Japan has successfully launched a spacecraft bound for the moons of Mars, gaining an early advantage over China in the international race to become the first country to return samples from Mars or its satellites.

Global Tek Industrial held an opening ceremony on the 20th for its Super Smart Manufacturing Park in Chonburi, Thailand. Spanning 177,600 square meters, the facility is the group's largest single production base. Having entered trial production in the third quarter of 2026, the plant will expand beyond existing automotive orders to incorporate high-value-added products such as AI liquid cooling and aerospace components, fulfilling customer demand for non-China supply chains.

Intel has asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a waiver to the US ban on advanced foreign robots, citing worries that its machines will not receive equipment updates, which could hinder its ability to produce semiconductors in the US. The request comes after the US banned imports of foreign-made robots in July.

More than a dozen US companies are exploring opportunities to develop Malaysia's rare earth industry, seeking alternatives to China-dominated supply chains as Washington pushes to secure supplies of critical minerals.

BYD is facing declining market share in China's domestic electric vehicle (EV) battery market, even as its overseas business continues to expand, highlighting a growing divergence between its domestic and international performance.

China's Hygon Information Technology reported a 57.58% increase in revenue for the first nine months of 2026, reflecting sustained demand for domestic high-performance processors and AI computing chips. Yet slower quarterly growth, mounting R&D expenditure and a steep share-price correction have highlighted the gap between the company's operating performance and market expectations.

South Korean automotive and machinery component makers are among 12 companies identified in a KRW2.2 trillion (approx. US$1.66 billion) private investment plan to develop a domestic humanoid robot supply chain in Daegu, as the region seeks to turn its automotive manufacturing base into a source of actuators, motors and other robot components.

DeepSeek is reportedly working closely with Huawei to influence the design of its future AI chips, a link reportedly closer than typical supplier-customer relationships. The collaboration shows the growing ties between two of China's largest technology firms to sidestep Nvidia.

Nvidia's South Korea representative said the company's Vera CPU already has customers in South Korea and that collaboration with LG Electronics on humanoid robots is expected to deliver results soon. Speaking at KES 2026, Soyoung Jeong outlined Nvidia's role in the shift toward AI agents and physical AI.

Kioxia is prioritising proprietary NAND flash technology and customer-specific development over aggressive capacity expansion, seeking to capitalise on rising AI storage demand while reducing exposure to memory market volatility.

China's electronic design automation (EDA) industry is consolidating, with Shanghai-based S2C and Wuxi-based HyperSilicon merging into a unified digital front-end EDA platform. Backed by Empyrean Technology and other investors, the deal aims to strengthen domestic capabilities in hardware emulation, chip verification, and simulation.

Malaysia wants data center investors to bear the cost of transmission upgrades required by their projects, tying investment decisions more closely to local grid readiness. New applications are already assessed against local grid capacity planning, according to the Ministry of Energy Transition and Water Transformation, while Wood Mackenzie identifies transmission and distribution readiness as an increasingly important constraint on growth in Johor.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced on October 18 that its H3 Flight No. 10 rocket, carrying the Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) spacecraft, had been transferred from the assembly building to the launch pad at the Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima Prefecture.

Amkor Technology is tripling its planned investment in Gwangju to expand advanced packaging capacity for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing, bringing a semiconductor project under South Korea's southwestern development strategy into construction.

Transmission systems integrator TiMotion Technology plans to begin trading on Taiwan's Emerging Stock Board on October 21 as it marks its 20th anniversary, with the company targeting record revenue in 2026 on strong industrial demand and expansion into the robot market.