International container shipping rates have risen for four consecutive weeks prior to the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday in mid-February 2026. However, the market has cast doubts on whether rates will continue to climb, since a sluggish recovery in China and the ongoing impact of US tariffs are expected to constrain shipping demand.

Facing US restrictions on high-end computing products, China is restructuring its AI chip industry by advancing GPU, TPU, and NPU technologies simultaneously. Domestic firms struggle to match Nvidia's software ecosystem but seek breakthroughs with TPUs for efficiency and NPUs for edge applications.

Taiwan Mobile's AI data center (AIDC) in Guishan in northern Taiwan is already fully leased after it officially began operations in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to the company's president, Jamie Lin. The company expects the AIDC to start contributing revenue from January 2026, with profitability achievable within its first year of operation.

Amid ongoing US export restrictions, Chinese company Zhonghao Xinying plans to launch its second-generation self-developed Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) chip in 2026. Industry observers predict multiple new Chinese TPU firms will emerge over the next five to 10 years, driven by growing demand for AI inference computing.

Since joining Google, DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis has been shaping the company's artificial intelligence development strategy, emphasizing the importance of "world models" over large language models (LLMs) alone, Bloomberg reports. Despite his scientific stature and technical contributions, Hassabis has yet to oversee the launch of a major consumer AI product.

Taiwan-based Fukuta Electric & Machinery plans to go public on the Innovation Board in late January 2026 as it accelerates its move from industrial motor manufacturing toward integrated powertrain system solutions for electric vehicles. The company reported that nearly half of its revenues in the first three quarters of 2025 stemmed from electric vehicle-related products.

As 2025 concludes, Taiwan's information and communication technology (ICT) and electronics sectors have experienced significant export growth driven by AI-related demand, particularly from the United States. This comes according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA). Despite record-breaking trade surpluses and rising foreign-exchange earnings, industry surveys indicate varying confidence about future prospects.

China's Ministry of Finance and the Customs Tariff Commission released a 2026 tariff adjustment plan set to take effect on January 1, 2026. The plan revises import provisional tariffs and adjusts tariff classifications. It also continues the application of agreement and preferential rates, covering a total of 8,972 tariff items.

Taiwan Mobile (TWM) has accelerated its AI application deployment, positioning self-developed AI solutions as a key growth engine for future operations. The company's president, Jamie Lin, highlighted that TWM's proprietary AI offerings, including large language models (LLM) and automatic speech recognition (ASR) technologies, are expected to achieve triple-digit growth by 2026.

Nvidia has reportedly informed its Chinese customers of its intention to deliver H200 AI chips by mid-February 2026, with shipments targeting 5,000 to 10,000 modules. This volume corresponds to approximately 40,000 to 80,000 H200 chips, signaling a significant step in Nvidia's efforts to supply China without disrupting its global distribution, Reuters reported.

Despite ongoing US-Taiwan tariff negotiations showing no significant progress, Taiwan's semiconductor industry has not yet been affected by the "Section 232" tariffs targeting electronics. According to recent data, Taiwan's information and communication technology (ICT) and electronics exports to the US have continued to grow at double-digit rates, even as US manufacturing has contracted for nine consecutive months under President Donald Trump's administration.