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Monday 9 February 2026
Weekly news roundup: chips, software, geopolitics reshape tech
Below are the most-read DIGITIMES Asia stories from the week of February 2-9, 2026.
Monday 9 February 2026
Takaichi's election victory clears path for Japan's chip sovereignty, military buildup
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's decisive victory in the lower house election has strengthened her government's ability to advance policies tied to economic security, bringing renewed attention to the future direction of Japan's semiconductor and defense technology agenda.
Monday 9 February 2026
Wistron navigates supply chain challenges while targeting broad growth

Taiwanese ODM Wistron is projecting robust growth in 2026, with confidence extending beyond revenue to profitability. Jeff Lin, Wistron's president, said the company anticipates strong performance across the board. In response to concerns that Nvidia's procurement strategies might compress supply chain margins, Lin declined to comment on specific clients but emphasized that Wistron's business remains stable and its profitability intact.

Monday 9 February 2026
OpenClaw and Cowork spark desktop AI agent race in China
The AI agent sector intensified in early 2026 as the simultaneous arrival of Anthropic's Claude Cowork and Peter Steinberger's OpenClaw catalyzed significant interest across the global technology community. While both represent a shift toward independent desktop agents, they operate on different ends of the permission spectrum. OpenClaw grants deep system-level access to files, applications, and chat histories, whereas Claude Cowork functions within secure, user-authorized boundaries to manage file organization, data processing, and document generation.
Monday 9 February 2026
MediaTek to be early adopter of TSMC 2nm, A14 processes, focuses on boosting AI computing power
MediaTek president and chief operating officer Joe Chen stated that artificial intelligence (AI) computing is shifting from training to inference applications, with rapid growth expected across cloud data centers and various edge devices. He noted that following the rise of generative AI and agentic AI, physical AI is also anticipated to see more mature applications and development within the next two to three years.
Monday 9 February 2026
AI spending spree threatens big tech cash flows
A dramatic ramp-up in capital expenditures by Google, Amazon, and Meta in 2026 is set to squeeze their free cash flow, forcing difficult trade-offs between shareholder returns and aggressive investment in AI infrastructure.
Monday 9 February 2026
Wistron chair sees AI growth entering 1.5 wave, believing AI bubble concerns still premature
Wistron chairman Simon Lin stated that artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure is currently centering a "1.5 wave" of development and is far from peaking, with greater growth potential ahead and across a broader range of applications. He emphasized that AI server manufacturing is becoming increasingly complex, with much faster iteration cycles, a trend that works in favor of Taiwan's ODM industry. As products grow more complex, ODMs will not revert to low-margin models of the past.
Monday 9 February 2026
Taiwan posts fastest growth in 15 years as AI boom drowns out hollowing-out fears
Taiwan's economy expanded 8.63% in 2025, its strongest growth in 15 years, as the island's semiconductor-driven supply chain continued to underpin global demand for AI computing. Minister of Economic Affairs Ming-hsin Kung said on February 5 that despite a high base effect from the previous year, Taiwan is expected to maintain resilience and flexibility into 2026.
Monday 9 February 2026
Musk predicts space computing shift in 36 months as terrestrial power limits bite
Elon Musk said artificial intelligence computing could become more cost-effective to deploy in space than on Earth within the next 30 to 36 months, arguing that power generation and terrestrial infrastructure are emerging as the primary constraints on AI expansion rather than semiconductor supply.
Monday 9 February 2026
Musk flags manufacturing bottlenecks, floats 'TeraFab' as chip supply strains
Elon Musk said the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence is running up against hard limits in global manufacturing capacity, as chip production, power equipment and industrial supply chains struggle to scale fast enough to meet surging demand.
Sunday 8 February 2026
AI startups capture majority of global venture capital in 2025, Best Brokers analysis shows
Artificial intelligence startups drew more than half of global venture capital funding in 2025, marking a significant shift in investor focus toward AI and machine learning companies, according to an analysis by Best Brokers. The report found that AI startups accounted for US$270.2 billion of the US$512.6 billion deployed worldwide, representing 52.7% of total venture capital deal value.
Sunday 8 February 2026
Record Japan blizzard threatens AI chip supply chains
A record-breaking blizzard driven by extreme weather has battered Japan's northern Aomori Prefecture, dumping snow at more than two and a half times the historical average. The storm has claimed lives, paralyzed local commerce, and raised fresh concerns about the resilience of global technology supply chains.
Sunday 8 February 2026
Nvidia and Dassault Systèmes deepen partnership to bring AI into the physical world
Dassault Systèmes announced that it will undertake its largest-ever technology integration with Nvidia, deepening a partnership that spans more than 25 years. Under the expanded collaboration, the two companies will embed accelerated computing, generative artificial intelligence, and digital twin technologies throughout engineering design and manufacturing workflows, jointly positioning themselves at the forefront of Physical AI and so-called world foundation models.
Sunday 8 February 2026
Musk: speed, not ambition, will shape next phase of AI expansion
Elon Musk said the pace of artificial intelligence expansion will be determined less by ambition than by how quickly AI developers and infrastructure builders can identify and remove the most binding constraints on execution, as limits shift from power to manufacturing capacity and, eventually, to capital.
Sunday 8 February 2026
Shanghai's AI chip boom powers China's homegrown computing future
In 2025, Shanghai's domestic AI chip sector surged alongside capital market activity. MetaX reported CNY740 million (US$106 million) in revenue in 2024, rising to CNY915 million in the first half of 2025. The company listed on the STAR Market in December, raising over CNY2 billion and reaching a CNY200 billion valuation to fund sub-7nm R&D.
Sunday 8 February 2026
Chicony Power looks beyond PCs as it bets on AI and low-carbon platforms
Chicony Power, a Taiwanese power and energy management company, is accelerating a strategic shift away from its traditional reliance on PC and notebook power supplies, expanding into communications power systems, AI server power solutions, and intelligent low-carbon integration platforms as it seeks to build a more resilient business amid market volatility.
Sunday 8 February 2026
SpaceX seeks approval for a vast orbital data center in space

