Global AI computing is rapidly moving beyond single-GPU systems toward AI Factory architectures, where agentic AI and inference workloads are pushing data centers to rely on networking, optics, packaging, cooling, power delivery and software co-design rather than raw accelerator counts...
Taiwan's role in the global AI supply chain is shifting from manufacturing toward engineering, Nvidia networking senior vice president Gilad Shainer told DIGITIMES in an interview. The island, he said, is increasingly serving as an engineering partner for next-generation AI factories rather than simply an assembler.
Tech talent has moved from being simply a hiring priority to a matter of national security. As major economies increasingly tie talent to competitiveness and national security, control over its cross-border movement is tightening. That shift is visible today: Taiwan's Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau is probing 17 companies accused of illegally recruiting tech talent in Taiwan, China is preparing to tighten exit controls on key technical workers, and the US continues expanding semiconductor and AI export controls and research security reviews.
The 2026 OCP APAC Summit will take place in Taipei on August 11-12. Ahead of the event, Lightmatter founder and CEO Nicholas Harris spoke exclusively with DIGITIMES about the company's advantages after joining the Nvidia NVLink ecosystem, its technology roadmap and the importance of close collaboration with Taiwan's supply chain.
Suppliers locked supply and price floors through 2030. The collateral protecting them runs out first — and that is when procurement leverage comes back.
Taiwan's hardware manufacturing sector leads globally, but the country's level of investment in cybersecurity software and identity governance still ranks in the back half of the Asia-Pacific region, SailPoint Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau managing director Simon Tai told DIGITIMES in an interview. As the tech industry speeds up digital transformation, remote collaboration, outsourced workflows, and AI agents are increasingly common in enterprise operations, shifting the focus of corporate cybersecurity defenses.
China's State Council has released a revised version of the regulations on the protection of IC layout designs, set to take effect on October 15, 2026. It is the first full overhaul since the rules were issued in 2001, adding protection for photonic and quantum IC designs, increasing punitive damages for intentional infringement, and improving systems for layout design registration, licensing, and rights enforcement.
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.
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.
SpaceX's first earnings disclosure delivered a stronger-than-expected quarterly performance, but the greater significance of the call lay beyond the headline beat. It gave investors their clearest look yet at how the company intends to extend its ambitions beyond rocket launches or broadband connectivity alone.
SpaceX's rapid growth in AI, satellite connectivity, and space infrastructure is widening the strategic challenge for China beyond any single industry, as Musk's companies increasingly compete across sectors Beijing considers priorities. The combination of Starlink's expanding orbital footprint, SpaceX's accelerating AI business, and Tesla's manufacturing scale could give Musk an unusually integrated platform spanning technologies central to China's efforts to build competing capabilities and reduce dependence on foreign systems.
Two earnings calls three months apart show AMD and Nvidia converging on the same AI infrastructure boom from opposite directions. AMD is building a single rack-scale platform, Helios, aimed squarely at the handful of frontier labs and hyperscalers who can commit to gigawatt-scale deployments. Nvidia, already dominant with those same customers, is restructuring its own disclosures and business model to capture the much larger, more fragmented tier of capital-constrained startups and neoclouds beneath them.
Samsung Electronics' memory business was the clear focus of its second quarter 2026 earnings call, accounting for about one-third of the Q&A session. DIGITIMES Intelligence said its review of the call points to three takeaways: AI is broadening high-end memory demand into a wider product mix, supply tightness will last through 2028, and long-term agreements (LTAs) are reshaping supply and operations.
Tesla's latest quarterly results fell short of market expectations, but another development attracted equal attention: CEO Elon Musk adopted a noticeably more cautious tone when discussing the company's Robotaxi ambitions.
DIGITIMES Intelligence observed at the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) that AI is rapidly reshaping the direction of the automotive industry. Competition in vehicle intelligence is shifting from software-defined vehicle (SDV) function integration towards the development of AI-defined vehicle (AIDV) capabilities, extending automakers' competitive focus from software architecture to AI models, computing platforms, and ecosystem integration.
