Below are the most-read DIGITIMES Asia stories from the week of May 18-24, 2026:

Singapore will launch a new testbed at the Punggol Digital District (PDD) later in 2026 to research, test, and deploy physical artificial intelligence (AI) systems, as the government seeks to accelerate the adoption of robotics and embodied AI in real-world environments. The initiative is being led by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), JTC, and the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) in collaboration with eight industry partners.

Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) startup Manus is reportedly evaluating a US$1 billion fundraising round to buy back control of the company from Meta Platforms, in response to Chinese authorities ordering the company to withdraw from Meta's more than US$2 billion acquisition deal.

Nvidia, AMD, and Intel are all optimistic about AI development. However, server supply chain companies admit that orders are no longer the issue. Instead, what is most lacking are three critical resources: power, human labor, and financial resources. Among these, power and labor have become the biggest obstacles for manufacturers, which is intensifying competition across the supply chain for electricity and talent.

The Global Electronics Association announced the formation of the Global Electronics Policy Council on Monday to centralize policy advocacy for the electronics supply chain in response to rising tariff volatility, export controls, and domestic-investment policies across multiple countries. Founding members include Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, US electronics manufacturing services firms Jabil, Flex, and Plexus, and printed circuit board makers AT&S and TTM Technologies, and the council will operate with formal bylaws and a defined leadership structure.

Open Source Team Taiwan will debut at COMPUTEX / InnoVEX 2026 as a government-backed pavilion showcasing how open-source frameworks underpin corporate product strategy, AI commercialization, and cross-industry collaboration. The pavilion is promoted by the Administration for Digital Industries under the Ministry of Digital Affairs, with support from the Information Management Association. It brings together Taiwan-led open-source projects, technology firms, academia, and developer communities to promote business models and standards around open-source software and AI.

BenQ Materials, part of the BenQ Qisda Group, announced on May 22 that it completed a five-year syndicated loan of NT$6 billion (US$190.4 million) led by E.SUN Bank to refinance debt and support its transition to a cross-industry materials platform. The facility drew participation from 10 financial institutions, was oversubscribed by 1.9 times, and includes sustainability-linked interest-rate discounts tied to ESG targets.

Elon Musk's AI startup xAI faced weak uptake for its chatbot Grok across US government, corporate, and consumer markets, and SpaceX moved to lease idle computing capacity to Anthropic after Grok underused the infrastructure, raising questions about the viability of SpaceX's IPO valuation, according to reporting by Reuters and The Wall Street Journal.

Rising enterprise investment in AI tools is prompting customers to compress traditional software-as-a-service contracts and extract stronger commercial protections, executives and reporting said. Over the past several months, buyers in the US and global markets moved to shorten multi-year agreements, introduce review windows, and seek clauses that limit vendor price hikes as they redirect budgets toward AI suppliers.

Nichidenbo's May 22 board changes and planned equity link with WT Microelectronics signal a strategic pivot that could influence global component supply chains, as leadership shifts and a share-swap partnership aim to deepen collaboration, expand market reach, and increase customer-focused solution development across international markets, driving long-term global growth.

"World models" have risen swiftly to prominence in AI discourse—and just as quickly become a source of confusion. Over the past two years, the term has grown simultaneously ubiquitous and ambiguous, invoked across generative AI and robotics research communities to describe fundamentally different architectural paradigms.