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Analysis: The AI buildout stopped being a demand story
Jul 31, 17:22

For three years the constraint on artificial intelligence was how much compute the hyperscalers wanted to buy. The June-quarter filings of seven companies say the constraint has moved. It is now about who sets the price — and on that question the past five quarters have already taught a lesson from which most readers drew the wrong conclusion.

The Monte Jade Science and Technology Association of Taiwan (MJ Taiwan) elected Maverick Shih, chairman of Acer Cyber Security (ACSI), as its 13th chairman during the association's first board meeting of its new term on July 30.

Delta Electronics expects capital spending to rise to roughly NT$70 billion(US$2.17 billion) in 2026 from NT$46.1 billion(US$1.43 billion) in 2025, driven by growing demand from AI data centers and energy infrastructure projects.

US transportation authorities have allowed Amazon's Zoox to operate commercially on a limited basis, making it the first paid robotaxi service approved in the country. This follows efforts by Trump administration officials to relax certain rules in an effort to encourage development in autonomous driving technology.

Pegatron chairman Tzu-hsien Tung said that although he is not an investment expert, from an industry perspective he remains optimistic about the long-term outlook for artificial intelligence (AI), despite recent volatility in the capital markets sparking debate over whether the AI boom has begun to fade. While short-term markets are inevitably subject to intense fluctuations driven by international events, what matters more is the strength of Taiwan's industrial base, with AI driving growth across upstream, midstream, and downstream supply chains and gradually expanding from a single "silicon shield" into a broader "mountain range" of strategic industries.
ByteDance is reorganising Doubao, Lark and Volcengine around a more unified enterprise AI strategy, combining product development, cloud commercialisation and workplace software as its large-model business reaches an annualised revenue run rate of US$4 billion.
Concerns over whether AI is a bubble hinge on two key questions: can related investments be monetized, and will cloud service providers (CSPs) keep expanding capital spending? Based on Google, Microsoft, and Meta, the answer to both remains yes, underscoring the strength of AI fundamentals.

Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang has used a rare public intervention to argue that the US should back open-source artificial intelligence, not just the largest closed systems. His message comes as Silicon Valley debates whether AI's next phase will reward broad adoption and customization, or concentrated control and pricing power.

Anthropic said three of its Claude models unintentionally accessed the systems of three organizations after a testing environment was misconfigured and connected to the public internet. The incidents were identified after the company reviewed 141,006 test sessions and found that the breaches had occurred since April 2026.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently appeared alongside SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won and Samsung Electronics Executive Chairman Lee Jae-yong at a high-profile AI gathering in San Francisco, highlighting the deepening ties among the companies driving the global AI supply chain.

Microsoft is no longer framing artificial intelligence as a race to build the single best model. Instead, it is positioning itself as the platform where customers can choose among many models. This shift could broaden its enterprise reach while reducing dependence on any one AI leader.