DIGITIMES: News and Insight of the Global Supply Chain

Anthropic joins OpenAI, Google DeepMind in Singapore

DIGITIMES — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 02:55:13 GMT

Anthropic will open its Singapore office in October, making it the company's fifth office in the Asia-Pacific region after Tokyo, Bengaluru, Seoul, and Sydney. The move underscores the AI company's push into Singapore as demand for Claude surges across startups, large enterprises, and government agencies.

Taiwan's Yusin pivots China OE brake pad business from BYD to JV automakers

Willis Ke — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 02:55:00 GMT

Taiwan-listed Yusin Holding Corp. said on September 23 that its Chinese subsidiary Fuzhou Assured Brake Systems is reducing its reliance on BYD and shifting its China original-equipment (OE) brake pad business toward joint-venture automakers including Volkswagen, Nissan and Honda. The subsidiary is targeting an 11% share of China's OE brake pad market by 2027.

Anthropic brings in Accenture to audit AI safety

DIGITIMES — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 02:50:03 GMT

Anthropic has announced a third-party on-site evaluation program, bringing in staff from Faculty, the AI company owned by Accenture, to test model safety measures with near-employee access. The two sides have each committed at least US$1 billion over the next five years to build what Anthropic calls a third-party embedded evaluation mechanism.

Qualcomm adopts 'offset PoP' packaging to cool new flagship phone SoC

Lily Hess — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 02:42:03 GMT

Qualcomm unveiled two flagship mobile platforms at the Snapdragon Summit 2026, including the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, which changes its packaging approach to improve heat dissipation. During a media Q&A, Qualcomm Senior Vice President and General Manager of Mobile Handsets Chris Patrick said the new package still falls under existing Package on Package (PoP) technology, but the memory is no longer stacked directly above the die and is shifted to the side to create a thermal path.

Xi's US visit stirs alarm over a possible Chinese auto push into America

Jingyue Hsiao — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 02:34:24 GMT

Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to the US is heightening anxiety across the global auto industry, where suppliers, dealers, and lawmakers fear it could open the door to Chinese carmakers in America. For readers worldwide, the issue matters because it could reshape EV pricing, supply chains, jobs, and trade tensions far beyond the US market.

Garmin drops Micro LED after 1 year, returns to OLED

Yunnie Cheng — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 02:25:31 GMT

The commercial adoption of Micro LED display technology is facing another major setback. Just one year after making waves with the world's first commercial Micro LED smartwatch, Garmin has dropped the technology from its latest lineup. The newly announced Fenix 9 series, unveiled in August 2026, uses AMOLED and memory-in-pixel (MiP) solar display options instead, highlighting the persistent technical and economic hurdles facing Micro LED deployment.

India reportedly probes LG, Samsung over duties on OLED TV display parts

DIGITIMES — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 02:24:05 GMT

India's Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) is investigating LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics over whether they underpaid import duties on display parts for OLED televisions, Reuters reported on September 23, citing five unnamed sources. The probe puts a tariff classification question at the center of a premium TV segment both South Korean companies are counting on to grow in India.

Alibaba Zhenwu V900 joins Huawei Ascend 960 in race to fill Nvidia's China AI compute gap

Levi Li — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 02:18:29 GMT

Alibaba has formally unveiled its self-developed Zhenwu V900 AI chip at the 2026 Apsara Conference, with CEO Eddie Wu describing the T-Head Semiconductor-designed processor as "China's most powerful AI chip to date." The V900 is intended to fill part of the computing gap left by restrictions on access to Nvidia's high-end accelerators.

Supermicro begins shipping Nvidia Vera Rubin NVL72 AI racks

DIGITIMES — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 02:11:40 GMT

Supermicro has begun shipping Nvidia's next-generation Vera Rubin NVL72 systems, moving the rack-scale platform from product demonstrations into customer deployments as AI infrastructure increasingly requires integrated computing, power, and liquid-cooling systems.

Qualcomm's PickNik deal brings robotics software to its edge AI push

DIGITIMES — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 02:02:44 GMT

MoveIt's integration with Qualcomm's Dragonwing and Arduino platforms could give robot builders a more direct route from on-device AI to motion planning and control, while also testing whether the open-source project can retain its cross-platform standing under new ownership.

Intel puts CPU-GPU coordination at center of agentic AI strategy

DIGITIMES — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 01:37:47 GMT

Intel is positioning closer coordination between CPUs, GPUs and other computing resources as a key requirement for the next phase of AI, as agentic AI shifts workloads from model inference toward complex task execution.

Trump-Xi pre-summit watch: H20 setbacks and Ascend gains reshape China's Nvidia calculus

DIGITIMES — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:20:38 GMT

Ahead of the Trump-Xi summit, the key semiconductor question is no longer simply how much Nvidia hardware Washington will allow China to buy.

