Huawei is preparing to launch commercial HarmonyOS-powered desktop PCs in September, marking another step in its effort to extend its self-developed operating system from smartphones and tablets into enterprise computing.
AI server liquid cooling is driving demand for pump makers, a shift that could boost supply-chain resilience and margins for Asia-based manufacturers as AI deployments accelerate. Walrus Pump aims to achieve a 10% revenue share from liquid cooling by year-end 2026, supported by growing orders, technology pumps, and broader industrial demand.
ByteDance is in talks to buy AI chips from Shanghai-based Iluvatar CoreX and is also considering using Baidu's Kunlunxin chips, as the TikTok parent expands its domestic chip options amid rising inference demand from its AI chatbot Doubao.
Apple is stepping up the AI capabilities of its Siri voice assistant, and analysts say memory chip demand will rise along with it, potentially benefiting Apple's suppliers such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. The shift could drive both shipment growth and higher prices for mobile DRAM.
China has recently eased controls on some indium phosphide (InP) substrates, relieving a bottleneck in optical communications capacity for the second half of the year. But supply chain players say the long-term priority is still to expand substrate capacity from non-China sources, with supply security for the AI industry outweighing price.
Nvidia's dominance in AI is extending beyond model training and deeper into inference—the fast-growing segment of the AI market responsible for running deployed models and generating revenue.
Physical AI is emerging as a new frontier of model development. Any model, however, is only as good as the data used to train it. Because of this, Japanese startup APTO is launching a physical AI infrastructure lab to help plug the data gap needed to create vision-language-action (VLA) models, with a focus on imitation learning.
