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Sep 18, 12:29
High-end GPUs may be slowing China's AI compute expansion
China's wide gap in token costs stems largely from domestic companies' difficulty in accessing Nvidia high-end GPUs, forcing them to squeeze more value from each token to recoup costs. But supply-chain sources say the scale of China and US AI compute investment may actually be roughly comparable, despite US hyperscalers' far larger 2025 capex.
Corning, the US glass substrate supplier, will raise prices for its yen-denominated display glass substrate products by 15% or more worldwide starting in the fourth quarter of 2026, according to industry sources. The company confirmed the move amid persistent cost pressure across the electronics supply chain.
China's AI data centers are confronting a severe chip access bottleneck, with the cost of producing tokens shaped less by model design than by geopolitics, according to a recent Caijing analysis. The report said restricted access to high-end GPUs has become the most critical cost burden in China's AI era.

CoreWeave launched a debt sale worth US$3 billion in convertible bonds, which would allow buyers to turn their bonds into shares. The neocloud, which has sharply ramped up its infrastructure spending over the past year, has secured a growing customer base but faces concerns over financial sustainability amid intense competition and fears of an AI slowdown.

King Charles III has stepped into the intensifying debate over artificial intelligence, urging executives from Nvidia, Google DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic to keep AI under human control and ensure the technology serves people and the planet.

The question facing China's "AI agent phone" category is no longer whether a model can drive a smartphone. It is whether the apps will let it. Judging by the first mass-produced device to try it, the answer is mostly not yet.
Taiwan's central bank left interest rates unchanged on the 17th, saying inflation remains manageable and the economy is still growing steadily. The decision came as the US Federal Reserve's rate hike drew criticism from President Donald Trump.
Taiwan's Central Bank said on the 17th that the success or failure of AI monetization will determine its long-term economic benefits and impact on financial markets. It urged Taiwanese companies to accelerate AI adoption as it weighed the effects of AI development on the macroeconomy and financial stability.
Electric-arc furnace steelmaker Tung Ho Steel said Taiwan's real-estate slowdown has dragged down rebar orders in 2026, while high-tech investment and plant construction have strongly supported its section steel and steel structure business. General manager Bing-Hua Huang said rebar shipments and order intake have both slowed since the start of 2026 amid housing policy headwinds. From January to August 2026, order intake fell 23% year-over-year, while orders on hand slipped from 1.2 million tonnes to 1.15 million tonnes, leaving rebar order visibility at 10 months.
Starlink's massive scale in conventional low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellites has markedly reinforced the satellite giant's aggressive grip on the commercial space industry for the next decade or so.

Huawei is extending its AI infrastructure strategy beyond individual accelerators and storage systems, unveiling an Agentic supercluster architecture designed to scale Ascend computing to as many as 1 million accelerator cards through UnifiedBus.

Chinese AI developer Z.ai has raised its 2026 year-end annual recurring revenue (ARR) target by 25% to US$3 billion after fresh financing eased the computing bottleneck that had constrained growth earlier this year.