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Monday 27 July 2026
Research Insight: Inside Tesla's bet on Optimus to offset slowing EV growth

Tesla's push into humanoid robots signals the company's effort to offset a cooling electric vehicle market and intensifying competition from Chinese automakers. The strategy could help reshape its growth outlook, but it also raises the stakes for execution, scale, and cost reduction.

Monday 27 July 2026
Samsung, Hyundai expand AI push from chips to robotics

Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motor Group used the San Francisco AI Summit to outline separate artificial intelligence (AI) expansion plans spanning semiconductors, autonomous driving and robotics.

Monday 27 July 2026
Weekly news roundup: Samsung and SK Hynix favor DDR5, Intel accelerates 18A, Alibaba deepens CXMT ties
AI infrastructure, memory and advanced chipmaking led this week's tech agenda, with Intel, Samsung, SK Hynix, CXMT, Alibaba and Foxconn reshaping capacity and supply chains. Below are the most-read DIGITIMES stories from the week of July 20-26, 2026.
Monday 27 July 2026
Jensen Huang backs open-weight AI as report says OpenAI, Anthropic lobby for tighter controls
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has backed open-weight artificial intelligence (AI) models in his first post on X, adding weight to a widening industry dispute over whether advanced AI should remain tightly controlled or be more broadly shared as competition with China accelerates.
Monday 27 July 2026
India's HCLTech plans US$4.4B AI data center
HCLTech said it plans to establish its first AI data center at the upcoming Odisha Sovereign AI Park, marking a further step in its expansion into the full-stack artificial intelligence market through a partnership with AI startup Sarvam and the Government of Odisha.
Monday 27 July 2026
DeepSeek reportedly pauses second funding round amid market and geopolitical scrutiny
Chinese artificial intelligence pioneer DeepSeek has verbally informed prospective investors that it is suspending its second fundraising round, according to people familiar with the matter cited by Bloomberg. The unexpected halt comes just days after leaked transcripts attributed to founder Liang Wenfeng sparked widespread online discussion about China's reliance on US hardware and its technological lag relative to American rivals.
Monday 27 July 2026
IDMs target AI margins, boosting Taiwan power suppliers
International IDMs such as Texas Instruments (TI) and STMicroelectronics are leaning into AI data-center demand, while the market's shift toward 400V and 800V power architectures is creating a longer runway for power semiconductors. Industry sources said the move could benefit Taiwanese suppliers in midrange products, with pricing gains extending into the second half of 2025 and, in some cases, 2027.
Monday 27 July 2026
AMD widens robotics push with Taiwan IPC partners as it targets Nvidia lead
AMD is deepening its robot and physical AI ambitions, and the move could matter far beyond Taiwan's industrial PC sector. By building a broader partner network in edge AI and robotics, the chipmaker aims to challenge Nvidia as global developers and manufacturers seek cheaper, faster paths to autonomous systems.
Monday 27 July 2026
TIER says Taiwan exports and investment can help absorb geopolitical shocks
Taiwan's export and investment momentum remained strong enough to partly offset geopolitical shocks, according to the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER). The think tank said the island was facing rising volatility in energy and commodity prices, along with added pressure on global supply chains, financial markets and inflation.
Monday 27 July 2026
TIER lifts Taiwan 2026 growth forecast and flags AI bubble risks
Taiwan Institute of Economic Research raised its forecast for Taiwan's 2026 gross domestic product (GDP) growth to 10.38% and said the artificial intelligence investment boom has become a major uncertainty for the global economy and financial markets. The revision followed upward updates from Academia Sinica and Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research, while TIER said exports, investment and consumption have been extremely strong since 2026 began.
Monday 27 July 2026
SK Telecom forms SK Hyper to build 15GW of AI data centers by 2035
SK Telecom has created a dedicated subsidiary, SK Hyper, to develop AI data center businesses and expand South Korea's domestic AI infrastructure. The move supports the government's "AI three major powers" strategy and gives the carrier a new vehicle for building and operating large-scale AI data center capacity.
Monday 27 July 2026
Column: Enterprise AI asset is learning loops, not models

For the past two decades, enterprise information governance has focused on protecting data through classification, encryption, backups, and internal containment. That remains essential, but in the AI era, competitive advantage increasingly comes not from data itself, but from how effectively companies turn it into operational improvement.

Monday 27 July 2026
GIGAIPC eyes retail, manufacturing and healthcare as edge AI adoption accelerates
GIGAIPC, an edge AI and industrial computing subsidiary of Gigabyte Technology, is set to begin trading on Taiwan's Emerging Stock Market on July 27. The company plans to deepen its presence in smart retail and edge AI-enabled manufacturing while positioning healthcare as its next major growth market.
Monday 27 July 2026
Industrial PC orders rise on edge AI demand

Industrial PC vendors are seeing order momentum strengthen as edge AI and physical AI applications spread beyond data centers into factories and other physical environments, marking what vendors describe as a new growth cycle for the sector.

