🧼 The company that makes Biore body wash and Attack laundry detergent is now indispensable to the world's most advanced AI chip factories. In April 2026, Kao opened its first overseas semiconductor cleaning center—right next door to TSMC in Taiwan. Meanwhile, Ajinomoto—yes, the MSG company—is pouring over 25 billion yen ($157 million) into ABF insulation films that already hold nearly 100% of the global market. The AI semiconductor boom has reached Japan's consumer goods giants.

"Cleaning Skin" and "Cleaning Silicon" Use the Same Technology

"We protect the skin while removing dirt. We protect the fabric of clothing while removing dirt. With semiconductors, we protect the substrate while removing dirt. The fundamentals are identical."

That's how Masato Yamasaki, head of Kao's Information Materials Business Department in the Chemical Business Sector, framed it in a November 2025 interview with Business Insider Japan. What sounds like a stretch is, from Kao's perspective, simply the latest application of what the company calls "interface control technology"—a 130-year-old core competency.

Dissolve the dirt. Emulsify and break it into microscopic particles. Weaken its grip on the surface so it slides off. Kao groups all of these methods under the umbrella of interface control, and applies them across its entire product range from household soap to industrial chemicals. In semiconductors, "precision interface control" creates atomically clean surfaces at the nanometer scale.

Kao Opens a Cleaning Center on TSMC's Doorstep

The new facility Kao opened in April 2026 inside its Taiwanese subsidiary's research lab is officially called the Fine Cleaning Center—the company's first such operation outside Japan. There, Kao engineers work alongside semiconductor customers to develop and validate custom cleaning chemistries for chips and substrates, with mass production handled at the adjacent factory (Nikkei, April 2026).

The center can handle large workpieces up to 30 cm square, run high-pressure spray cleaning at production-equivalent specifications, and adjust ultrasonic frequencies to verify cleaning performance. It supports both amine-based and non-amine-based stripping agent tests. Until now, Kao Taiwan could only run small-scale tests; the new center brings full-scale validation onshore in the world's most important chipmaking hub.

The location is no accident. Taiwan, anchored by TSMC, sits at the center of the global semiconductor supply chain. Kao has already announced plans to expand the center's operations during 2026.

Meet "CLEANTHROUGH"—Kao's Semiconductor Cleaning Brand

Kao's industrial cleaning agent line for semiconductors carries the brand name CLEANTHROUGH. Its origins trace back to 1987 and the Montreal Protocol's restrictions on CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons), which had been the standard solvent for cleaning precision electronics. Kao developed water-based and semi-aqueous alternatives to replace CFCs—and from there gradually expanded into semiconductor-specific applications.

The current portfolio is broad:

  • Flux cleaners for back-end packaging, removing solder flux residue after chip-to-substrate bonding
  • Dry film resist strippers used after copper interconnect patterning
  • Post-CMP (chemical mechanical polishing) cleaners that remove silica and ceria particles after wafer polishing
  • Temporary bonding/de-bonding (TBDB) cleaners for 3D packaging, where wafers are temporarily attached to glass carriers for thinning
  • The KS-3000 particle cleaner series for wafers, photomasks, and LCD glass substrates

"Consumer products account for about 80% of Kao Group sales, with industrial chemicals making up the remaining 20%. Consumer products dominate in both revenue and brand recognition. But semiconductor chemicals are highly profitable, the market is growing rapidly, and we plan to invest accordingly going forward," a Kao representative told EE Times Japan at the NEPCON JAPAN trade show in January 2026.

Kao Is Also a Member of Resonac's "JOINT3"

Kao's semiconductor footprint isn't limited to Taiwan. The company also participates in JOINT3, the panel-level organic interposer development consortium led by Resonac. This Japan-US-Europe coalition of leading materials and equipment makers is developing the next generation of chip packaging—and Kao, a consumer goods company, holds a seat at the table. That fact has barely registered outside Japan.

Ajinomoto Is Putting Over $157 Million Into ABF

Ajinomoto, the Japanese seasoning giant best known worldwide for MSG, controls another critical chokepoint of the semiconductor supply chain. Its Ajinomoto Build-Up Film (ABF)—a thermoset insulation film used between circuit layers in CPU and GPU substrates—commands a near-100% share of the high-end market. No competitor has matched ABF's combination of insulation performance, micro-circuit compatibility, and reliability for AI-grade logic chips.

