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Wednesday 18 March 2026

Jensen Huang's survival playbook: Nvidia navigates the next AI frontier

At GTC 2026, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang delivered a blunt message to an industry fixated on raw compute: the next bottleneck in AI is not the chip — it is everything around it. From packaging and interconnects to geopolitics and supply chains, Huang mapped a future where performance gains depend on deep collaboration across the entire stack, even as global tensions strain the ecosystem holding it together.

Wednesday 18 March 2026

Tencent joins OpenClaw as sponsor after copy dispute, aligns with OpenAI and Baidu

OpenClaw founder Peter Steinberger accused Tencent of copying a GitHub open-source project without providing support, prompting Tencent on March 16 to announce it had become a sponsor alongside OpenAI and Baidu.

Wednesday 18 March 2026

How Meta's Manus acquisition ignited a new tech war

When Meta announced its US$2 billion acquisition of AI startup Manus, it was meant to be a victory lap for CEO Mark Zuckerberg. By bringing what it billed as the world's most advanced agentic AI under the Meta umbrella, the social media giant was expected to leapfrog OpenAI and Google. Instead, the deal has become a flashpoint for geopolitical tension. According to The New York Times and Alpha Spread, the acquisition is now entangled in investigations over "Singapore washing" and questions about the origins of its digital infrastructure.

Wednesday 18 March 2026

GTC 2026: Memory, power, and deployment challenges reshape AI infrastructure

Amid tightening memory supply and surging demand for AI-ready infrastructure, hardware vendors are racing to redesign systems for the next phase of enterprise AI adoption — a shift thrown into sharp relief at Nvidia's GTC 2026.

Wednesday 18 March 2026

IBM completes Confluent acquisition to power real-time AI data

On March 17, IBM completed its acquisition of Confluent, Inc., the data streaming platform used by more than 6,500 enterprises — including 40% of the Fortune 500 — to power real-time operations. Under the agreement, IBM acquired all issued and outstanding common shares of Confluent for US$31 per share in cash, representing an enterprise value of approximately US$11 billion.

Wednesday 18 March 2026

OpenAI teams with AWS to target US govt AI contracts

OpenAI has signed an agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to provide its artificial intelligence tools to US government agencies for both classified and unclassified work, according to The Information and Reuters, as the company steps up efforts to secure defense and public-sector contracts.

Wednesday 18 March 2026

Foxconn and SAP forge strategic alliance to drive enterprise AI in APAC

On March 18, Foxconn (Hon Hai) announced a strategic partnership with SAP to accelerate the adoption of next-generation enterprise artificial intelligence across the Asia-Pacific region. The collaboration is built on the AI Factory initiative, which Foxconn says seeks to reshape future manufacturing processes and supply chain management while opening pathways for global deployment.

Wednesday 18 March 2026

US Army inks US$20 billion deal with Anduril, consolidating procurement to accelerate AI-driven military modernization

The US Army has signed a sweeping corporate contract with defense tech startup Anduril Industries, valued at up to US$20 billion over 10 years. Covering software, hardware, infrastructure, and related support services, the deal underscores the Pentagon's aggressive push to integrate Silicon Valley technologies and innovations for military modernization.

Wednesday 18 March 2026

OpenAI shifts from building data centers to leasing cloud capacity

OpenAI has appointed new leadership to oversee its Stargate computing initiative as the company pivots its infrastructure strategy away from building its own data centers and toward leasing capacity from cloud providers, according to people familiar with the matter, as reported by The Information.

Wednesday 18 March 2026

In-depth: China's AI 'five-layer cake'— impressive on the outside, underbaked in the middle

Jensen Huang's "five-layer cake" model for AI is a tidy recipe: energy, chips, infrastructure, models, applications — stacked in order. Applied to China, the cake looks polished on top. Pull it apart, though, and the middle layers are still underbaked.

Wednesday 18 March 2026

HD Renewable Energy deepens presence in Japan's power market with 50MW Hokkaido energy storage project

Japan's 25th Smart Energy Week is taking place in Tokyo, where HD Renewable Energy (HDRE) showcased three major solutions: energy storage integration, electricity trading, and charging operations. The company stated that its target in the Japanese market is to develop 3 GW, and that its Helios 50MW storage project in the Hokkaido region has already begun trading on the electricity market.

Wednesday 18 March 2026

Analysis: How Nvidia is leveraging DeepSeek R1 surge to cement hardware–model domination

On March 11 (US time), Nvidia announced a US$26 billion five-year investment in open-source large language models and introduced Nemotron 3 Super, its most powerful hybrid mixture-of-experts model to date. The company said the model outperforms OpenAI's open-source GPT-OSS in several benchmark tests.

