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Apr 2
South Korea's market volatility hands Taiwan a rare edge in AI
During a lecture hosted by the Chinese National Association of Industry and Commerce (CNAIC), DIGITIMES Chairman Colley Hwang analyzed the East Asian industrial landscape. While headlines often focus on the chip wars between the US and China, Hwang shed light on a quieter, more structural divergence: the widening "resilience gap" between Taiwan and South Korea, as manifested through the lens of currency.

The 2026 National Trade Estimate (NTE) Report signals a new era of digital friction between the US and its closest Asian allies.

The current lack of real-world physical data for humanoid robots means they still require substantial training costs. Recognizing this business opportunity, J-Mex, which specializes in motion capture technology, has in recent years been actively entering the humanoid robot supply chain. It is now a partner in Nvidia's ecosystem and has recently announced a collaboration with Techman Robot to accelerate the deployment of physical AI.
Taiwan sits at a rare intersection of economic momentum and political gridlock. The island's economy expanded 8.68% in 2025, exports hit a record US$640.75 billion, and per capita GDP is closing in on the US$40,000 threshold — largely on the back of booming global demand for AI chips and semiconductor capacity. Yet while Taiwan's technology industry is firing on all cylinders, its legislature remains deadlocked over the government's spending plan.

Wiwynn has nominated LandMark Optoelectronics chairman and CEO Steven Chang to its 2026 board, reinforcing its push into co-packaged optics (CPO) and signaling deeper alignment with optical interconnect technologies for AI infrastructure.

Rising global economic uncertainty has fueled safe-haven demand alongside strong industrial consumption, pushing precious metal prices higher. In response, Taiwan's leading quartz component maker TXC announced a 5–10% price increase effective April 1, 2026. Tai-Saw Technology followed suit by raising prices on filters and other frequency parts, while other Taiwanese suppliers have begun negotiating with customers to reflect rising raw material costs, such as gold.
On March 31, Nvidia announced a US$2 billion investment in Marvell and plans to further integrate its NVLink Fusion technology with Marvell's XPU services for customer use. Although Nvidia revealed partnerships with several ASIC service providers around NVLink Fusion technology earlier in 2025, this direct investment signals a closer collaboration between Nvidia and Marvell. The move raises questions about how the two companies will expand their presence in the cloud AI market and whether ASIC customers will embrace this integrated solution.
Amid AI-driven shifts, Arm launched its AGI CPU in March 2026 to address system-level optimization lacking in highly customized data center CPUs. Partnering with Meta and supported by OpenAI, Arm seeks to offer a standardized solution that enhances ecosystem efficiency without directly competing with clients.
Dixon Technologies is accelerating its push into display module manufacturing, backed by an INR11 billion (US$118.74 million) investment in a new facility in the Noida–Greater Noida region. The plant, approved under India's Electronics Component Manufacturing Scheme (ECMS), will serve as the company's first dedicated display module fabrication unit and marks a significant milestone in its backward integration strategy.

In late March 2026, a series of developments converged to reshape sentiment in the large model sector. Anthropic faced a major source code leak of Claude Code due to an engineer error. At nearly the same time, Chinese large model firm Z.ai released its first annual report since listing, with CEO Zhang Peng explicitly naming Anthropic as the company's benchmark; meanwhile, rising contender DeepSeek experienced three consecutive days of service disruptions from March 29 to 31, affecting both web and API access.

Microsoft has unveiled back-to-back investments across Southeast Asia, committing US$5.5 billion to Singapore and more than US$1 billion to Thailand in a coordinated push to expand artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud infrastructure in the region.

Spot prices for memory have plunged by 35%, yet contract prices continue to rise. Notebook supply chain sources say there are no signs of supply easing, with shortages expected to persist through the end of 2026. Rising component costs are also being passed on to end markets, prompting brand vendors to adopt a conservative stance, and a full-year decline in shipments now appears inevitable.