China's high-end AI chip market could become almost entirely domestic in 2026, with local solutions expected to take nearly 90% of sales and leave Nvidia, AMD and other overseas suppliers with about 10%.

The technical feasibility of co-packaged optics (CPO) has been demonstrated repeatedly at major industry conferences in recent years. At the 2026 OCP APAC Summit, however, Ayar Labs CEO Mark Wade shifted the focus from whether CPO works to whether it can scale commercially.

NXP Semiconductors has begun expanding its Petaling Jaya assembly and test site in Malaysia, a move that could support semiconductor supply chains worldwide by adding capacity, automation, and geographic diversification. The project is part of a broader effort to improve manufacturing resilience as global demand and supply risks continue to shape the industry.

National Tsing Hua University (NTHU), one of Taiwan's leading research universities, has spent more than a decade cultivating a campus culture of professor-led startups — a track record that has already produced companies such as eMemory Technology, Heron Neutron Medical, Advanced Ceramic X (ACX), Apex Biotechnology (ApexBio), and Finesse Technology. Building on that history, the university announced on August 10 that it will expand the scale of its "NTHU Accelerator."

Nvidia's Spectrum-6 co-packaged optics (CPO) switches are in production and shipping, Gilad Shainer, senior vice president of networking at Nvidia, stated at the OCP APAC Summit 2026 — and the manufacturing chain behind them runs heavily through Taiwan.

Nvidia is intensifying its open-source strategy through its upcoming trillion-parameter model in the Nemotron 4 family, which is meant to compete with the world's leading open-source models, according to The Information. While this may put it in the awkward position of vying against its customers, the chipmaker's advocacy for open-source AI could see the company benefit from more chip sales across the board.

Speaking at the OCP APAC Summit in Taipei, Subi Kengeri, Corporate Vice President and General Manager of Systems to Materials at Applied Materials, delivered a keynote warning that the artificial intelligence boom faces a critical bottleneck: energy efficiency.

Japan has drawn up a plan for more than JPY370 trillion (approx. US$2.33 trillion) in combined public and private investment across 17 strategic sectors, including AI and space, through fiscal 2040, which runs from April 2040 to March 2041.

Microsoft sources roughly 70% of the hardware content in its cloud infrastructure from Taiwan and the wider Asia-Pacific region, executives said at the OCP APAC 2026 summit here. The company is shifting from buying discrete components to co-designing entire AI systems from the silicon up.

Taiwan's National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) announced the winners of its annual Future Tech Award on August 10, with the aim of encouraging the licensing and commercialization of breakthrough research projects. Among the selected technologies were Academia Sinica's 20-qubit superconducting quantum computer and quantum chip process development project, headed by distinguished research fellow Chii-dong Chen, and research into complementary field-effect transistors and other advanced stacked transistors, led by Chee Wee Liu of the Department of Electrical Engineering at National Taiwan University (NTU).

Novatek, a Taiwan-based display driver integrated circuit (DDI) supplier, said at its August 6 investor conference that second-quarter 2026 revenue and gross margin exceeded expectations, supported by stronger customer orders across all three major product lines and a sharp sequential increase in profit.

The latest indication of global demand for AI hardware comes not from a hyperscaler capex presentation, but from unaudited monthly filings in Taipei. Major Taiwanese companies across the AI server supply chain, including server assembly, cooling, power, networking, and testing, reported combined July revenue of NT$2.59 trillion (US$80.34 million), according to the filings.

Taiwanese power management IC (PMIC) maker Global Mixed-mode Technology (GMT) said at a recent investor conference that its revenue and profit for the second quarter of 2026 were close to expectations. Looking ahead to the third quarter, the company said wafer manufacturing and back-end testing capacity remain extremely tight, leaving little room to offer customers additional supply beyond already secured volumes.