Japanese electronic components manufacturer TDK will make its largest-ever capital investment in fiscal 2026, running from April 2026 to March 2027, to address surging demand related to artificial intelligence (AI), focusing on batteries, hard disk drive (HDD) components, and multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCC).
Lens Technology is seeking control of Ju Teng International Holdings in a deal that could cost as much as US$337 million, expanding the Chinese precision manufacturing supplier's reach in notebook casings and hardware components as electronics suppliers position for a new wave of AI-enabled devices.
Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs has awarded subsidies to three research and development projects, approving NT$100 million (US$3.16 million) for Solomon's humanoid robot Vision-Language-Action technology on May 18. The grants were approved at the sixth final review meeting of the ministry's A+ Enterprise Innovation R&D Tempering Program, which helps companies share R&D costs and risks through expert review and direct funding.
Analog Devices Inc. is in advanced talks to acquire Empower Semiconductor for about US$1.5 billion in cash, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. A formal announcement could come as soon as Tuesday. The deal has not been finalized and could still fall through.
Nvidia's fanless Vera Rubin AI server racks, slated for mass production in the second half of 2026, are expected to accelerate global adoption of liquid cooling across server components, creating demand beyond GPUs for CPUs, memory, network cards, and switches, and reshaping thermal management supply chains worldwide and vendor economics.
Chinese officials have renewed calls to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) more deeply into manufacturing as Beijing seeks to modernize traditional industries, strengthen industrial competitiveness, and cultivate new growth drivers.
China is accelerating plans for a national computing power network as artificial intelligence (AI) token usage surges, casting AI compute as part of the country's next layer of public infrastructure.
Baidu said its core AI businesses became the majority of the company's revenue in the first quarter of 2026, driven by rapid growth in AI cloud infrastructure, expanded foundation-model support on its model-as-a-service platform Qianfan, and stronger commercial adoption of its Kunlunxin AI chips.
Analysts offered mixed assessments of Baidu after the Chinese internet company posted first-quarter revenue that topped market expectations, with some pointing to stronger AI monetization. In contrast, others warned that profitability remains under pressure from rising investment and lower-margin AI businesses.
Australia directed six China-linked investors to sell their combined 17% stake in rare earths miner Northern Minerals within two weeks, as reported by The Wall Street Journal and the Australian Broadcasting Corp. The treasury issued the order to protect national interest and to support efforts to build a rare earths supply chain outside China.
Anthropic launched Claude for Legal, a specialized version of its Claude generative AI designed to integrate directly with law firms' existing tools and workflows, the company announced. The offering arrives as legal use cases have surged on Claude, and it targets contract analysis, litigation support, employment, intellectual property, and privacy compliance workflows.
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