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Thursday 30 July 2026
Microsoft's AI buildout: 88 new data centers, broader model catalog, silicon gains

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella laid out how the company is scaling its AI infrastructure and platform to keep pace with demand. He outlined these plans during an earnings call on July 29, when he also announced record revenue above US$331 billion for fiscal year 2026 (ending on June 30), with Microsoft Cloud earnings surpassing US$214 billion and Azure earnings surpassing US$100 billion.

Thursday 30 July 2026
Qualcomm to supply compute chips for BMW's next-gen vehicles through 2030s
Qualcomm Technologies and BMW Group have signed a long-term agreement under which Qualcomm will supply compute silicon for BMW's next-generation digital cockpit and advanced driver assistance and automated driving systems. The deal, announced on July 29, extends the partnership through the next decade, although financial details of the agreement have not been revealed.
Thursday 30 July 2026
Marvell opens expanded Bengaluru R&D hub, doubling India headcount

Marvell Technology has opened 100,000 square feet of additional semiconductor R&D space in Bengaluru and plans to double its India headcount over the next three years as part of a US$250 million investment program.

Thursday 30 July 2026
Qualcomm's push into data centers and cars signals a broader shift in chip strategy

Qualcomm is moving more aggressively into data centers and automotive technology, aiming to reduce its dependence on smartphones and build new growth engines. The company is betting that custom AI silicon, server products, and long-term vehicle deals will help offset softer Apple revenue and position it deeper in infrastructure.

Thursday 30 July 2026
Qualcomm confirms price hike plan and broadens growth bets as Apple sales fade

Qualcomm is raising prices across its product portfolio and accelerating a shift beyond smartphones as higher memory and manufacturing costs squeeze margins and Apple-related revenue falls. The company is leaning on automotive, data center, and Android demand to support growth while it works to offset a weaker premium handset mix.

Thursday 30 July 2026
Arm readies AGI CPU shipments, eyes 3Q stream in fiscal 2028

Arm Holdings is preparing its first self-designed data center CPU, the Arm AGI CPU, for shipments by the end of calendar 2026, and expects silicon sales to become a separately reported revenue category in fiscal 2028. The change would give Arm a third reported revenue line alongside licensing and royalties as it expands from supplying processor designs to selling complete chips.

Thursday 30 July 2026
Qualcomm completes Modular acquisition to expand AI software platform
Qualcomm has completed its acquisition of Modular, strengthening its push into AI software that can run across devices, data centers, and edge systems worldwide. The deal could broaden access to more efficient generative and agentic AI tools, while intensifying competition in a fast-growing market shaping global computing infrastructure.
Thursday 30 July 2026
Marvell plans US$250 million India investment to expand semiconductor R&D
Marvell Technology said its planned US$250 million investment in India over three years will deepen semiconductor research, hiring, and infrastructure, with implications for global AI, cloud, and data center supply chains. The move signals how India is becoming a larger hub for engineering talent and advanced chip development worldwide.
Thursday 30 July 2026
Arm's AI-driven data center growth offsets smartphone weakness, but softer handset outlook weighs on shares
Arm Holdings reported stronger-than-expected first-quarter results as demand for AI and data center chips lifted licensing and royalty revenue. However, the company's warning of slower smartphone royalty growth overshadowed its upbeat forecast, highlighting the challenge of balancing maturing handset markets with expanding AI opportunities.
Thursday 30 July 2026
Qualcomm bets on AI and automotive growth to offset Apple decline as weak outlook pressures shares
Qualcomm forecast weaker fourth-quarter earnings and warned that revenue from Apple products will decline faster than previously expected, underscoring near-term pressure on its smartphone business. However, the chipmaker said expanding AI data center, automotive, and other non-handset businesses are expected to replace lost Apple revenue by fiscal 2027.
Thursday 30 July 2026
AMD's Helios gains ground in challenge to Nvidia's CUDA
AI infrastructure competition is intensifying, but the market is no longer focusing only on GPU performance and is instead re-evaluating the entire computing system. For AMD, the chance to turn software improvements into market share is now emerging, but two hurdles remain: whether ROCm can run stably in large clusters and whether Helios can enter mass production and ship on time.
Wednesday 29 July 2026
Nvidia's Jensen Huang warns US officials about banning Chinese open-weight models

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang once again voiced his support for open-weight and open-source AI, a form of model that has caught official attention in Washington after the release of the powerful Kimi K3 model from Chinese startup Moonshot AI. His comments added another voice to the ongoing debate over closed-source versus open-source approaches as the US considers restrictions on Chinese AI.

