Smobio Technology, a strategic investment of Global Lighting Technologies (GLT), will officially list on Taiwan's Emerging Stock Board on July 24. The company's precast gel products have gained interest from international biotech companies, and it is actively discussing opportunities for private-level collaborations.
China's exports of rare-earth permanent magnets reached record levels in the first half of 2026, yet the same customs data reveal a market increasingly shaped less by demand than by Beijing's discretion — flowing freely to most of the world, throttled to the US, and, since January, newly restricted to Japan.
Former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger has criticized Intel's past strategy in a recent interview, revisiting the company's history with Nvidia and Apple while also weighing in on Taiwan Strait tensions and the outlook for quantum computing. Speaking at the RAISE Summit AI conference in Paris, he said Intel dismissed Nvidia GPUs at the height of its CPU dominance as nothing more than graphics tools for gamers.
Zeiss is moving into a new AI chip battleground as advanced packaging and silicon photonics rise on the back of chiplet-based architectures, multi-chip integration, and high-bandwidth memory (HBM). The company says it is extending decades of lithography expertise into advanced packaging, metrology, inspection, and co-packaged optics (CPO) to build competitiveness for the next decade.
TSMC's sustained capital spending highlights the two foundations of its competitive strength: technology leadership and manufacturing excellence. The latter remains a core advantage not only for TSMC but also for the broader semiconductor ecosystem built around its production model.
Samsung Electronics is cutting over 800 jobs in the US from its smartphone, display, and consumer electronics business units. The division, part of Samsung Group, is facing a challenging market this year, in contrast to the soaring performance of its chip unit.
Apple has filed a sharp antitrust-style complaint against OpenAI, turning a once-celebrated AI partnership into a legal clash over strategy, supply chains, and future hardware control. Behind the lawsuit lies a broader contest over who will shape the next wave of AI devices, and whether the Trump administration's "America First" agenda can help both sides find common ground.
Star Fusion Group announced on July 15 that it plans to spend NT$252 million (US$7.8 million) to strategically acquire Chao Lung Electrical Engineering and Chin Yao Electrical Engineering, in a move aimed at boosting the group's competitiveness and long-term development.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's (TSMC) announcement of an additional US$100 billion investment into US manufacturing has brought renewed attention to manufacturing in the US. The International Artificial Intelligence and Law Research Foundation (IAILRF) released the 2026 US-Taiwan Co-Make and Protection Strategy White Paper on July 17. Foundation secretary-general Wesley Chu said that for Taiwanese companies, investing in the US is no longer a question of whether to go, but how to go.
Humanoid robots are very hyped these days. They are performing ever more impressive feats, from pulling off coordinated dance performances to running half-marathons. Yet one investor believes that the robots ultimately winning the commercial race will be the "boring" ones with solid, real-world market potential.