SpaceX has filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission seeking approval to deploy as many as one million satellites, outlining an ambitious plan to build what it calls an "orbital data center system." The network, designed to operate entirely in space, would process large-scale artificial intelligence workloads in orbit, effectively functioning as a vast, distributed supercomputer circling the Earth.

Sunday 8 February 2026
Google named Apple's preferred cloud provider as AI partnership details remain unclear
Alphabet executives have confirmed that Google is Apple Inc.'s "preferred cloud provider," renewing market speculation over the scope of their collaboration in artificial intelligence, even as both companies continue to withhold detailed disclosures.
Saturday 7 February 2026
Experts dismiss AI agents replacing enterprise software claims
The rapid rise of AI agent tools has reignited debate over whether AI could eventually displace enterprise software. While recent launches have unsettled markets, industry analysts and consultants argue that expectations of widespread replacement overlook the practical, regulatory, and operational constraints facing enterprise adoption.
Saturday 7 February 2026
Dassault Systèmes unveils ‘generative economy’ vision for AI-driven industry

At the 3DEXPERIENCE World 2026 conference, Pascal Daloz, the chief executive of Dassault Systèmes, introduced what he called the "generative economy," a concept that departs sharply from the traditional manufacturing economy's emphasis on physical output. In this emerging model, the accumulation of knowledge and expertise—not the volume of goods produced—becomes the primary source of value. In the age of artificial intelligence, he argued, expertise is poised to become a new form of currency.

Saturday 7 February 2026
Google outlines 5 key trends for AI agent growth in 2026
Industry experts are viewing 2026 as a pivotal year for AI agents, with AI CRM firm Salesforce predicting the full-scale adoption of agentic enterprises this year, and Google Cloud Taiwan general manager Mike Chen stressing that 2026 will be the breakout year for AI agents.
Saturday 7 February 2026
Humanoid robots step into factories, safety laws set the limits
A fast-moving contest between technological acceleration and regulatory safeguards is spreading from automotive electronics and electrification (E/E) into industrial AI robotics.
Saturday 7 February 2026
Musk's SpaceX-xAI merger raises governance and financial risks
After Elon Musk confirmed that SpaceX had completed its acquisition of artificial intelligence startup xAI, the focus quickly shifted from the mechanics of the deal to its broader implications. The transaction—among the most unconventional corporate combinations in the technology industry—has raised fresh questions about governance, regulatory oversight, and whether a founder-dominated empire can withstand the financial and operational strains of the global AI race.
Friday 6 February 2026
Apple integrates AI agents into Xcode to boost coding productivity
Apple has introduced AI agent integration in its integrated development environment (IDE) Xcode, supporting Anthropic Claude and OpenAI Codex. This allows AI to autonomously build, test, and debug code, aligning with the rising trend of vibe coding.
Friday 6 February 2026
Anthropic launch adds pressure on the enterprise software sector
Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, on February 5, 2026, released an updated AI model as investors continued to reassess the impact of rapid advances in generative AI on the traditional enterprise software sector.