For all the noise Donald Trump has made about taxing semiconductors, the measure that actually took effect in January 2026 barely touched the machines the AI build-out runs on. A 25% Section 232 duty landed on a narrow band of advanced logic chips, and an explicit carve-out spared anything imported for use in US data centers. That carve-out is why US$143.2 billion of computer processing units entered the US in the first half of 2026 without meaningfully paying it.

For the past two years, China's AI companies have competed on a single axis: whose model performs best. That contest is starting to give way to a harder one — whether those models can actually run, at scale, on chips made in China, as US restrictions on advanced AI chip exports raise the stakes of that question.

Compound semiconductor supply-chain players say China has recently eased some substrate export controls, but the upgrade of high-frequency transmission in AI data centers toward 200G and 400G has made optical communications a key technology breakthrough, creating a severe indium phosphide (InP) substrate shortage and sparking a trend toward signing long-term contracts and locking up capacity to secure stable supply.

Nvidia reported revenue of US$96.221 billion in the second quarter of fiscal 2027, more than doubling from a year earlier and underscoring the global rush to build AI infrastructure and expand computing power. The results also signal a continued boost for Taiwan's suppliers as hyperscalers shift purchases from Blackwell to Blackwell Ultra and Vera Rubin.

A new hardware standard could make it easier for AI agents to operate laboratory and factory equipment across borders and industries. Anthropic says its Model Hardware Standard aims to speed device integration, improve safety, and support around-the-clock automated experiments for researchers, engineers, and manufacturers worldwide.

Renesas Electronics has opened a physical AI and robotics lab in Beijing, a move that could speed the development of safer, smarter machines for factories, logistics, and homes worldwide. The facility is designed to help customers test, validate, and co-develop robotic systems as physical AI shifts from concept to real-world deployment.

Google is shifting a roughly 90-person artificial intelligence responsibility team out of DeepMind and into its global affairs organization as part of a wider reorganization in early September. The move, which brings the group closer to companywide lobbying and public policy, has prompted internal concerns that it could reduce the team's independence and its ability to identify risks and cybersecurity threats in new models.

Enterprise AI tools are spreading quickly across Taiwan and Hong Kong, but a new Workday study found that many employees are still losing time to disconnected systems, repeated data checks and manual information transfers. The report, based on 6,100 professionals globally, including 200 respondents in Taiwan and Hong Kong, showed that a quarter of local workers still spend seven hours or more each week moving information and verifying data.

Marvell Technology used its second-quarter fiscal 2027 earnings call on August 27 to lift its revenue outlook for a second consecutive quarter, and the composition of the raise says more about the AI infrastructure cycle than the headline number does. Management now expects fiscal 2027 revenue of roughly US$12 billion, up from approximately US$11.5 billion a quarter ago, and fiscal 2028 revenue of approximately US$18 billion, up US$1.5 billion from the US$16.5 billion guided three months earlier. Growth is accelerating off a larger base: fiscal 2028 is now guided at about 50% growth, up from roughly 45% previously.

Marvell Technology's second quarter of fiscal 2027 was the point at which its data center business stopped being the growth engine attached to a diversified infrastructure chipmaker and became substantially the whole company. Revenue for the three months ended August 1, 2026, reached a record US$2.74 billion, up 37% from a year earlier, with the data center end market contributing US$2.17 billion, or 79% of the total, against 74% a year ago. Everything else - the carrier, enterprise networking, consumer, and automotive businesses grouped as communications and other - grew 10% and shrank as a share of the company.

More than a year after Honor first debated the idea internally, its Robot Phone has moved from a contentious concept to a mass-produced commercial product. But the significance of the device extends beyond creating a smartphone with an unconventional form factor.