1 month ago
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If you deliberation that companies should instrumentality to their halfway expertise, Toto is present to flush distant that notion. The Japanese institution is champion known for its bidet-style "Washlet" toilets, but it besides has an precocious ceramics section that produces components utilized successful NAND representation chips. That business gained 34 percent complete past year acknowledgment to AI spot demand, accounting for 55 percent of Toto's 53.8 cardinal yen ($343.5 million) operating profit truthful acold this year. Toto expects that section to proceed to turn rapidly, astir 27 percent adjacent year. To that end, nan institution plans to put different 30 cardinal yen (around $192 million) complete nan adjacent fiscal twelvemonth to boost wide accumulation and R&D.
As it turns out, Toto is nan world's second-largest shaper of electrostatic chucks (E-chucks) utilized to manufacture NAND memory. Those are designed to securely clasp silicon wafers into spot during fabrication via electrostatic force. The ceramic section (established successful 1984) besides makes aerosol deposition components and structural parts utilized to manufacture ample LCD panels, according to Nikkei.
Toto isn't nan only improbable Japanese institution benefiting from AI. Cosmetics shaper Kao has a business making cleaning agents for semiconductors, while monosodium glutamate (MSG) inventor Ajinomoto is investing 25 cardinal yen ($159.5 million) successful nan accumulation of insulating movie utilized for motherboards.
Toto's results show really nan AI boom, which has powered a sustained banal marketplace emergence via companies for illustration NVIDIA, has lifted other, much unexpected industries arsenic well. The concern, of course, is astir an AI bubble that could yet popular and vessel nan full economy.
