As the conflict involving the US, Israel, and Iran enters its second month, a fragile ceasefire has tempered immediate market shocks, yet economists warn that prolonged tensions could still ripple through global energy and trade. For Taiwan, however, strong export momentum — driven by surging demand for AI and semiconductor technologies — has so far cushioned the impact.

After China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) banned Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus, the social media giant is reportedly preparing to unwind the deal and allow the founding team to exit in compliance with the cancellation. Original investors, including Tencent, HSG, and ZhenFund, have pledged cooperation should Meta finalize the termination.

Taiwanese artificial intelligence (AI) software company Osense Technology is targeting the rapidly growing sports technology market — valued at more than US$10 billion — by independently developing a domestically produced baseball hawk-eye system and smart bullpen training solution.

Quantum computing has long been regarded as one of the defining technology races of the coming decade — and Taiwan, a global powerhouse in semiconductor manufacturing, is now making its most deliberate move yet to stake a claim. Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) on April 27 established the Quantum Industry Technology Promotion Office (QITPO), naming 18 companies as potential participants in a bid to accelerate the island's development of the quantum computing sector.

Superior Plating Technology announced a groundbreaking for a new factory in Ayutthaya, Thailand, with the first phase involving an investment of NT$300 million (US$9.52 million) for construction and equipment to establish a high-end transformation hub for optical communications and hard disk drives. The facility is expected to be completed by the end of 2026, with mass production beginning after client validation and the company aiming to double production capacity by year-end.

NetApp signed a four-year enterprise agreement with Google Cloud to expand their collaboration and accelerate deployment of NetApp storage solutions on Google Distributed Cloud within air-gapped environments managed by World Wide Technology for Google's sovereign cloud platform. The deal aims to provide physically isolated private cloud offerings that embed NetApp's data platform and built-in security controls to meet data sovereignty requirements.

Samsung Electronics is reportedly preparing a significant strategic pivot: a withdrawal from China's home appliance and television sales market by the end of 2026. According to Nikkei Asia, the company is expected to reach a final decision by the end of April, after which it will begin disposing of its inventory and communicating the transition to employees and partners.

OpenAI updated its five core operational principles in late April 2026, replacing its 2018 founding charter and framing a new stance on democratization, empowerment, universal prosperity, resilience, and adaptability.

Outsourcing by US cloud service providers (CSPs) has become an increasingly dominant trend, with Taiwanese manufacturers taking on a larger share of global production. Oracle has not only expanded its supplier network but is also reportedly reallocating orders originally assigned to Supermicro to Taiwanese firms, further boosting their strategic importance.

The shift from model training to real-time inference, driven by open-source agent applications, is reshaping global data center design and supplier dynamics, with implications for cloud providers and hardware makers worldwide. Demand for inference-dedicated systems is accelerating production and favoring manufacturers with liquid-cooling and vertical-integration capabilities across the industry.

Workloads are shifting from training to inference. In this transition, CPUs are regaining a central role in coordinating diverse computing tasks, significantly boosting their importance. Industry estimates suggest that CPU demand could eventually rival that of GPUs, with the ratio between the two trending toward 1:1.