South Korea's leading telecom operator SK Telecom (SKT) has introduced A.X K1, a 500-billion-parameter AI model developed under a national AI initiative to establish a foundational platform for the country, highlighting SKT's efforts to align AI technology with national strategy and industrial applications.
Against a backdrop of cyclical adjustment and structural transformation in the global electronics industry, Foxconn Technology Group is opening 2026 with what it calls a "dual-engine" strategy.
As AI server and semiconductor companies look set to close out a profitable 2025, recent Chinese military encirclement exercises and live-fire drills around Taiwan have once again highlighted the island's geopolitical tensions. US President Donald Trump has stated that China doesn't want to invade Taiwan.
OpenAI is accelerating plans to enter the consumer hardware market, with reports indicating that the company is preparing a new voice-focused AI model to underpin its first generation of AI devices. According to TechCrunch and SiliconANGLE, citing The Information, OpenAI is targeting the first quarter of 2026 for the release of a next-generation voice model designed to deliver more natural speech, lower latency, and more fluid, human-like interactions.
South Korea is intensifying competition to develop a sovereign AI foundation model, with five leading teams from industry and academia unveiling first-phase results. The contenders highlighted differences in parameter scale, multimodal capabilities, and vertical applications. By mid-January 2026, four teams will be selected to advance to the next stage.
India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has approved an additional 22 proposals under the Electronics Components Manufacturing Scheme (ECMS), marking a significant expansion of the country's push to expand electronics manufacturing. The newly cleared projects involve a projected investment of INR418/63 billion and an estimated production of INR2,581.52 billion, and are expected to generate 33,791 direct jobs.
Smartwatch shipments returned to an upward trajectory in 2025 with products from Huawei, Xiaomi, Apple, and Samsung Electronics, further boosted by strong demand in China.
Elon Musk said Neuralink plans to begin high-volume production of its brain-computer interface implants in 2026 and shift to an almost fully automated surgical process, a move aimed at scaling the company's experimental neurotechnology beyond early clinical trials.
Artificial intelligence continues to be the central force behind the upcoming productivity revolution. Yet in the US, foundational energy constraints threaten to stall progress. The primary obstacle is not a shortage of semiconductor chips or inadequate computing capacity. It is a more fundamental resource: electricity. Increasing demand from AI data centers (AIDCs) is straining the nation's electric grid. It is testing the limits of social tolerance.
The global semiconductor market is projected to reach US$1 trillion as early as 2026, significantly ahead of previous industry forecasts targeting 2030. The World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) forecast, released in December 2024, expects growth to be driven predominantly by logic chips, including GPUs and AI accelerators. Memory markets are poised for the steepest increase.
Copper prices are expected to continue rising through 2026, driven by strong demand from AI data center construction, growth in the electric vehicle (EV) industry, and power grid modernization projects. Wire and cable manufacturers such as Taya and Walsin Lihwa stand to benefit from the international copper price surge, with market reports suggesting planned price increases for related products.
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