United Microelectronics (UMC) is one of the world's largest pure-play semiconductor foundries, meaning it manufactures chips to customer design specifications rather than designing or selling chips of its own. UMC's customers are primarily fabless chip designers (roughly 81% of wafer sales) such as MediaTek, Realtek, and Novatek, with the remainder coming from integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) like Texas Instruments and Intel that outsource some production. UMC earns revenue on a per-wafer or per-die basis, and profitability is driven primarily by capacity utilization, average selling price, and product mix. UMC operates 12 fabs across Taiwan, Singapore, China, and Japan, with total capacity of roughly 5,163 thousand 12-inch wafer equivalents per month. UMC's growth strategy centers on expanding its 22nm platform, ramping a new Singapore fab expansion at 28nm/22nm in late 2026, and collaborating with Intel to produce 12nm wafers at an Arizona fab starting around 2027. Specialty technologies — including embedded high-voltage, non-volatile memory, RF-SOI, and BCD processes — now represent roughly half of total revenue, and UMC views this specialty mix as critical to sustaining pricing power against commoditized mature-node competition, particularly from Chinese foundries. UMC is also developing advanced packaging and silicon photonics capabilities targeting AI, HPC, and connectivity applications.