Wednesday 29 July 2026
NXP finds new AI data center role beyond GPUs

NXP Semiconductors' physical AI strategy extends beyond vehicles, factories and robots. The same control, connectivity and real-time processing capabilities are also giving the company a larger role in AI data center infrastructure, where it is targeting the systems that manage networking, cooling, security and power around increasingly complex accelerator platforms.

Wednesday 29 July 2026
China chip substitution accelerates as chill effect looms
China's semiconductor self-reliance push has notched new gains, with Chinese AI giants expanding purchases of domestic AI chips and facing direct pressure from Beijing to use more local silicon, market sources say. Industry players say the trend toward chip substitution has been building for years, but whether it truly accelerates will depend on how strong the "chilling effect" becomes.
Wednesday 29 July 2026
AI shift to inference boosts CPU server demand across the supply chain
The move from AI model training to inference is widening server demand beyond accelerators and easing margin pressure on hardware assemblers. For global readers, the shift signals a broader buildout in data centers, with implications for cloud costs, server makers, chip suppliers, and enterprise AI deployment worldwide.
Wednesday 29 July 2026
NXP posts strong 2Q as investors remain cautious on chip outlook

Despite robust performance in the automotive sector and growing demand for artificial intelligence, NXP Semiconductors' second-quarter earnings and third-quarter projections fell short of investor expectations due to cautious market sentiment regarding semiconductor valuations and heightened competition from Chinese chip manufacturers.

Wednesday 29 July 2026
Qualcomm's Snapdragon price hikes test Apple, MediaTek flagship phone demand
Qualcomm has reportedly notified customers that it will raise prices across its Snapdragon system-on-chip portfolio from September 2026, including its next flagship mobile platform due to launch that month. The largest increases could reach double-digit percentages, drawing attention to how Apple and MediaTek will respond.
Tuesday 28 July 2026
Nvidia says smuggling is a 'nonstarter' as Taiwan arrests its employee in GB300 server scheme
A senior sales manager allegedly helped route GB300-equipped servers through Japan and Hong Kong over three years, in a scheme prosecutors value at up to $300 million
Tuesday 28 July 2026
Nvidia invests in Ilya Sutskever's SSI, providing access to Vera Rubin compute platform
Nvidia has made a strategic investment in Safe Superintelligence Inc. and announced a long-term partnership with the secretive AI lab founded by OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, giving SSI access to Nvidia's next-generation Vera Rubin systems and expanding its computing capacity by an order of magnitude.
Tuesday 28 July 2026
Google TPU surge and Meta capacity push fuel CSP capex wave
AI demand and whether the boom is heading into a bubble are back in focus, and capital expenditure by cloud service providers (CSPs) and their supply chains is emerging as a key gauge. Google has already said it will raise capex again in 2027, and industry watchers expect AWS and Microsoft to follow, keeping AI infrastructure momentum strong with more capital injections.
Tuesday 28 July 2026
Cadence raises 2026 outlook after record quarter, flags major Intel deal as revenue driver

Cadence Design Systems posted stronger-than-expected second-quarter results on July 27 and raised its full-year revenue growth outlook to 19%, citing broad demand for its AI-driven chip design tools and a landmark new agreement with Intel that executives described as a historic shift in the two companies' relationship.

Tuesday 28 July 2026
Smart glasses ignite AI device battle as China nears 80% global brand share
Smart glasses are emerging as a major next-generation consumer device as breakthroughs in generative AI and large language models (LLMs) reshape the wearable market. Once constrained by bulky designs and limited use cases, smart glasses are now drawing investment from global tech giants and hardware startups alike, while also redrawing the supply chain.
Tuesday 28 July 2026
Robot boom heats up as Taiwan chipmakers race to catch up
Cloud AI chip giants are stepping up investment in robot applications, putting robots back at the center of industry debate. For Taiwanese chipmakers, the broad range of robot use cases is clearly becoming a major strategic focus, in contrast to the narrower gatekeeping of cloud AI.
Tuesday 28 July 2026
Nvidia's Vera targets AI server growth, with CSP adoption the key test
Nvidia is pushing into the server CPU market with its Vera chip as AI infrastructure competition enters a new phase, seeking to evolve from a chip supplier into a full AI computing systems provider. But the company still needs cloud service providers (CSPs) to embrace the platform at scale if it wants to challenge Intel and AMD in servers.
Tuesday 28 July 2026
China faces AI compute divide as advanced capacity falls short and lower-tier resources sit underused
China's AI computing infrastructure is developing along two sharply divergent paths. As large language models and AI agents gain traction across industries, rapidly rising token consumption is driving shortages of advanced computing capacity. At the same time, portions of the country's installed lower- and mid-tier capacity remain underutilized because of software compatibility issues, weak coordination between supply and demand, and inadequate resource scheduling.