Global venture capital has rebounded on the AI boom after the pandemic freeze, with total investment in the first half of 2026 already topping full-year 2025. But the recovery is coming with a warning sign: capital is becoming highly concentrated in AI, while China is pouring money into robotics and drawing scrutiny from the US.
Samsung Electronics' latest move to scale back its smartphone retail network in China marks another milestone in a years-long restructuring. The shift has steadily reduced the company's footprint across manufacturing and consumer businesses, highlighting how changing market dynamics have reshaped the Korean technology giant's China strategy.
South Korea's planned KRW500 billion(US$349,398) research and development initiative for silicon carbide (SiC) power semiconductors is struggling to move beyond the planning stage because the government has not secured a major anchor company to drive demand and support commercialization, according to ETNews.
China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said humanoid robots have become a key symbol of the country's emerging manufacturing sector, claiming that 8 of every 10 humanoid and quadruped robots sold globally are produced by Chinese companies. The remarks came at a July 31 press briefing and also highlighted progress in IC design, semiconductor equipment, wafer fabrication, and packaging and testing.
HP, Asus and Acer have begun using limited quantities of DRAM from China's ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) in selected budget notebooks sold outside the US, Nikkei Asia reported, as a global memory shortage pushes PC makers to widen their supplier base.
Intel China has completed day-0 adaptation for MiniMax H3, the latest multimodal generative model from Chinese AI startup MiniMax, following its earlier support for the DeepSeek model family. The move underscores Intel's push to capture local AI deployment opportunities in China's growing open-source model ecosystem.
Samsung Electro-Mechanics (SEMCO) is reportedly pulling forward the start-up of its first overseas multilayer ceramic capacitor (MLCC) plant, a move that underscores how an AI-driven scramble for the tiny components is reshaping pricing and investment across the industry.
China's leading DRAM maker ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) is considering building a second 12-inch memory chip fabrication plant in Beijing's Yizhuang district while holding early-stage financing talks with entities backed by the Beijing municipal government, according to a Reuters report. The proposed project would further expand the company's manufacturing footprint as AI-driven demand continues to tighten global memory supply.
India is reportedly proposing to extend key tax exemptions for foreign electronics manufacturers until 2041, a move that hands Apple a lobbying win and deepens a widening set of incentives designed to pull global hardware production away from China.
Montage Technology has begun pilot production of what it says is the industry's first CXL 3.2 memory expansion controller, targeting growing memory capacity and pooling requirements across AI, cloud computing and data centers.
China's leading humanoid robot maker Unitree Technology expects first-half 2026 revenue to reach roughly CNY1.1 billion (US$155.8 million), an increase of 35.6% to 45.4% year on year, as demand for embodied AI continues to grow and the company expands its business scale.
