The strange Japanese companies minting money from AI

Ajinomoto has spent well over a century supplying monosodium glutamate (MSG), a chemical that gives food an umami kick. Now another of the Japanese seasoning giant’s products is whetting investors’ appetites. Ajinomoto Build-up Film (ABF) is a material used to insulate artificial-intelligence processors from circuit boards. It was originally made from by-products of MSG manufacturing. Ajinomoto controls more than 95% of the market. Booming demand for AI chips has made the film scarce, pushing Ajinomoto’s share price up by 65% since the start of the year, around three times the gain in Japan’s benchmark Nikkei index.