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Aug 31
Agentrys, agentic chip design startup backed by MediaTek, raises US$24.5M in funding
Chip design company Agentrys announced last week that it raised US$24.5 million in funding from backers including MediaTek. It is one among an emerging crop of startups using agentic tools to power the design of semiconductors, a step in the chip process that still involves considerable amounts of time and labor.
Tmytek is preparing to list on the Taiwan Innovation Board as its millimeter-wave platforms approach commercial scale. For global telecom, satellite, and defense customers, the timing may matter because it could shape supply availability, manufacturing capacity, and the speed at which next-generation connectivity reaches the market.
DIGITIMES observed that as AI systems continued to scale, interconnect requirements inside AI data centers had expanded from chips, packages, and boards to racks, clusters, and eventually inter-data-center connections.
Chinese large-model developer Z.ai says it can now support large-scale inference using roughly 100,000 domestically produced AI chips, while its GLM models are also moving closer to overseas cloud deployment.
Anthropic has reportedly signed a cloud-computing contract worth US$35 billion with Lambda, an Nvidia-backed cloud provider, under which Nvidia itself holds the data center lease, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the deal. The site is being developed by Hut 8, a bitcoin miner turned data-center builder, in Nueces County, Texas, and Nvidia signed an agreement with Hut 8 a few weeks ago to secure capacity, according to the Journal.
For global cloud operators and network vendors, Cisco said co-packaged optics (CPO) is moving from lab promise to commercial necessity as AI data centers strain power budgets and bandwidth limits. The company said pluggable modules, near-packaged optics, and co-packaged optics will coexist, but the shift could reshape how hyperscale infrastructure is built worldwide.
Huawei Technologies increased first-half revenue in 2026 while profit fell sharply, highlighting the growing cost of its effort to build a self-sufficient technology stack spanning AI chips, smartphones, operating systems and computing infrastructure.
China's humanoid robot cost cuts run into three bottlenecks
Sep 1, 10:20
Humanoid robot scaling is still constrained by price, and Chinese humanoid robots — which command the largest global market share — show a sharp gap between consumer and industrial models. Industrial versions demand high load, high precision, and strong stability, making several precision transmission parts a key battleground for Chinese players and Taiwan suppliers.
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.