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Apr 28
Commentary: Tim Cook's sole omission during 15-year tenor
On December 6, 2022, Tim Cook stood on a construction site in Phoenix, Arizona, alongside President Biden, TSMC founder Morris Chang, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. It was the tool-in ceremony for TSMC's first Arizona fab, a moment that crystallized how central Taiwan's semiconductor industry had become to American technology ambitions. For Cook, it was also the closest he ever got to TSMC's leadership in 15 years as Apple's CEO.
Outsourcing by US cloud service providers (CSPs) has become an increasingly dominant trend, with Taiwanese manufacturers taking on a larger share of global production. Oracle has not only expanded its supplier network but is also reportedly reallocating orders originally assigned to Supermicro to Taiwanese firms, further boosting their strategic importance.
The shift from model training to real-time inference, driven by open-source agent applications, is reshaping global data center design and supplier dynamics, with implications for cloud providers and hardware makers worldwide. Demand for inference-dedicated systems is accelerating production and favoring manufacturers with liquid-cooling and vertical-integration capabilities across the industry.
Workloads are shifting from training to inference. In this transition, CPUs are regaining a central role in coordinating diverse computing tasks, significantly boosting their importance. Industry estimates suggest that CPU demand could eventually rival that of GPUs, with the ratio between the two trending toward 1:1.
The global competition in open-source large language models is heating up again. On April 28, Xiaomi officially unveiled the "MiMo-V2.5" series of models developed under the leadership of Fuli Luo, a former core member of DeepSeek and current head of Xiaomi's MiMo large model team. The lineup includes the flagship MiMo-V2.5-Pro and the general-purpose MiMo-V2.5 model.

A surge in demand for AI is fueling a powerful upswing in the memory market, propelling Adata to record-breaking results at the start of 2026.

Taiwan's drone export momentum continues to surge, with first-quarter 2026 shipments already surpassing the entire 2025 annual total. The market landscape has shifted as well, with the Czech Republic overtaking Poland as Taiwan's largest drone export destination.
Nvidia has signed a 10-year lease for approximately 760,000 square feet of office space in Bengaluru, marking the largest single-tenant office commitment in India to date. The space, located at Bagmane Capital's Memphis South Tower in Mahadevpura, spans 12 floors and will serve as a major hub for the company's expanding artificial intelligence (AI) and engineering operations.
Acer is celebrating its 50th anniversary, having started in 1976 with a total capital of NT$1 million (US$31,800 in today's value). As of April 27, 2026, the broader Acer Group family includes 43 publicly listed companies. Founder Stan Shih emphasized that Acer's greatest contribution lies in nurturing talent for Taiwan, which he said has created intangible and long-lasting value.
Taiwan's exports were forecast to surpass US$800 billion in 2026, driven by strong demand for electronic components and information and audiovisual products tied to artificial intelligence, according to China Credit Information Service. The projection followed a record first quarter when exports reached US$195.74 billion, marking the highest quarterly total on record and a 51.1% year-over-year increase.
Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE) and the National Institute of Cyber Security signed a memorandum of understanding on April 28 to establish a joint cyber defense, intelligence sharing, and cooperation framework aimed at countering complex global cyber threats. The agreement will integrate technical resources and real-time threat intelligence to strengthen industry-wide defenses for the semiconductor sector, with an emphasis on protecting smart manufacturing and core corporate assets in Kaohsiung.

Honor's surprise win at this year's Beijing humanoid robot half-marathon has stirred industry debate, not only for its on-track performance but for what the move signals about shifting competitive dynamics. The smartphone maker's cross-sector push into robotics has reignited questions over whether embodied AI and humanoid systems could trigger a new round of market reshuffling.