China continues to see resilience in industry, technology, and trade as the largest economy in Asia, with Chinese firms securing seven of the top 10 spots in the startup fundraising rankings for the Asia-Pacific region. More notably, investors are particularly focused on emerging ventures in AI and defense, both sectors in which China is competing with the US.

Targeting the shift of AI workloads toward distributed computing, Cisco has unveiled its new Unified Edge solution. The platform integrates computing, networking, storage, and security closer to data sources, focusing on real-time AI inference and agentic AI use cases in retail, manufacturing, healthcare, and other sectors.

As the fourth quarter begins, IT panel demand has entered its usual seasonal lull, with shipments expected to fall from third-quarter levels. Notebook panel prices are forecasted to soften slightly as manufacturers brace for a challenging 2026 while anticipating a potential rebound driven by AI-enabled PCs.

As AI applications expand from data centers to various enterprise work environments, demands for network bandwidth, low latency, and intelligent management are rising. Cisco has introduced multiple new solutions at the Cisco Partner Summit 2025, including a unified dashboard integrating its Meraki and Catalyst Center platforms and automation workflows supporting natural language commands, aimed at helping enterprises upgrade networks and simplify operations.

Japanese IC substrate giant Ibiden announced an upward revision of its fiscal year 2025 financial forecast, running April 2025 to March 2026, with revenue, operating profit, and net profit all expected to exceed previous estimates. The revision is mainly driven by orders for high-value-added products related to generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), far surpassing expectations.

Wistron announced the launch of the Wistron Computing Power Donation Program, pledging to donate 1 million GPU hours annually starting in 2026. The free resources will be made available to promising startups and academic research institutions both in Taiwan and abroad.

Sanmina reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter results and issued upbeat guidance, citing strong demand from communications networks and cloud, and AI infrastructure, and momentum from its newly closed ZT Systems acquisition.

Acoustics specialist Merry Electronics delivered solid operational results in the third quarter of 2025, with revenue reaching a nearly three-year high for the same period. This reflects the gradual benefits of its diversified portfolio in acoustics and medical products.

Vulcan Elements and ReElement Technologies announced a US$1.4 billion partnership with the US government to scale a fully domestic rare earth magnet supply chain. The agreement includes the construction of a 10,000-metric-ton magnet production facility in the US and the expansion of ReElement's recycling and processing capabilities.

Taiwanese electronics giant Hon Hai Precision Industry, known as Foxconn, has revealed its strategic plans to develop quantum computing technology as part of its expanding quantum technology sector initiatives. The company's Hon Hai Quantum Computing Laboratory recently disclosed its quantum computer development roadmap, marking a significant step ahead of its 2025 Technology Day event. This move underscores Foxconn's effort to position itself competitively in the emerging quantum computing market.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and OpenAI have announced a US$38 billion, multi-year strategic partnership that will see OpenAI use AWS infrastructure to run and scale its artificial intelligence workloads. The deal underscores growing demand for computing power as the AI industry continues to expand rapidly.