Baidu's second-quarter 2026 results confirm a business in the midst of a wrenching handover: an AI-powered core that is scaling faster than almost any other line item at the company, while the total revenue base is still shrinking. Group revenue fell 4% year-on-year to CNY31.3 billion (US$4.63 billion), the fifth straight quarter of annual decline, even as Baidu's AI-powered businesses grew 25% and accounted for half of Baidu General Business revenue for the second consecutive quarter, exceeding legacy-business revenue.
Intelligent Asia 2026 opened on August 19 at TaiNEX 1 and TaiNEX 2 in Taipei, with industry and government speakers repeatedly returning to one theme: Taiwan should use its manufacturing depth to anchor more production locally while connecting domestic suppliers more closely with global markets.
Kenmec Group founder and president Frank Hsieh said on August 19 that two of the company's new businesses have taken shape, with Taisic Materials focusing on silicon carbide (SiC), a third-generation semiconductor material, and Kentec targeting the AI data center (AIDC) market. Both companies are expected to list on Taiwan's Emerging Stock Board in October 2026.
As artificial intelligence expands from digital environments into physical operations, embodied intelligence is emerging as a new frontier for technology companies. Xiaomi's latest earnings call offered a glimpse into how the company is approaching this field, with robotics positioned not as a standalone product category, but as a capability designed to enhance manufacturing, automation, and future industrial applications.
As competition in artificial intelligence shifts from model development toward real-world deployment, Xiaomi is betting that its advantage will come not only from building foundation models, but from integrating those models across a broad hardware ecosystem spanning smartphones, smart homes, and electric vehicles.
The 2026 World Robot Conference (WRC) recently opened in Beijing, with humanoid robots remaining the event's biggest focus. With China continuing to lead global humanoid robot shipments and the conference reaching new highs in scale each year, WRC has become a key showcase for humanoid robot makers to demonstrate their latest capabilities.
Marvell Technology is set to deepen its role in Google's AI infrastructure through an expanded agreement to develop custom chips, in a deal that could generate roughly US$120 billion in revenue for the chipmaker through fiscal 2033 if Google meets purchasing targets tied to the warrant, according to Reuters.
As physical AI and robotics draw unprecedented market attention, a key bottleneck is clogging the deployment pipeline: quality, real-world physical data. To move applications from the lab to real-world deployment, companies are getting creative in overcoming this obstacle while balancing affordability, stability, and data volumes.