Wednesday 18 March 2026

Exclusive: AI server supply chain hits hidden stalemate as CSPs and manufacturers favor price hikes over expansion

Geopolitical tariff conflicts combined with the outbreak of Middle East hostilities have pushed even the booming AI server and data center industry—and its supply chain—into a subtle deadlock. Supply chain insiders reveal that despite ample funding, major cloud service providers (CSPs) are hesitating to back suppliers' capacity expansions amid shortages.

Wednesday 18 March 2026

AI boom lifts Changs Ascending as data centers seek reliable power

As AI and advanced semiconductor manufacturing drive unprecedented demand for computing power, the reliability of the electricity supply has become a critical concern for both data centers and chip fabrication plants.

Wednesday 18 March 2026

Surging US AI demand drives contract manufacturing fees higher for Taiwan electronics makers

Aggressive AI investments by major US cloud service providers (CSPs) are driving a surge in demand for Taiwan's semiconductor and ICT hardware, pushing exports, prices, and private investments toward record levels despite supply constraints.

Wednesday 18 March 2026

Meta accelerates AI ASIC roll-out as Broadcom secures four-generation chip design deal

Meta recently announced plans to launch four generations of ASIC product lines over the next two years, including the already mass-produced MTIA 300 and upcoming MTIA 400, 450, and 500 chips. These ASICs will primarily target AI inference workloads, while AI training tasks will continue relying on Nvidia solutions.

Wednesday 18 March 2026

Taiwan on track to outpace China's growth again in 2026

Driven by US President Donald Trump's push for American reindustrialization and efforts to shift industries away from China through high tariffs, Taiwan's economy is set to outpace China's growth for the second consecutive year in 2026.

Wednesday 18 March 2026

Wistron eyes sales model shift as AI server volume squeezes margins

Wistron Group posted record revenue and earnings per share in 2025, driven by strong demand for AI servers. Still, its gross margin fell as higher unit prices and material costs tied to increased shipments of AI server racks weighed on profitability.

Tuesday 17 March 2026

MSI to increase gaming product prices by up to 30% as memory costs spike

With artificial intelligence (AI) demand surging and key components such as memory in tight supply, Micro-Star International (MSI) chairman Joseph Hsu and president Jeans Huang said the company is actively expanding in the AI server market, achieving growth of 50 to 100% in 2025, and expects to maintain strong growth in 2026. In addition, they expect gaming products to see a price increase of about 15 to 30% in 2026 due to the impact of rising memory costs.

Tuesday 17 March 2026

Korean AI trio takes industry spotlight—but can early promise survive the factory floor?

At Automation World (AW) 2026, the Media Pick Awards, hosted by global news network Aving News, highlighted the transformative technologies driving the physical AI era. A competitive field of innovators was interviewed and assessed, ultimately awarding MakinaRocks, Impactive AI, and emCT as the top three picks for their potential to redefine global manufacturing and safety standards.

Tuesday 17 March 2026

China reins in OpenClaw surge, flags AI agent security risks

China's Ministry of State Security on March 17 issued its first "lobster security guidelines" for AI agents, aiming to cool market hype while flagging cybersecurity risks emerging at the early stage of the sector's rapid expansion.

Tuesday 17 March 2026

MiroMind releases MiroThinker AI models focused on verifiable reasoning

On March 16, 2026, Redwood City-based AI firm MiroMind announced the release of its MiroThinker-1.7 and MiroThinker-H1 models. These systems utilize a verification-centric architecture designed to improve accuracy in multi-step reasoning tasks across scientific, financial, and legal sectors.

Tuesday 17 March 2026

MPI posts record 2025 revenue and profit, expands probe card production in Taiwan

Semiconductor test and measurement solutions provider MPI reported that strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC), and application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) has driven rapid demand growth for semiconductor test equipment and test interface products. Under this trend, the company achieved record-high revenue and profit for the full year 2025.

Tuesday 17 March 2026

MetaX GPU push delivers growth, not profit, as losses hit US$560 million

MetaX, one of China's most closely watched domestic GPU developers, remains loss-making despite rapid revenue growth. According to Sina, 2025 revenue reached CNY1.64 billion (US$230 million), up 121.26% year-over-year, while net loss narrowed to CNY781 million. First-quarter 2026 revenue is expected to be CNY400-600 million, with losses of CNY90.8 million to CNY182 million.

Tuesday 17 March 2026

Nvidia GTC 2026: NemoClaw adds security layer to OpenClaw AI agents

Nvidia has unveiled NemoClaw, an open-source stack aimed at turning the fast-growing OpenClaw ecosystem into a secure, enterprise-ready platform for autonomous AI agents, extending its reach beyond hardware into the operational layer of AI systems.

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