Industrial software giants race to build industry world models

Yunnie Cheng — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:19:11 GMT

While generative AI has surged into mainstream consumer use thanks to ChatGPT, the adoption of AI across industrial sectors has progressed at a much slower pace. Industry analysts point out that the primary culprit is the tendency of current AI architectures to "hallucinate," a fatal vulnerability in manufacturing environments where there is no tolerance for error. As industrial AI development cannot rely on large language models (LLMs) alone, attention is rapidly shifting toward industry world models that anchor AI systems in the laws of physics. Recognizing this pivot, global industrial software giants are already aggressively positioning themselves in this space.

Powertech targets quarterly growth in 2026, eyes record high

Lily Hess — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:18:00 GMT

Powertech Technology expects stronger memory packaging and testing demand, higher average selling prices (ASPs), and ramping high-end through-silicon via (TSV) DDR5 production in the fourth quarter of 2026 to drive sequential growth throughout 2026 and lift revenue to a new record. Its Taiwan fan-out panel-level package (FOPLP) line, already booked by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), is set to add revenue from 2027 and open another growth chapter for both sales and profit.

AUO unveils EPS 2030 blueprint linking sustainability to business value

Charlene Chen — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:17:09 GMT

AUO has set out its EPS 2030 sustainability goals, expanding beyond factory energy saving and carbon reduction to applications including smart mobility, smart healthcare, smart retail, smart manufacturing, and low-carbon digital transformation. The company outlined 31 sustainability targets in total and said it has already achieved all 10 of its 2025 EPS goals, with a 100% completion rate.

GMI AI compute leasing business sells out in US as big users lock in long contracts

Rodney Chan — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:16:35 GMT

GMI Technology, a Taiwan-based electronics component distributor and application solutions provider, said its AI computing rental business is booming, with strong demand from US technology companies for computing power. The company said large users tend to secure computing capacity through long-term contracts, leaving the market short of supply.

SK Hynix Indiana HBM plant faces lawsuit

DIGITIMES — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:16:08 GMT

SK Hynix's high-bandwidth memory (HBM) production site under construction in Indiana has been drawn into local litigation as the race for AI memory capacity intensifies. Local residents in the US are seeking to overturn a land-use change and halt construction, with a trial scheduled for December 2026 and the case drawing market attention.

Trump-Xi pre-summit watch: China charts a sovereignty-first path for frontier AI

DIGITIMES — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:15:33 GMT

When Donald Trump and Xi Jinping discuss artificial intelligence, the deeper divide may not be over whether AI needs rules, but over what those rules are designed to protect.

OUCC sees semiconductor chemical shipments ramping up in 2027

Sherri Wang — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:15:11 GMT

Oriental Union Chemical Corporation (OUCC) expects shipments of semiconductor chemicals to ramp up in 2027 as more products complete customer qualification, with the Taiwan-based chemical maker targeting electronic chemicals to account for 10% of revenue by 2028.

Microsoft reframes AI ROI calculations, keeps in-house ASICs for internal use

Kevin Wang — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:14:36 GMT

Microsoft is changing how companies evaluate their generative AI investments, as the technology evolves from its beginnings as a productivity tool into deeper uses in core business workflows. In addition to token consumption and model costs, Microsoft Taiwan general manager Sean Pien points out that corporations are also examining how AI actually benefits workflows and innovation, making return-on-investment (ROI) evaluations harder to judge solely on the basis of time or labor savings.

ASRock Industrial's game-streaming win signals longer revenue tail, but supply risks remain

Jingyue Hsiao — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:14:07 GMT

ASRock Industrial has secured a large North American game-streaming services project that could extend well into 2027, according to chairman James Lee. The industrial PC maker said the deal supports a long-term customer deployment, even as component shortages, rising prices, and staged ordering continue to cloud the near-term revenue picture.

LSTC links with Rapidus to revive Japan's advanced chipmaking

DIGITIMES — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:13:39 GMT

Japan's Leading-edge Semiconductor Technology Center (LSTC) is building a public-private-academic framework around Rapidus, which plans to mass-produce 2-nanometer chips in 2027, to advance next-generation semiconductor research and talent development and give Japan a unique edge in the global race for advanced process technology.

AMD pushes ROCm for agentic workloads while Intel holds on to OpenVINO

Lily Hess — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:13:14 GMT

Starting in the second half of 2025, as AI agent programs such as OpenClaw, Hermes, Claude, and DeepSeek Harness were launched one after another, a wave of "keeping lobsters" began to emerge around on-device AI models paired with AI agents.

US, China diverge on AI guardrails ahead of Trump-Xi summit

DIGITIMES — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 09:26:07 GMT

The US and China are moving toward different models for governing increasingly capable artificial intelligence, even as the US proposes a limited safety mechanism with China ahead of President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping's September 24 summit in Washington. AI is expected to be among the issues discussed at the meeting.