Monday 27 July 2026
Sovereign AI promises independence, but often deepens reliance on US vendors, Stanford report says
Stanford researchers say the global push for sovereign AI is producing a paradox for governments seeking digital independence. The latest report from Stanford HAI argues that offerings from Nvidia, Microsoft, and OpenAI often repackage dependence on US technology rather than reduce it, leaving countries with more control over location and jurisdiction, but not over the underlying stack.
Monday 27 July 2026
Apacer 2Q26 profit tops full-year record on memory shortage
Memory module maker Apacer Technology posted record quarterly profit in the second quarter of 2026, lifted by the memory shortage and surging prices. Net profit reached NT$2.7 billion (approx. US$83.8 million), up 45.7% from the prior quarter, surpassing its full-year profit in any previous year, while the earnings per share (EPS) came to NT$20.9. First-half profit also jumped nearly 20-fold from the same period in 2025.
Monday 27 July 2026
Taiwan's AIDC is turning a decade of AI manufacturing know-how into a business model

Taiwan's Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation (AIDC) has spent nearly a decade pushing AI adoption, moving from smart manufacturing in 2015 to full-scale generative AI deployment in 2024, and turning years of production experience into digital corporate assets. Information chief I-ting Fang said the company now hopes to transform its AI and smart manufacturing expertise into a business model that can help more suppliers and manufacturers accelerate AI transformation.

Monday 27 July 2026
AI agents reshape smart cars as auto industry shifts toward AIDV

As the global electric vehicle (EV) market enters a growth adjustment phase, the auto industry is shifting from "electrification" toward "intelligence," while AI agents move rapidly from the cloud to end devices. Qualcomm says the end devices with which future AI agents will mainly interact include about 6 billion smartphones, 2 billion AI wearables, 2 billion PCs, and 500 million connected cars, underscoring how vehicles are becoming a key gateway to AI services.

Sunday 26 July 2026
Samsung and Hyundai target Silicon Valley AI roundtable
Samsung Electronics chairman Lee Jae-Yong and Hyundai Motor chairman Chung Eui-Sun are reportedly moving to join the advisory network of the global AI leaders' gathering "Silicon Valley & The World." The two are expected to meet AI industry leaders, including Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, in San Francisco this week, before possibly meeting again in Silicon Valley in November 2026.
Sunday 26 July 2026
Alphabet's purchase commitments surge past US$800 billion amid AI infrastructure expansion
Alphabet disclosed in its latest quarterly filing that its purchase commitments and other contractual obligations had climbed to US$811 billion as of the end of June, underscoring the company's aggressive push to secure long-term AI infrastructure capacity.
Saturday 25 July 2026
Samsung, SK, Hyundai join Jensen Huang and Korea's President Lee at San Francisco AI Summit
South Korean President Lee Jae-myung and a delegation of the country's most powerful business leaders convened with NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang in Silicon Valley this week, in a series of meetings and public appearances that cast Korea as a cornerstone of the global AI infrastructure push.
Saturday 25 July 2026
Qualcomm expands Galaxy AI partnership as Samsung adopts Snapdragon across new device lineup
Qualcomm is expanding the reach of its Snapdragon platform across Samsung Electronics' Galaxy ecosystem, with Samsung's latest foldable smartphones, smartwatches and next-generation smart glasses all powered by Snapdragon processors. The move highlights the two companies' growing focus on on-device AI and seamless cross-device experiences.
Saturday 25 July 2026
Taiwan firms push local robot dog parts, eye non-China supply chains

As global companies rush to tap the robotics boom, Taiwan's manufacturers are focusing on a blue ocean strategy centered on components, non-humanoid designs, and non-consumer products. A recent partnership between Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and domestic companies has produced a local robot dog platform with a much higher self-sufficiency rate, signaling that Taiwanese firms can help build a non-China supply chain.

Saturday 25 July 2026
China folds data centers into 15th Five-Year renewable energy plan
China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the National Energy Administration (NEA) on the 23rd released the 15th Five-Year Plan for Renewable Energy Development, setting out renewable energy targets for 2030 and, for the first time, requiring new data centers to be planned together with renewable power projects to raise the share of green electricity use.
Saturday 25 July 2026
Commentary: OpenAI and Apple heat up AI hardware; Anthropic stands apart
As OpenAI extends its foundation model outward to capture every entry point, Anthropic has chosen almost the opposite path. Rather than emulate Google or Apple, Anthropic is concentrating its resources on the capabilities that only a native AI company can build, with compute still its most pressing constraint.