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Aug 6
Unitree's impending IPO draws Meituan and Tencent as investors

Chinese robotics company Unitree is entering a critical stage in its initial public offering. The IPO is expected to raise about CNY4.2 billion (approximately US$622 million), while the company's post-listing valuation could range from CNY40 billion to CNY50 billion. It would become the first company on China's A-share market whose primary investment theme is humanoid robotics.

Chinese large language model (LLM) developers are beginning to move away from aggressive price competition, with leading players reportedly introducing higher prices and new commercial licensing models as they seek more sustainable returns on growing AI investments.
US optical transceiver ban risks slowing AI data center build-out
Aug 7, 12:44
A proposed US ban on new Chinese optical transceivers could disrupt the build-out of AI data centers before Western suppliers have enough capacity to replace Chinese production, raising the risk of higher costs, delayed cluster deployments and stranded GPU capacity.
Nvidia Senior Vice President of Networking Gilad Shainer said the company is building the key network architecture and optical interconnect technologies needed for AI factory deployments at scale, in a DIGITIMES interview ahead of the OCP APAC Summit on August 11-12, 2026. He said the biggest shift in AI factories is that the computing unit is no longer a single server but the entire data center, while Nvidia's announcement that co-packaged optics (CPO) switch has entered mass production signals a new round of upgrades for the optical communications industry and the AI networking market.

SpaceX's earnings call — the first since its IPO disclosure — beat expectations on Aug 4, but the line that moved markets wasn't a revenue figure.

Elon Musk's ambitions across AI, robotics and space infrastructure are moving into a new phase following the unveiling of Terafab, an ambitious semiconductor manufacturing complex designed to secure the compute capacity required by Tesla, SpaceX and xAI.

AI-driven demand for advanced packaging is giving old-generation panel fabs and equipment new value. As Taiwan's panel makers accelerate the phaseout of LCD capacity at the 5.5 generation and below, they are splitting into two tracks: selling factories to foundries and outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) providers, or keeping lines in-house to develop fan-out panel-level packaging (FOPLP), through-glass via (TGV), redistribution layer (RDL), and glass core technologies.

Microsoft has opened its India South Central cloud region in Hyderabad, expanding local capacity for customers in one of the world's fastest-growing digital markets. The move could matter well beyond India, giving global enterprises more options for sovereign-ready AI, regulated workloads, and lower-latency cloud services in Asia's second-largest internet economy.

The government-organized 2026 Taiwan Innotech Expo (TIE) will open in Taipei on September 17, with the National Science and Technology Council's (NSTC) Future Tech Pavilion set to showcase the latest research achievements that are ready for proof-of-concept validation and technology licensing. This year's exhibition will spotlight six priority areas: AI applications, semiconductors, precision health, space technology, disaster prevention technology, and net-zero technology.

Wistron has secured new AI server customers, including enterprise accounts Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Lenovo Group, as well as a reported cloud services provider (CSP) order from Oracle, underscoring Taiwan ODMs' growing role in AI server manufacturing as demand surges and production becomes more complex.

From smartphones and smartwatches to emerging AI glasses, electric vehicles, autonomous driving systems, and the rapidly expanding drone industry, batteries have become the indispensable power source behind virtually every next-generation technology. More than just the "heart" of these products, batteries have also become one of the world's largest strategic growth markets.

Inventec said notebook shipments will soften in the third quarter after customers pulled in orders during the first half, lifting volumes above expectations, while server shipments are set to keep rising. The Taiwanese electronics maker reported that it shipped 1.6 million notebook units in July, down from 2.4 million in June, and expects third-quarter notebook shipments to fall by a single-digit percentage from the second quarter.