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Sep 22
Taiwan advances major science park expansion to support AI, semiconductor growth

Demand from high-tech companies for new research and manufacturing sites remains strong, prompting Taiwan to advance plans to expand Longtan Science Park by 104 hectares as the government seeks to accommodate continued growth in AI and semiconductor industries.

Anthropic and OpenAI, the two AI labs that spent early September telling the world that model capabilities are outrunning the safeguards around them, shipped new frontier models within hours of each other on September 22 — and both sold them primarily on price. The pairing is the clearest sign yet that competitive pressure, not the industry's own risk rhetoric, is still setting the release calendar.

Higgstec said its first half 2026 operating momentum recovered as inventory reduction in the European industrial controls market neared completion, client orders picked up again, and commercial products in Asia gradually ramped. The niche touchscreen panel maker has also launched mass production on an assembly line it spent more than a year building, extending its business from standalone touch panels to a "one-stop service" that integrates display modules and mechanical parts.

ASRock's business focus is shifting toward AI as ASRock Rack expands server output and ASRock Industrial pushes into edge computing. Following ASRock Rack's listing, ASRock Industrial is also set to go public, as the group's transition from motherboards to AI servers and edge AI gradually takes shape.

As drones, smart vehicles, and autonomous platforms advance, the ability to accurately identify people, vehicles and heat sources in darkness and low-visibility conditions has become a key requirement for safe intelligent mobility. Taiwan's Institute for Information Industry (III) is using AI super-resolution algorithms with edge AI real-time computing to reduce blur and enhance detail in low-resolution thermal images, helping low-cost thermal imaging modules approach the performance of higher-resolution systems and potentially cut sensor costs by about 50%.
Optical communications capacity is in short supply as surging computing demand from AI data centers turns transmission into a bottleneck for AI infrastructure. The market is shifting toward combined optical-and-copper solutions, while optical communications rapidly advances toward 800G and 1.6T, prompting compound semiconductor foundry Win Semiconductors to expand its photodiode (PD) and laser diode (LD) capacity and co-develop 200G components with customers.

China's leading AI developers are scaling revenue rapidly, but the gap with their US rivals remains substantial — and the cost of keeping pace is rising even faster. Rhodium Group estimates that seven major Chinese AI companies had combined annualized recurring revenue (ARR) of about US$10.7 billion, based on estimates dated between March and August 2026, roughly one-tenth of the more than US$100 billion attributed to OpenAI and Anthropic combined.

Changs Ascending's board approved an operating plan on Sept. 21 to launch an energy systems integration push into the AI data center sector, betting on structurally rising demand from AI computing centers for stable power, backup power, and ESS. The lithium battery materials maker aims to extend its proven UPS, lithium iron phosphate battery and BESS integration capabilities in semiconductor sites into AI data center power infrastructure as the next growth engine for its energy business.

Meta's new AI agent, Muse, has leapt to the top of app charts roughly two weeks after its release. Its popularity has helped push up chip stocks by focusing attention on the importance of CPUs for agentic AI.

Humanoid robot makers are accelerating investment in dexterous hands as the component becomes increasingly important to fine manipulation. Chinese robotics company Unitree Robotics launched its new Dex5-S dexterous hand on September 21, raising the degrees of freedom to 22 and adopting dimensions close to those of a human hand. Prices start at CNY39,900 (approx. US$6,000), underscoring a shift from demonstration-focused products toward practical tasks and deeper integration with complete humanoid robot systems.
Acer has launched its first Googlebook, a new flagship notebook equipped with Gemini Intelligence that combines premium materials, strong performance, smart features, and seamless syncing with Android phones. The Acer Googlebook 14 is also the first convertible Googlebook on the market.
Microsoft has turned a headline slice of its US$20.5 billion India commitment into operating infrastructure, opening a Hyderabad cloud region it intends to serve customers well beyond India's borders. The move positions the country as a supply base for AI compute at a moment when it generates far more data than it can process at home.