South Korean President Lee Jae-myung has begun a fresh round of talks with the country's leading business figures, starting with a private dinner with SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won, at a time when semiconductor investment, artificial intelligence and US demands for more local manufacturing are becoming increasingly intertwined.

Xiaomi is preparing to take its in-house smartphone silicon further upmarket, with founder and chairman Lei Jun confirming that a new generation of its Xring chip is on the way. Supply-chain sources say the chip has already returned from fabrication, completed initial power-on testing and moved into the device integration stage.

SK hynix is considering a large-scale memory semiconductor investment in Japan, with Miyagi Prefecture emerging as a potential site, although the company has stressed that no decision has been finalized.

HP Korea is sharpening its localized AI strategy through a partnership with large language model (LLM) startup Upstage, and has already moved into AI transformation (AX), eyeing demand from document-heavy industries such as healthcare and finance. Built around high-performance AI workstations, the company is offering an end-to-end pipeline from scanning and inference to printing, helping HP break out of its image as only a PC supplier in the South Korean market.

As South Korea's semiconductor exports continue to power its economic expansion, market concerns are growing regarding the risks of excessive concentration in the tech sector. Recent financial analysis, however, suggests that South Korea may face fewer side effects from single-industry reliance than Taiwan.

China has introduced the world's first national standards for automotive solid-state batteries, setting off market speculation that most of the country's more than 320 players may ultimately fail to meet the new bar. The rules tighten definitions, safety testing, and mass-production expectations, shifting competition from concept claims to engineering proof and industrial readiness.

Alibaba Group's June quarter is the clearest statement yet that the company now runs as an AI infrastructure business with an e-commerce cash engine attached, rather than the other way around. Revenue rose 9% year-over-year to CNY268.95 billion (US$39.64 billion), but the composition of that growth, and the cost of buying it, matter more than the headline.

Alibaba is signaling that its most capital-intensive bet yet — a three-year, CNY380 billion (US$56.33 billion) buildout of AI compute — is starting to compound into a self-reinforcing growth cycle, even as the near-term cost of that buildout shows up in a sharp swing in capital spending and a steep drop in group profitability.

JCET Group has completed trial production of a 1.5μm-diameter, 17μm-deep through-silicon via (TSV) with an aspect ratio of 11.3:1, extending its advanced packaging capabilities towards denser 2.5D and 3D integration.

South Korean AI infrastructure provider Elice Group is expanding on two fronts, adding enterprise AI transformation (AX) solutions while building what it says will be the country's first AI data center to use warm-water cooling above 40°C.

Korean display makers are stepping up patent licensing and cross-border enforcement as Chinese rivals have sharply narrowed the technology and market-share gap in OLED since 2020, just as competition expands into higher-value panels for notebooks and monitors.

National Silicon Industry Group (NSIG) reported a 36.51% rise in first-half 2026 revenue as shipments of 300mm semiconductor silicon wafers increased more than 90%, though continued R&D spending, currency movements and inventory impairments widened its net loss.

Samsung Electronics does not expect to move High-NA EUV lithography into volume production until its 1nm-class generation, a timeline that points to around 2030, after it had earlier hoped to introduce the technology at the 2nm and 1.4nm nodes.

China shipped more than 40,000 humanoid robots in the first half of 2026, lifting its share of global shipments to 97%, according to a development report released on August 20 at the 2026 World Robot Conference in Beijing. The figure marked the highest share ever recorded in the report's historical data and underscored China's growing role in the global humanoid robot supply chain.