SKC raises Absolics stake to 82% as glass substrates remain in testing

DIGITIMES — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 09:07:57 GMT

SKC is increasing its investment in its US glass substrate subsidiary Absolics, raising its stake to more than 82%, as the South Korean materials group commits more capital to a business that remains in customer evaluation and testing ahead of volume production.

Engineering over panic: Jensen Huang's pragmatic vision for the future of AI

Yunnie Cheng — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 08:53:10 GMT

In a 46-minute interview on CBS, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang pushed back against apocalyptic warnings regarding artificial intelligence (AI). He urged the industry to focus on rigorous engineering and safe product delivery rather than apocalyptic fearmongering.

Vivo launches camera monitor accessory, stoking panel demand

Charlene Chen — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 08:46:43 GMT

Vivo officially unveiled its new flagship X500 series smartphones in Shanghai on September 21, along with wearable accessories including smartwatches and earphones. The X500 series is positioned around a broader push to extend image capture from still photography into video recording and content creation. Vivo has further integrated its hardware and software imaging functions, and is now testing whether the camera monitor can become a standard accessory for high-end imaging phones.

Foxtron maps overseas expansion as customers seek full EV line-up

Lily Hess — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 08:10:11 GMT

Foxtron Vehicle Technologies said its overseas expansion is taking shape as exports to New Zealand and Australia enter their final countdown, with a planned Poland factory with ElectroMobility Poland also drawing attention. On September 22, Foxtron Chairman Andy Lee said Europe's strict emissions rules and strong environmental awareness make it a key electric vehicle (EV) market, while localization and shared platforms are central to the company's strategy.

With Xi's Washington visit incoming, trade data show how the tariff war has reshaped US-China tech flows

DIGITIMES — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 08:04:00 GMT

When Chinese President Xi Jinping meets US President Donald Trump at the White House on September 24, trade will be the most measurable front of their rivalry. Since the first Section 301 tariffs took effect in July 2018, US imports of Chinese technology hardware have fallen sharply. Rare earth magnets are the exception: Washington cannot easily replace them, which gives Beijing leverage as the one-year Busan truce nears its November 10 expiry.

YMTC wins German injunctions against Micron in latest round of NAND patent battle

Charlene Chen — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 07:59:18 GMT

Micron is facing fresh pressure on multiple fronts after Germany's Munich I Regional Court sided with Chinese memory maker YMTC and issued two injunctions over alleged infringement. Industry sources said enforcement of the injunctions could restrict Micron's supply in Germany and reshape the European automotive and industrial-control NAND market.

Automotive display growth shifts to HUDs, passenger screens

Lily Hess — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 07:33:44 GMT

The global automotive display market is entering a new phase of growth, with demand shifting away from central consoles and instrument clusters toward niche applications such as head-up displays (HUDs) and front-passenger entertainment panels. DIGITIMES Intelligence analyst Jason Yang said the global automotive display shipment compound annual growth rate (CAGR) is expected to reach only about 2.4% from 2026 to 2031, but HUDs and entertainment panels will grow 14.4% and 17.9%, respectively.

LG Electronics, Microsoft enter partnership on AI data centers, physical AI

DIGITIMES — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 07:24:46 GMT

LG Electronics entered a partnership with Microsoft to cooperate on a range of AI initiatives. The two firms agreed to work together on AI data centers, LG Electronics' AI data transformation, and physical AI as the company known for appliances taps into growing AI-related industries.

Samsung Display explores halftone black PDL tech to cut OLED production costs

DIGITIMES — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 07:17:32 GMT

Samsung Display is evaluating a new manufacturing process known as halftone black pixel definition layer (PDL) that could streamline the production of its OLED panels, industry sources disclosed to The ELEC on September 22. By integrating two separate manufacturing steps into a single photolithography process, the display maker aims to reduce costs and boost efficiency for upcoming flagship devices.

Samsung LPDDR6 validated by Qualcomm for next-gen Snapdragon platform

DIGITIMES — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 07:13:37 GMT

AI workloads are pushing cloud, edge, and mobile devices toward tighter power budgets and heavier data traffic, making memory efficiency a growing global issue. Samsung is positioning its new LPDDR6 as a response, with higher bandwidth, lower power use, and improved reliability for next-generation on-device AI.

Qualcomm and Google eye Agentic AI, expand partnership to GoogleBook, automotives

Yunnie Cheng — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 07:06:20 GMT

During his keynote at Snapdragon Summit 2026, Qualcomm President and CEO Cristiano Amon invited Rick Osterloh, Senior Vice President of Platforms and Devices at Google, on stage to discuss the past year's developments in agentic AI and the strategic direction of their ongoing partnership. Amon emphasized that Google remains an indispensable partner to Qualcomm, noting that the relationship—built on co-developing the industry's first Android smartphone—has grown even stronger amid the broader AI transformation.