Western Digital argues that demand for hard drives depends less on the current wave of AI spending than investors fear. On its fiscal first-quarter earnings call on October 22, the company said demand for disk storage now comes from four separate sources: cloud services, model training, inference and AI agents, and physical AI. Each, it said, could offset weakness in the others. The company is also trying to move hard drives into faster AI workloads that are currently served by flash memory.

AI-driven growth will push the semiconductor industry past the US$1.6 trillion mark in 2026, while accelerating chip development cycles to one new product every nine months, Etron Chairman Nicky Lu said. He warned that the next 3 to 5 years will be critical for Taiwan, which risks facing intense competition unless it builds stronger software, system, and architecture advantages.

Unitree Robotics continues to expand production of its humanoid robots but still faces challenges in production capacity and artificial intelligence (AI) technology as it works to scale up production for widespread adoption.

Western Digital's fiscal first quarter showed a hard-drive business turning demand into profit faster than into sales. Revenue for the three months ended October 2, 2026 rose 55% from a year earlier to US$4.38 billion, while GAAP gross margin climbed to 57.8% from 43.5%, according to the results release the company filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on October 22. Its guidance indicates margins will widen further in the December quarter.

Elan Microelectronics is pursuing drone opportunities across multiple applications, showcasing a broad range of solutions at the 2026 TAITRONICS expo. Solutions developed with Taiwanese drone maker Thunder Tiger stood out at the company's exhibition area, with several offerings expected to begin contributing to revenue in 2026 and 2027.

LG Electronics is expanding its artificial intelligence (AI) footprint on two fronts: in-house appliance chips and GPU compute services. On one hand, the company is scaling up the deployment of custom AI chips in its home appliances to boost product differentiation. On the other hand, PADO, a startup incubated and spun off by LG NOVA (LG's North American Innovation Center), is entering the GPU compute leasing and brokerage market to explore data center opportunities.

Salesforce has seen sustained growth in both revenue and new customer count, as the company's Taiwan office approaches its first anniversary. According to Salesforce Taiwan general manager Chia-shen Hsu, Agentforce and Data 360 deployments account for roughly 40% of newly signed deals, showing that local companies are moving from evaluating AI technology to applying it in real business scenarios.

Chunghwa Telecom (CHT) has established Chunghwa Yaocih Technology to expand into AI and intelligent imaging, holding its inauguration and unveiling ceremony on October 22. The new company will focus on AI, image recognition, and smart security as CHT deepens its digital transformation services for businesses and government agencies.

AUO is entering the next chapter of its transformation as Chairman and CEO Paul Peng establishes a "quasi-holding company" model, turning its three major operating pillars into separate corporate entities to sharpen performance evaluations and resource allocation while distinguishing core from noncore businesses.

Verda and Compal Electronics have expanded their partnership to support Verda's rapidly growing AI infrastructure footprint, combining Verda's AI cloud expertise with Compal's expanding global manufacturing network and advanced AI server engineering capabilities. The companies showcased the results of their collaboration at GTC Berlin 2026 as demand for AI computing continues to rise across Europe and global markets.