Meta Platforms is intensifying its robotics initiatives by appointing Li-Chen Miller, formerly head of its smart glasses division, as the first product manager for its Reality Labs robotics team while actively recruiting AI and robotics experts.
With military conflicts in areas around the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea easing, Egypt aims to restore the Suez Canal's former traffic levels to boost its fiscal revenue. However, two major factors continue to deter shipping companies from resuming passage through this strategic waterway, opting instead to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope.
Netronix-invested Taiwan Biomaterial Company (TWBM) has announced that its stroke negative pressure pump system catheter guidewire—one of only two such products available globally—is scheduled to begin shipments in the first quarter of 2026.
India's Ziroh Labs is positioning its Kompact AI runtime as a homegrown alternative to GPU-based AI compute, arguing that enterprise AI adoption in emerging markets will hinge as much on energy availability and hardware sovereignty as on model quality.
Gold Circuit Electronics (GCE), a major manufacturer of networking and server printed circuit boards (PCBs), announced the approval of two capex projects totaling NT$8.5 billion (approx. US$270 million). The investments include rebuilding an old factory in Taoyuan acquired from CMC Magnetics and expanding its plant in Thailand.
Rising demand for enterprise IT equipment upgrades and cybersecurity has boosted the order intake of system integrators, including HPI Corp, which announced a pre-listing performance briefing for June 18, 2025. The company reported third-quarter 2025 revenue of NT$530 million (US$17.31 million), with a gross margin of 15.34%, up 2.23% year-on-year. Net profit after tax reached NT$27.93 million, a 1.13% increase compared to a year ago.
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, has reentered corporate leadership as co-CEO of a new artificial intelligence (AI) startup named Project Prometheus, alongside former Google X scientist Vik Bajaj. The company is reportedly focusing on applying AI to aerospace, automotive engineering, and manufacturing sectors.
Taiwan's air cargo market is bracing for further increases in shipping prices as sustained demand for AI servers and semiconductor components drives record export volumes. Freight carriers expect rates to keep climbing through late 2025, reinforced by robust North America-bound shipments despite rising geopolitical and tariff-related uncertainties.
China's AI server vendors are accelerating their shift toward self-developed architectures, bringing RISC-V from edge devices into data-center workloads. StarFive Technology has entered this space with the Lion Rock chip, its first RISC-V–based data-center management processor and one of the earliest large-scale commercial deployments of the ISA in China's server market.
Silicon Valley venture firm Playground recently showcased seven semiconductor startups at a media event in Taiwan. Beyond the well-known Ayar Labs, d-Matrix, and NextSilicon, two HPC power component startups—PowerLattice and Vertical Semiconductor—stood out.
The 35th Taiwan-Japan Modern Engineering and Technology Symposium opened in Taipei on November 17, with experts highlighting that Taiwan's future economic growth faces challenges from extreme climate events, geopolitical conflicts, US tariff uncertainties, and constraints on critical material supplies. Among these, extreme drought poses the most severe threat to Taiwan's industries, especially the water-intensive semiconductor sector.
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