Jedec released a new standard for silicon photonics (SiPh) testing and manufacturing controls to promote consistent reliability practices. The standard comes as SiPh experiences rapid growth due to its potential to replace copper interconnects amid AI infrastructure demand surges.

AM Intelligence (AMI) is widening its AI infrastructure push in India and Malaysia, adding to a regional buildout that could matter well beyond Asia. The latest orders expand access to frontier computing for cloud providers and developers, while signaling a shift in global AI capacity toward new hubs outside North America.

Notebook shipments performed better than expected in the first half of 2026, but the market entered a sharp downturn beginning in September, in stark contrast to previous years, when the month typically marked the start of the peak season.

The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) has announced the details of its next five-year quantum research program as Taiwan prepares to wrap up its current NT$8 billion (US$252.14 million) National Quantum Team project by the end of 2026.

Da Yi Cheng Technology (DYC) has rapidly expanded in recent years, benefiting from the global semiconductor capacity expansion wave, which has driven demand for second-phase electrical and mechanical installation work. The company is now applying its experience in the US, Japan, Germany, and Singapore.

AI data center plans and computing demand are expanding far faster than physical infrastructure can be built, creating a widening gap between planned and actually deployed compute. A review tracking construction progress and satellite imagery shows that while US data center construction continues to accelerate, bottlenecks in chip supply, advanced packaging, power, transformers and permitting could become key constraints on AI compute deployment.

NTT Data expects India to contribute a larger share of its global artificial intelligence (AI) business than it does of its overall IT services business, as the Japanese company pushes ahead with a three-year investment program in the country focused on data centers.

Despite intense technology competition between the US and China, cooperation between the two sides on the open-standard RISC-V architecture continues to deepen, with US intellectual property provider MIPS expanding its work with Chinese industry.

Schneider Electric has agreed to purchase software company PTC in a deal valuing its equity at around US$22.6 billion. The all-cash acquisition marks the French energy and tech company's latest move to expand into the software and AI market.

Magnetic components maker LinkCom Manufacturing posted September consolidated revenue of NT$44.18 million (approx. US$1.39 million), up 32.53% from a month earlier and down 10.24% from a year earlier. Cumulative consolidated revenue for the first three quarters reached NT$411 million, a 10.21% decline from the same period in 2025.

Kawasaki Heavy Industries plans to launch an AI-powered fully autonomous humanoid robot as early as 2030, using a physical AI platform under development by Japan's Noetra. Nikkei reported that Noetra is backed by 44 Japanese companies, including SoftBank and Kawasaki Heavy Industries.

Samsung Electronics has set up a Quantum Design Lab in the Boston area of Massachusetts and started hiring for it, marking a new phase in the company's push into quantum computing. The effort places the South Korean tech giant closer to US research hubs and signals a broader attempt to connect semiconductor expertise with quantum development.

Pegatron's AI server business is ramping up in 2026, with co-CEO Kuang-Chih Cheng recently saying new orders from a US client have begun shipping and are expected to lift September revenue. He added that the company still sees AI server revenue growing by triple digits next year, with the business potentially accounting for 10% of sales.

The resilience of global goods trade amid tariff escalation and an energy shock is real, but it rests on a narrow base. A breakdown of ITC Trade Map export data shows that a handful of AI hardware categories, led by servers, processors and memory chips, account for well over a third of the growth in world exports, and that the gains are flowing overwhelmingly to a small group of East Asian exporters and their North American customers.

Microsoft is expanding AI and cloud infrastructure in Australia, while Google has announced a Christmas Island connectivity hub amid reports of a proposed data center there. Australia's abundant renewable energy resources could create opportunities across the supply chain, including green steel, ammonia, and hydrogen.

The AI server boom is spreading into the market for collaborative robots (cobots). The share of cobots on AI server production lines is rising as Wiwynn expands their use at its Mexico and Texas plants, while Quanta has also deployed robotic arms from Techman Robot on its server lines.

Recent reports citing Anthropic's IPO filings show that Broadcom has agreed to provide up to US$42 billion in convertible-note financing to help fund the AI company's infrastructure spending, with Anthropic expected to become Broadcom's largest compute customer in 2027.

Quanta, a leading notebook ODM, reportedly cut off supply to Hewlett-Packard (HP) for one week in September 2026, forcing HP to raise prices as Quanta drew on its surging server business to strengthen its hand.

Across the week, Taiwan-linked semiconductor groups and their partners continued expanding capacity, while AI demand, export controls, and financing structures shaped the industry outlook. ASML's push to raise EUV output comes as Musk and Huang warn China may narrow the lithography gap by 2030. TSMC is also tied to Texas, Singapore, and Tesla projects, while ASE added test capacity. Meanwhile, a US smuggling case and Broadcom's Anthropic financing highlight growing geopolitical and financial risk.

Surging electricity demand driven by artificial intelligence, combined with growing public backlash against data center developments, is elevating energy developers into the new powerbrokers of the AI economy. Beyond maximizing land value through grid access, some energy-rich operators are moving up the technology value chain and could become direct purchasers of IT equipment.

Supercomputer maker Bull will double its production capacity using an expanded factory that reopened on October 1. The French creator of Europe's fastest supercomputers described unprecedented orders as the continent seeks to catch up to the US and China in AI infrastructure.

Industrial computer (IPC) maker Qbic held its pre-IPO presentation for the over-the-counter market on October 1, 2026, highlighting a strategy that differs from that of most Taiwanese IPC peers by centering on the Arm architecture instead of x86. Qbic said smart access control is now its biggest revenue driver, accounting for about 60% of revenue in 2025, while smart retail and edge AI are the next expansion areas.

South Korea's LG Electronics and LS Electric are expanding deeper into AI data center infrastructure, targeting two of the fastest-growing bottlenecks around high-density computing: cooling and power delivery. LG is adding chiller capacity in the US and South Korea, while LS Electric has secured a US$133.41 million contract to supply ultra-high-voltage transformers for a hyperscale AI data center project in North America.

Under Lisa Su's 12-year tenure at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), the company has gradually moved beyond its role as Intel's challenger in the CPU market. But in the accelerator market for training and running AI models, old rival Nvidia still holds the upper hand.

Google has moved its orbital AI data center ambitions from paper to hardware. A prototype satellite carrying the company's Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) reached orbit on October 1, 2026, and the data it returns over the coming weeks will help decide whether Project Suncatcher's vision of solar-powered compute clusters in low Earth orbit can survive contact with reality. The launch also puts the first real test data behind a concept that a Gartner analyst has said does not make economic sense.