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Monday 21 September 2026
Microsoft CEO expected at Trump-Xi dinner amid rising AI debate
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was expected to attend this week's White House state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping, joining top executives from Apple, OpenAI, Nvidia and Qualcomm, according to people familiar with the matter. The dinner comes as the Trump-Xi summit puts AI policy, trade and technology ties under heightened scrutiny.
Monday 21 September 2026
California orders AI safety audits and emergency shutdown planning
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order to speed third-party AI safety oversight and independent audits, as the state moved to tighten protections in the absence of federal regulation. The order, reported by CNBC and the California Governor's Office, aimed to strengthen California's AI rules and set a standard for the country.
Monday 21 September 2026
China's smart glasses boom: AI evolution, market shakeout, macro trends

China's smart glasses sector is experiencing explosive growth, driven by shifting consumer habits, rapid technological advancements, and strong policy backing. However, beneath the surface lies a fundamental divide: while lightweight AI and AR glasses are surging, the once-popular audio-only glasses market is shrinking.

Monday 21 September 2026
Microsoft AI chief says regulation is not a bad thing
Silicon Valley's AI safety debate is increasingly splitting into two camps; Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman says science and technology should serve humanity, that companies should not create things they cannot control, and that regulation should not automatically be seen as a bad thing.
Monday 21 September 2026
Trump announces 'AI Force' as safety concerns and China rivalry mount
US President Donald Trump has announced that he will launch a new unit dedicated to AI, called the "AI Force". This proclamation follows a surge of concern among US industry leaders and the public over safety. It also precedes talks between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Trump this week, where AI is expected to be on the agenda.
Monday 21 September 2026
Z.ai's ZCode crisis exposes AI coding's enterprise trust gap
Chinese AI developer Z.ai has open-sourced its ZCode coding tool and is preparing a zero-data-retention option for its Model-as-a-Service (MaaS) platform after ZCode was found packaging local code repositories and attempting to upload them to the cloud.
Monday 21 September 2026
Musk's Memphis move puts xAI at the center of his empire
Elon Musk is personally overseeing construction at xAI's Memphis data center, moving into an Airstream trailer beside the site as he takes a more hands-on role in the company's AI buildout. The move underscores how central Memphis has become to Musk's latest infrastructure push, while his renewed talk of a possible Tesla and SpaceX merger adds another layer of strategic uncertainty.
Monday 21 September 2026
Wiwynn chair says AI hardware is being reshaped by power, cooling, interconnect demands

AI computing is changing how global hardware is designed, built, and deployed, with implications that extend well beyond Taiwan's tech sector. At a September 19 event, Wiwynn chair Emily Hong said the industry now faces three central challenges: power, cooling, and high-speed interconnect, as demand for AI infrastructure rises worldwide.

Monday 21 September 2026
ByteDance's China AI chip push hits substrate shortage

China's fast-rising AI models are running into a compute supply bottleneck as demand for advanced packaging substrates surges, with ByteDance reportedly preparing to spend CNY100 billion (US$14.9 billion) a year on large-scale chip substrate purchases by 2030. Supply chain sources say the scramble for packaging substrate capacity is intensifying across Huawei HiSilicon, Hygon Information Technology, ByteDance, and major outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) players, even as the industry races to expand output.

Monday 21 September 2026
Faraday Future says robotics, not EVs, must carry it to profitability

Faraday Future used its annual 919 launch event on September 19 to complete what it calls "Robot World 2.0," unveiling nine new embodied AI (EAI) devices and four industry productivity solutions, putting an all-new Futurist humanoid on sale, and pricing a Master Mini from US$9,990. The lineup spans humanoids, quadrupeds, and mobile manipulators in large, medium, and small sizes, which the company claims is the widest range of device forms of any US robotics company.

Monday 21 September 2026
Acer founder says slowing AI development will be hard, amid call for AI slowdown

Acer founder Stan Shih stated that slowing artificial intelligence (AI) growth is not easy, as semiconductor capacity is still insufficient to support the current pace of AI development. He added that Taiwan's tech manufacturers have always been known for their flexibility and speed, and they will only become stronger in the face of fluctuations in technology cycles.

Monday 21 September 2026
Weekly news roundup: AI boom strains chips; Google's TPUs pay off, China eyes 3nm without EUV
This week's reports centered on intensifying competition and bottlenecks across the semiconductor and AI supply chains, from Sandisk's unusual engineering push in Korea and Google's TPU-driven ASIC demand to equipment shortages and packaging debates that could slow capacity expansion. Taiwan's Physical AI discussions emphasized system integration over components, while China's semiconductor researchers outlined a DUV-based sub-3nm GAA path. Beijing also moved to restrict civilian drones starting in November sharply. Below are the most-read DIGITIMES stories from September 14 to September 20, 2026
Monday 21 September 2026
Anthropic reportedly weighs a new model, outside safety auditors as its IPO clock runs down

Anthropic is reportedly being asked to prove two opposite things at once. To list at the valuation its bankers have floated, the company must show public-market investors that Claude remains competitive among enterprise buyers. To keep the safety-first identity that separates it from OpenAI, it must show it is willing to move slower than it can. The next few weeks will show which of those claims it is prepared to compromise.

