Electronics Weekly highlights a week of significant developments, including Hiveware’s new chip verification tool, the growing dominance of SpaceX’s Starlink, Waymo’s autonomous vehicle expansion, surging UK EV sales, and a critical global PCB shortage impacting electronics supply chains.
Electronics Weekly’s most-read stories from the past week point to a mix of semiconductor, transport and energy themes, with the sharpest reader interest going to Hiveware, Starlink and Waymo. The list also reflected stronger UK battery-electric vehicle sales in July and a worsening global shortage of printed circuit boards, or PCBs.
Hiveware drew attention because the Israeli EDA company has emerged from stealth with $24 million in funding, according to Semiwiki. The company is positioning itself around a new SystemVerilog simulator aimed at chip verification, a part of electronic design that has become more demanding as device complexity rises. In practical terms, it is trying to shorten simulation times without sacrificing the accuracy engineers need before silicon is made.
Starlink was the subject of another widely read item, with the service increasingly central to SpaceX’s finances. Reporting on the company’s recent results said the satellite internet business has become a major earnings engine, helping drive a strong rise in profitability. That matters because Starlink is no longer just a side project attached to SpaceX’s launch business; it is now one of the clearest examples of satellite communications becoming a large-scale commercial service.
Waymo also stood out for readers as Alphabet’s driverless-car unit expanded its lead in autonomous ride-hailing. The story said the company now has nearly 4,000 driverless vehicles on the road, up from about 700 early last year, operating across 15 cities and carrying out roughly half a million paid trips each week. That scale places Waymo well ahead of most rivals still trying to prove that fully driverless service can work commercially and safely at city level.
In the automotive market, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders said UK battery EV sales rose 44.5% in July to 43,106, accounting for more than a quarter of the new-car market. The same data showed 9,750 of those sales came from Chinese manufacturers. It was the eighth straight month of growth for battery EVs and the strongest July since 2019, suggesting demand remains resilient even as the market adjusts to pricing pressure and competition.
The PCB shortage story pointed to a separate strain in the electronics supply chain. According to the report, some Chinese manufacturers are now quoting delivery dates as far out as 2028 for orders placed last month, as AI data centres absorb large volumes of advanced boards. A single AI server rack can use up to 10,000 PCBs, and the problem is being made worse by an interruption in supply from the Jubail petrochemical complex in Saudi Arabia.
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