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Wednesday 19 August 2026
US pushes South Korea to prioritize memory chip investment in trade talks
US officials have pressed South Korea to make memory chip manufacturing its first strategic investment in the US, according to a report cited by JoongAng Daily. The claim added fresh uncertainty to an investment package that Seoul had expected to unveil by the end of August 2026, even as the South Korean government quickly denied that semiconductors were being treated as the first candidate.
Wednesday 19 August 2026
Z.ai says GLM-5.3 lifts coding, cyber tests, flags Cursor vulnerability

Z.ai has released GLM-5.3, a new AI model that it said delivers major gains in coding and cybersecurity through post-training alone. The Chinese startup also said the model uncovered a potentially serious vulnerability in Cursor, the AI coding company recently acquired by SpaceX.

Tuesday 18 August 2026
LG Electronics lands first OSAT order for chip packaging LDI

LG Electronics has secured its first order for laser direct imaging (LDI) equipment used in semiconductor packaging, marking an early commercial milestone as it expands into chip packaging.

Tuesday 18 August 2026
Rockchip profit jumps 62% as edge AI chips scale across devices

China AIoT chip designer Rockchip posted record first-half 2026 results, with revenue rising 40.6% year on year to CNY2.88 billion (US$427 million) and net profit surging 61.73% to CNY859 million, supported by accelerating edge AI adoption.

Tuesday 18 August 2026
2,056 humanoid robots march to Beijing for China's biggest real-world test

China's humanoid robot industry is entering a larger real-world test of AI, mobility and performance, with 2,056 robots set to compete in Beijing as domestic makers including Unitree Robotics accelerate development of faster and more capable machines.

Tuesday 18 August 2026
VeriSilicon revenue surges 91% as AI ASIC backlog swells to US$1.85B

VeriSilicon posted record first-half 2026 revenue of CNY1.86 billion (US$276 million), up 91.37% year-on-year, as AI computing demand lifted custom silicon and mass-production services.

Tuesday 18 August 2026
Huawei Hubble builds China's InP optical chip stack for the AI interconnect era
Huawei's semiconductor investment arm is seeing an earlier optical-chip strategy line up with the AI infrastructure boom. Since 2019, Hubble Technology Investment Co. has backed a string of Chinese photonics and high-speed interconnect companies, including Vertilite, Yuanjie Semiconductor, North Ocean Photonics (NOP), and Newport Coast (Beijing) Technology, covering lasers, optical components, and transmission chips. The portfolio is now increasingly exposed to the same 800G, 1.6T, and 3.2T interconnect demand reshaping AI data centers.
Tuesday 18 August 2026
Tokyo University's satellite legacy helped build Japan's space startup wave—now comes the harder part
Japan may not possess the industrial scale or launch economics of satellite giants such as SpaceX, but the country has established its own development mechanism around persistent experimentation, research-driven breakthroughs, and a growing concentration of aerospace talent.
Tuesday 18 August 2026
Russia fuels China's ICE exports while Europe's NEV figures mask transshipment demand
China's accelerating auto export boom reveals two trends that challenge conventional assumptions. First, Russia—China's largest single export market—is still overwhelmingly driven by internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. Second, while new energy vehicle (NEV) exports are concentrated in South America and Europe, some headline export figures do not necessarily reflect actual end-market demand.
Tuesday 18 August 2026
China AI chip sales scale: Biren's revenue rockets up to 21-fold

Chinese AI chipmaker Biren expects first-half 2026 revenue to reach CNY1.15-1.3 billion (US$171-193 million), up about 1,852% to 2,107% from a year earlier, as demand for GPGPU computing expands across AI coding, long-horizon AI agents and generative AI workloads, according to Cninfo data cited in a report by the Hong Kong Economic Times (HKET).

Tuesday 18 August 2026
Samsung deepens humanoid push with new robotics lab

Samsung Electronics has begun operating a dedicated physical AI research lab focused on humanoid control and manipulation, according to South Korean news outlet Edaily. The move extends its robotics push from hardware investment into the AI and control technologies needed for robots to operate in real-world environments.

Tuesday 18 August 2026
South Korea's NPS backs AI optical link amid US scrutiny

South Korea's National Pension Service (NPS) has drawn fresh attention after joining a cornerstone investment in the Hong Kong IPO of Chinese optical communications maker Zhongji Innolight. The investment came at a time when the company had already been placed on the US Department of Defense's list of Chinese Military Companies (CMC). The case has reignited debate over how large public pension funds assess geopolitical and regulatory risk. Money Today reported that the move comes as US-China tech competition extends beyond chips, equipment, and supply-chain controls into global capital markets.

Tuesday 18 August 2026
Analysis: China's AI chip ambitions collide with Ajinomoto's 95% grip on ABF film

China's semiconductor self-reliance campaign is moving beyond lithography machines and advanced processors into less visible materials that can be just as difficult to replace. Ajinomoto Build-up Film, or ABF, has become the latest pressure point.

Tuesday 18 August 2026
South Korea's Gwangju chip hub faces looming water crunch as experts push underground storage and AI management
Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are preparing to invest in four memory fabs in southwestern South Korea, but alongside power infrastructure, the semiconductor industry's uninterrupted demand for water is emerging as another major burden on the region.
Tuesday 18 August 2026
China's Horizon Robotics sets J7 against Nvidia, Tesla

Horizon Robotics is preparing its next-generation Journey 7 (J7) automotive AI chip family for mass production in 2027, aiming to extend its lead in China's L2+ assisted-driving market into the higher end of autonomous-driving computing.