo Electron says it fired an employee in Taipei and is cooperating with Taiwan’s investigation after Taiwan arrested six people over alleged TSMC IP theft.