Loss-making Taiwanese toolmaker lands US$33 million in deals with ASE
Cheng Mei Instrument’s sales have doubled this year, but it was still in the red at midyear
Cheng Mei Instrument Technology (CMIT, 政美應用), a small Taiwanese maker of inspection tools for chip packaging, has landed deals worth NT$1.08 billion (about US$33 million) with ASE Technology Holding (日月光投控). That is more than three times CMIT’s revenue for all of 2025.
ASE disclosed the machine deals with CMIT in a filing on October 21. The filing doesn’t say which tools ASE is getting.
CMIT, based in Zhubei, Hsinchu County, started out in 1995 as an agent for other companies’ measuring tools. It now designs and makes its own optical inspection and measurement equipment, mostly for advanced chip packaging. Its shares have traded on Taiwan’s emerging stock board, a pre-listing market, since September 2025.
The company lost NT$176.3 million (about US$5.4 million) in 2025 on revenue of NT$331.4 million (about US$10.2 million). Sales have since taken off. Revenue for January through September 2026 was NT$526.0 million (about US$16.2 million), roughly double the same period a year earlier, and September alone brought in a record NT$153.2 million. The company was still losing money at midyear: a loss of NT$1.08 a share for the first half, it reported in August.
CMIT names KLA, Camtek, Onto Innovation and Toray as its main foreign rivals, and says their tools usually cost more than twice as much as Taiwanese ones.
ASE is the parent of Siliconware Precision Industries (SPIL), a major packaging supplier for Nvidia’s AI chips, Reuters reported in April. ASE has had a strategic alliance with TSMC since 1997, under which TSMC names ASE a non-exclusive preferred provider of packaging and testing for chips TSMC makes, ASE’s latest annual report says.
Sources: 日月光投控 ASE Technology Holding (TWSE filing), 日月光投控 ASE Technology Holding and SPIL (TWSE filings), 政美應用 Cheng Mei Instrument Technology (2025 annual report), 政美應用 Cheng Mei Instrument Technology (2026 monthly revenue report), 科技新報 TechNews, Cheng Mei Instrument Technology (company website, Argus product page)
Editor: Ian Lamont
