In early June in Vienna, a robotics startup used its keynote at ICRA 2026 — the International Conference on Robotics and Automation — to show a robotic arm slowly and precisely shaving its founder's face.

Flytech announced a strategic shift from being primarily a point-of-sale hardware supplier toward a systems-provider model focused on payments, edge computing, and recurring services. At Computex 2026, the firm unveiled a full payment solution covering counter POS, self-service kiosks, and handheld payment terminals designed for retail and food service, and said the move reflects changing customer mixes and a push to embed computing power across store operations.

GEM Terminals reported consolidated revenue of about NT$428 million (US$13.6 million) in May 2026, up 71.83% year-over-year from NT$249 million, saying expanding global investment in AI infrastructure drove a surge in demand for specialty copper materials used in cooling applications. The firm linked the month's performance to rising cooling needs at servers and data centers as computing density increased, and described the result as evidence of strong long-term momentum for its materials transformation strategy.

Server chassis maker Chenbro Micom reported that May 2026 revenue reached NT$2.51 billion (approx. US$79 million), up 37.3% year-over-year and 21.8% month-over-month, and said it expects robust operating momentum in the second half of 2026. The firm disclosed that consolidated revenue for the first five months of 2026 totaled NT$11.69 billion, a 46.8% increase compared with the same period last year, and attributed near-term strength to smooth handovers between legacy and new projects.

Chinese artificial-intelligence (AI) startup StepFun is preparing to file for a Hong Kong initial public offering as early as Monday, according to people familiar with the matter, in what could become one of the city's largest technology listings in recent years.

COMPUTEX 2026 has made clearer a shift already underway in Taiwan's robotics supply chain, with suppliers looking beyond humanoid showcases toward less visible technologies — including motion data, vision, sensing, embedded control, actuators, and system integration — that could determine which robots reach commercial deployment first.

Global hardware growth is facing an increasingly fragile and fragmented supply chain. At PCIM Europe 2026, software intelligence firm Luminovo's OEM Growth Lead, Inga Schwarz, made a compelling case for why AI is no longer enough to save hardware companies from costly operational challenges. The industry, she argued, must embrace a transition toward deep, native domain enterprise integration to build a unified "digital thread." With the fast-moving advancement of generative models set against modern supply chain complexity, Schwarz delivered a reality check for OEMs and EMS providers navigating the global market.

COMPUTEX Taipei 2026, held from June 2 to 5 under the theme "AI Together," drew more than 1,500 exhibitors from 33 countries and set a new record in scale. The show underscored a new AI industry reality: competition has moved far beyond standalone chip compute and into a systems-level battle spanning compute, connectivity, power, and cooling.

AI adoption in PCB manufacturing is now widespread, yet fewer than 10% of companies have fully scaled deployments, underscoring a global gap between experimentation and factory-wide integration. For readers worldwide, the findings point to a sector where quality gains are real, but talent, data, and governance constraints are slowing broader industrial change.