In March 2025, Ajinomoto's new CEO Shigeo Nakamura (who took office that February) told Nikkei that the company will invest more than 25 billion yen ($157 million) by 2030 to boost ABF production capacity by 50%. AI semiconductor demand drove the decision. Back in 2022, then-CEO Taro Fujie had already announced an acceleration of a 17 billion yen investment, so capacity additions have been stacking up year over year.

ABF's origin story is quirky enough to belong in a business school case. In the 1970s, Ajinomoto researchers were studying epoxy resin curing agents derived from amino acid research. By the late 1990s, this knowledge produced a thin-film insulator that solved the smoothness, bubble, and process-step problems plaguing the liquid inks then used for chip substrate insulation. The acronym is literal: ABF stands for Ajinomoto Build-up Film, and its lineage traces back to byproducts of the company's MSG production.

UK-based investment fund Palliser Capital published its "Ajinomoto Value Enhancement Plan" in 2026, arguing that "if semiconductor companies start consuming ABF faster than Ajinomoto can produce it, price increases become inevitable." ABF is now treated as a strategic asset of the AI age (GIGAZINE, April 2026).

Japan's Materials Stack: 50%+ Share in 14 Critical Categories

Kao and Ajinomoto are the headline-grabbing examples, but the full Japanese materials roster is much deeper.

Category Major Japanese Companies Estimated Global Share
Silicon wafers Shin-Etsu Chemical, SUMCO ~53–60%
High-end photoresists Shin-Etsu, JSR, Tokyo Ohka Kogyo (TOK), Fujifilm ~75–91%
EUV photomasks JEOL, NuFlare ~91%
ABF interlayer insulation Ajinomoto ~100%
Glass substrates AGC "Globally unique" position
Semiconductor cleaning agents Kao High share in flux cleaning and back-end

According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Japan holds over a 50% global share in 14 of the most critical materials needed for advanced chipmaking (2024 analysis). Japanese companies account for roughly 31% of the global semiconductor equipment market—but the materials picture is even more dominant.

Competition From the US, Europe, Korea, and Taiwan

This isn't a comfortable status quo. Each major chipmaking region has a strategy aimed at this Japanese lead.

United States: The CHIPS Act has accelerated localization of materials supply. Resonac launched the "US-JOINT" consortium to develop advanced packaging materials onshore in the US. DuPont and Merck compete with Japanese leaders in advanced photoresists.

South Korea: Anchored by Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, Korea has been pushing domestic materials makers like Dongwoo Fine-Chem and DNF since the 2019 Japan-Korea trade dispute exposed the risk of Japanese supply concentration. Localization is progressing in photoresists and high-purity hydrogen fluoride, but at the leading edge, Japanese suppliers still dominate.

Taiwan: As home to TSMC, Taiwan is also where Shin-Etsu Chemical and TOK keep expanding local production. Ajinomoto is deepening its presence in the Taiwanese supply chain. Kao's new cleaning center fits into this same pattern.

Europe: ASML of the Netherlands controls 90%+ of the lithography equipment market, but in materials, only a few players like Allresist (Germany) and Merck have meaningful positions. Replacing Japanese suppliers would be far from straightforward.

China: State-led localization is underway, but TrendForce's analysis notes that "Chinese photoresist progress has been mainly in i-line and KrF, while EUV photoresists for the most advanced nodes still face significant technical and cost gaps."

Why Consumer Goods and Food Companies Win at Semiconductor Materials

What unites Kao and Ajinomoto—and Fujifilm, AGC, and others—is a pattern: technology accumulated around a long-running core business gets repurposed for semiconductors.

  • Kao: surfactant chemistry from soap and detergent → precision component cleaning
  • Ajinomoto: amino acid byproducts → semiconductor insulation
  • Fujifilm: photographic chemistry → EUV photoresists
  • AGC: flat glass manufacturing → semiconductor-grade synthetic quartz glass

Materials science rewards time. You can't catch up to decades of accumulated tacit knowledge by throwing money at the problem for two or three years. Japan's quiet but relentless materials engineering—built over generations—is the bedrock that high-end AI chip production now sits on. The Kao news is a reminder that the AI windfall isn't reaching only the obvious semiconductor names. It's reaching the soap aisle and the spice rack too.

In your country, are there unexpected industries riding the AI boom? Do you have local "hidden semiconductor champions" the way Japan does? Let us know in the comments.

References