Applied Materials and Besi are expanding a partnership focused on hybrid bonding, an advanced packaging technique that creates direct copper-to-copper connections between chips. The approach removes the tiny solder bumps used in older methods, enabling more connections in the same area, faster data movement between stacked chips and lower power loss. Applied Materials acquired a 9% stake in Besi in April 2025, becoming the Dutch equipment maker’s largest shareholder, while saying it does not plan to buy more shares or seek board representation. Their flagship Kinex die-to-wafer hybrid bonding system, launched in October 2025, combines surface preparation, bonding and metrology, or alignment measurement and inspection, in one machine. SK hynix ordered an inline Kinex system worth approximately 20 billion won in March 2026 to support high-bandwidth memory development. Related hybrid bonding technology is already in mass production at TSMC for high-performance products including AMD’s 3D V-Cache. Besi’s 2026 materials said Applied Materials had hosted 25 customer engagements at its Singapore Center of Excellence and that leading HBM manufacturers were broadly evaluating hybrid bonding. The industry is projecting high-volume hybrid bonding manufacturing processes in 2027, making follow-on HBM orders, production-volume adoption and the timing of that ramp key indicators for semiconductor-equipment investors.