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Mar 13
AW 2026: a reality check for the fully autonomous era
Global headlines may proclaim a fully autonomous era, but AW 2026 told a different story. The show made clear that robots are not yet fully autonomous — a fact obscured by modern robotics coverage. The industry is heading in the right direction, but independent operation remains out of reach. A surprising number of robots were teleoperated via controllers. Those left unsupervised often struggled with basic environmental navigation.
CEOs from Nvidia and other American tech companies are among those that the US government plans to invite to join President Donald Trump's visit to China next week. Along with the trade negotiations, the US leader has also sought to frame the summit as a type of high-level trade delegation, although the White House is reportedly considering inviting only a small number of executives.
Nvidia and Corning are expanding their partnership in a move that underscores how the artificial intelligence infrastructure race is rapidly shifting beyond GPUs and into optical connectivity, photonics, and advanced manufacturing.

Elon Musk's latest move to team up with Anthropic in a major computing-capacity agreement captures the logic of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." The deal gives Anthropic access to SpaceX's Colossus 1 data center, with more than 220,000 Nvidia GPUs, potentially easing near-term capacity constraints for Claude.

Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman and Device Solutions (DS) head Jun Young-Hyun, along with Device eXperience (DX) head Roh Tae-moon, issued a joint statement to all employees on the progress of wage negotiations on May 7, marking their first public remarks on the talks. The move comes as Samsung tries to defuse labor tensions ahead of a union strike deadline.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) announced on May 6 that, excluding TSMC, about 20 Taiwan companies plan to invest US$35 billion in the US. The statement comes after US President Donald Trump issued reciprocal tariffs in April 2025, which unexpectedly helped speed up long-stalled progress on a Taiwan-US economic and trade agreement.
Compal formed a strategic partnership with European AI cloud provider Verda to accelerate deployment of next-generation AI infrastructure across Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, the companies announced. The collaboration, revealed in early May, will see Compal supply GPU server systems and high-density, liquid-cooled AI platforms tailored for large-context model training and high-concurrency inference workloads.

Samsung Electronics is facing mounting pressure from workers seeking a larger share of the AI-driven semiconductor boom, as unions threaten an 18-day walkout and the dispute puts renewed scrutiny on the company's decades-old performance-pay system.

Taiwanese solder materials manufacturer Shenmao Technology said surging demand from the artificial-intelligence server supply chain, coupled with expanding shipments to Southeast Asia and rising processing fees, drove a sharp acceleration in both revenue and profit during the first quarter of 2026.
AMD data center revenue surpassed Intel's for the first time in the first quarter of 2026, highlighting how the rise of agentic artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping demand across the server CPU market and shifting attention back toward x86 computing infrastructure.
Google has unveiled the Fitbit Air, a screenless wrist-worn health tracker positioned as the most affordable and lightweight device in the Fitbit lineup, available for pre-order at US$99.99 with a target on-shelf date of May 26 for a special edition variant.
Anpec plans midyear 15% price hike to protect PMIC margins
May 8, 08:32
Taiwan power management IC (PMIC) maker Anpec Electronics recently said its 2026 growth momentum will mainly rely on demand in non-PC applications to offset declines in PC-related business, while more meaningful expansion is not expected until 2027. The company also said rising wafer packaging and testing costs will drive a price increase of its products by up to 15% in June-July to preserve gross margins.