[FuriouslyAdrift]

Ajinomoto (Japanese company) is nearly the sole manufacturer of build up film need for CPU manufacturing (for about 30 years).

There's all kinds of stuff like this in supply chains. Low profit, high barrier to entry critical items.

[jrimbault]

Wild to learn this is the same company selling MSG (mono sodium glutamate) and build up film

- https://www.ajinomoto.com/innovation/our_innovation/buildupf...

- https://www.ajinomoto.com/brands/aji-no-moto

[lbcadden3]

Not really shocking considering how Japan likes conglomerates.

Hyundai makes cars and military weapons and probably thousands of other things that aren’t even related to each other, don’t know if they still make computers.

[SpecialistK]

To nitpick: Hyundai are Korean but the Korean Chaebols are in many ways even more dominant than Japanese Keiretsu (fmr. Zaibatsu) are. Mitsubishi would be a good Japanese example.

[skybrian]

Hyundai is Korean.

[ginko]

Ajinomoto the MSG company?

[hampelm]

Apparently so! https://www.ajinomoto.com/innovation/our_innovation/buildupf...

[zht]

the MSG company also makes film for CPU manufacturing?

[reaperducer]

Large Asian companies tend to have their fingers in lots of different pies.

I haven't been to Asia in a while, but at one time, Hyundai made both computer chips and bulldozers.

Mitsubishi once made computer chips, and had a bank, and an art museum.

There are companies that own both department stores and subway systems.

America used to have a fair amount of this, but it was more common during the Industrial Revolution. Companies that owned both railroads and summer resorts. Oil wells and banks.

Even as recently as the 1990's there were companies that owned both pipelines and fiber optic networks. Toasters and television networks.