Monday 21 September 2026
Column: AI usage patterns may be shifting the case for self-hosted servers

A new Anthropic threat intelligence report offers an unusual glimpse into how advanced AI systems are being used under heavy, real-world workloads. The findings suggest that the decision to buy or host AI servers may depend less on model quality alone, and more on which tasks consume tokens, how long they run, and how much operational state they must preserve.

Monday 21 September 2026
US-Mexico trade talks put AI servers in focus as Taiwan ODMs seek common ground

The US is reportedly pressuring Mexico to tighten rules of origin for AI hardware to limit the use of components produced outside North America, particularly in China. Server supply chain sources said the Mexican government began consultations with Taiwanese original design manufacturers (ODMs) around 10 days ago to explore mutually acceptable solutions, signaling a willingness to negotiate.

Monday 21 September 2026
Dassault Systèmes: AI-native transformation emerges as Taiwan's next industrial frontier

Digital transformation is no longer the endpoint for Taiwan's technology industries. As artificial intelligence moves from individual applications into core business operations, companies are entering a new phase in which AI, engineering models, and industrial knowledge are increasingly integrated into product development and operations, Dassault Systèmes said.

Monday 21 September 2026
HEC Compucase AI server products drive 2026 revenue growth

HEC Compucase's AI server-related rollout continues to gain traction as AI racks, cooling modules, and high-end power supplies move into mass production or volume shipments. The company expects fourth-quarter 2026 shipments and operating momentum to strengthen further, with full-year 2026 revenue set to maintain double-digit growth and first-half gross margin rising to 24%, about 3 percentage points higher than a year earlier.

Monday 21 September 2026
ACES targets AI compute, power with cable ramp-up

High-speed transmission demand continues to rise on the back of AI server and data center buildouts, while cloud service providers (CSPs) accelerate adoption of in-house application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) platforms. As a result, demand for high-speed connectors and high-speed transmission cables inside servers is also increasing.

Monday 21 September 2026
Ampoc AI PCB orders surge as it expands into CPO

Printed circuit board (PCB) wet-process equipment maker Ampoc Far-East said demand for its in-house high-end equipment has surged on AI servers and high-performance computing applications, driving brisk orders in the first half of 2026 and strong utilization rates. Capacity is now close to fully booked, and customers have also begun laying out long-term orders for the next one to two years.

Monday 21 September 2026
AI safety debate heats up: Pegatron chairman urges risk controls, not an innovation halt

AI safety concerns are intensifying debate over whether development should slow, with US technology executives divided over the trade-off between innovation and risk. Pegatron chairman T.H. Tung, speaking at a forum on September 18, likened the current AI race to three sports cars speeding against each other through city streets, prompting calls to slow down.

Monday 21 September 2026
Analysis: The race to superintelligence meets a demand for restraint — and the industry is split
The extraordinary technological progress humanity has witnessed since AI first emerged has propelled a fundamental shift in industrial development. With experts hailing AI as the next phase of the digital revolution and an extension of Industry 4.0, the technology is increasingly reshaping how industries operate.
Sunday 20 September 2026
OpenAI, Microsoft filings intensify copyright fight over AI training

New court filings from The New York Times and other news organizations have put OpenAI and Microsoft's internal comments on AI and journalism at the center of a widening copyright dispute in the US. The documents, cited by Financial Times and Reuters, are being used to challenge the companies' fair use defense in a case that has stretched for nearly three years.

Sunday 20 September 2026
Wiwynn brings cobots to L10 server assembly as AI rack testing drives factory redesign

Wiwynn is introducing collaborative robots (cobots) at its El Paso, Texas, facility and third plant in Mexico, alongside a central heat exchange system designed to support liquid-cooled server rack testing. The upgrades reflect the company's efforts to modernize manufacturing as AI servers become more complex and demand for liquid cooling increases.

Saturday 19 September 2026
Power grids can't keep pace with AI data center boom in EU, US
According to supply chain players, most AI data center cost models used by analysts in both China and the West only count electricity consumption when estimating the cost of AI data centers or tokens, but do not take into account the cost of power generation, transmission, or grid infrastructure. As a result, actual AI data center build-out costs vary greatly by country and region, due to the vast differences in power mix, grid capacity, and energy policies.
Saturday 19 September 2026
MediaTek, Vivo bring 30B MoE models on-device in next AI phone race

MediaTek's new Dimensity 9600 Pro puts agentic AI at the center of its flagship smartphone strategy, supporting on-device mixture-of-experts (MoE) models with up to 30 billion parameters. Vivo, among the first Chinese handset makers to adopt the platform, has followed with an expanded AI software stack spanning BlueLM, BlueLM Copilot, and a system-level BlueLM Harness.