Nvidia's US$3.5 billion investment in MediaTek's overseas convertible bonds marks more than a financial bet. It underscores how the chip leader is trying to anchor its AI infrastructure strategy as cloud giants and model developers expand their use of custom silicon and rack-scale systems.

Nvidia and MediaTek are widening a global AI partnership that could reshape data center, edge, and PC hardware markets. MediaTek's US$3.9 billion overseas convertible bond sale, largely bought by Nvidia, signals a deeper strategic tie that may affect supply chains, customer choices, and competition worldwide.

China is testing a new route for combining quantum computing with generative AI, moving beyond model training toward the decision layer used by AI agents. Beijing Guoguang Liangchao Technology has introduced Xenomi, a family of large language models that uses quantum annealing for selected routing, tool-selection, and task-decision workloads while leaving language understanding to conventional AI models.

When DeepSeek burst onto the scene in early 2025, it wiped nearly US$600 billion from Nvidia's market value in a single day. By the summer of 2026, Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 had triggered another wave of anxiety, sharpening divisions in Silicon Valley over the growing strength of China's open models.

Ninety-six percent of professionals in Taiwan use AI in the workplace, topping the Asia-wide average of 93%, according to a new survey released by Robert Walters. The report, which covered nearly 5,000 professionals and employers across 10 Asian markets, showed that Taiwanese companies are already using AI far beyond basic tasks and are preparing for broader changes in job design and skills.

Nidec Chaun-Choung Technology plans to establish a dedicated liquid-cooling team and deepen cooperation with major cloud service providers, citing rising thermal-management demand from AI servers. The company also plans to expand cooling capacity beyond its existing operations in Kunshan, China, to Hanoi, Vietnam, with mass production and shipments expected to begin in 2028.

If vision serves as a robot's eyes, tactile sensors function as its skin and peripheral nerves. In China, leading dexterous-hand makers have increasingly begun treating tactile sensing as a standard feature. The shift was particularly visible at the 2026 World Robot Conference, where queues formed throughout the day at tactile-glove demonstration areas as visitors took turns grasping objects and watching real-time changes in touch data. According to Chinese market research estimates, tactile-sensor penetration in dexterous robotic hands has risen from about 20% in early 2025 to more than 60% in 2026.

OpenAI unveiled performance results for its in-house AI chip Jalapeno at Hot Chips 2026 ahead of Nvidia's latest earnings report, underscoring not whether it can beat GB200 or GB300, but how unusually fast it moved from design to tape-out.

AI-driven demand for optical transceiver modules is rising rapidly, and LuxNet said its business in the second half of 2026 will grow sharply from the first half. With capacity coming online in 2027, revenue from data center interconnect (DCI) products is expected to multiply, driving a leap in overall operations, while 1.6T optical modules are slated to enter mass production in the second half of 2027.

Kaimei Electronics, a Yageo Group company, said order visibility remains strong for the second half of 2026 as AI server demand continues to ramp and automotive and industrial-control markets recover. Across its three major product lines, the average book-to-bill (B/B) ratio reached 1.2 in June and July, while pricing pressure has eased significantly, supporting a more optimistic operating outlook.

Silergy said at a recent earnings call that most of its applications, excluding its computing product line, posted quarter-over-quarter growth of more than 20% in the second quarter of 2026. Automotive revenue rose about 50% year-over-year, industrial revenue increased 49.7%, and data center-related applications grew nearly 90% year-over-year.