DIGITIMES ICT: AI news

Home Tech ICT AI

Friday 20 March 2026

Analysis: Supermicro co-founder's GTC star turn ends in federal indictment

At NVIDIA GTC 2026, Super Micro Computer (Supermicro) appeared firmly at the center of the AI infrastructure boom. The company showcased its deepening collaboration with Nvidia and welcomed CEO Jensen Huang to its booth in a highly public display of partnership. When the event wrapped up, however, that momentum was quickly overshadowed by a federal indictment placing one of the company's most senior figures under scrutiny.

Friday 20 March 2026

OpenAI plans new 'super app' merging ChatGPT, Codex, and Atlas as competition with Anthropic for enterprise customers heats up

OpenAI is planning to launch a "super app" combining its ChatGPT app, browser Atlas, and coding platform Codex, according to the Wall Street Journal. The strategic shift comes as the company faces competition from rival Anthropic in capturing the enterprise and engineering market.

Friday 20 March 2026

Tencent leverages WeChat ecosystem to lead AI agent race in China

Tencent's rapid rollout of agentic AI across WeChat could reshape the competitive dynamics of Chinese AI, with potential implications for global markets given WeChat's 1.4 billion users and integrations across communication, payments, content, and services, possibly accelerating AI agent adoption and raising questions about competitors' responses and timing.

Friday 20 March 2026

Nvidia strategy at GTC 2026 blocks ASIC rivals with Groq deal

At GTC 2026, Nvidia unveiled a strategic US$20 billion partnership with AI chip startup Groq, licensing its LPU technology and hiring key team members to integrate advanced inference capabilities into the Vera Rubin server stack. This move positions Nvidia to define foundational rules for agentic AI while effectively blocking ASIC competitors like Google from encroaching on its market.

Friday 20 March 2026

Commentary: Nvidia sees Groq as its next Mellanox

Since the start of 2026, Jensen Huang has twice drawn a striking parallel: likening a potential deal involving Groq to Nvidia's 2020 acquisition of Mellanox Technologies. He first made the comparison during a late-February earnings call, and again in an interview following his keynote at GTC 2026 in March.

Friday 20 March 2026

Samsung signals AI memory shift with HBM showcase at 2026 shareholders meeting

Samsung Electronics held its 57th annual shareholders meeting on March 18 in Suwon, South Korea, where it unveiled advanced memory products, including high-bandwidth memory (HBM), signaling a strategic push to strengthen its semiconductor competitiveness.

Friday 20 March 2026

Nvidia to supply 1 million GPUs to Amazon through 2027 in landmark AI cloud deal

Nvidia will supply 1 million graphics processing units (GPUs) to Amazon.com's cloud computing division by 2027 in one of the largest artificial intelligence infrastructure agreements to date, a company executive told Reuters.

Friday 20 March 2026

Amazon founder reportedly eyeing US$100B AI fund to transform manufacturing

Jeff Bezos is reportedly in early discussions to raise a US$100 billion investment fund aimed at acquiring and modernizing manufacturing companies with AI, according to The Wall Street Journal. The proposed vehicle—described as a "manufacturing transformation" fund—would target sectors such as semiconductors, aerospace, and defense, signaling a major push to bring AI-driven efficiencies into the industrial economy.

Friday 20 March 2026
Supermicro co-founder charged in US$2.5 billion AI chip smuggling scheme to China
US Federal prosecutors have charged a co-founder of Super Micro Computer Inc. (Supermicro) and two associates in a massive conspiracy to illegally divert billions of dollars worth of restricted AI technology to China.

Friday 20 March 2026
Analysis: Alibaba and Baidu raise AI pricing as token-based model reshapes cloud economics
Alibaba and Baidu have raised prices for AI computing services, reflecting a broader shift in how cloud providers monetize AI as demand for tokenized workloads accelerates.

Friday 20 March 2026
Alibaba outlines US$100 billion AI roadmap as cloud growth accelerates
Alibaba Group Holding set out an expansive artificial intelligence strategy targeting more than US$100 billion in combined cloud and AI revenue within five years, as strong demand for AI services continued to drive growth in its cloud business.

Friday 20 March 2026
Alibaba's AI and cloud growth cushions slowing earnings but raises profit questions
Alibaba Group reported modest overall revenue growth while disclosing a sharp fall in operating income, underlining a tension between investment-led expansion in AI and near-term profitability.

Friday 20 March 2026
UK-Taiwan R&D ties scale up with Foxconn, Turing Space, NSYSU
Taiwan has long leveraged its manufacturing strengths to carve out a place in the global supply chain. Now, it is going further. With research and development reach expanding overseas, the country is shifting from contract manufacturing to joint innovation. The UK-Taiwan Innovative Industries Programme (I2P), run under the British Office Taipei and ITRI, has hit a record scale in 2026, with 17 research and development teams taking part in bilateral exchanges.

Friday 20 March 2026
Microsoft considers legal action over Amazon-OpenAI cloud deal

Microsoft is considering legal action against Amazon and OpenAI over a multibillion-dollar cloud arrangement that could breach its exclusive partnership with the ChatGPT creator, according to the Financial Times.

Friday 20 March 2026

The 'golden triangle': Inside Taiwan's industrial engine to win the AI robotics race

The next front in the global AI race may not be a data center. It could be a robot. Taiwan has quietly staked its claim — and it's building the industrial machinery to back it up.

Friday 20 March 2026

China's AI robot industry surges on market freedom and strategic autonomy

Despite lacking the industrial legacy of Japan and Germany, China has rapidly built its AI robotics sector into a formidable force, posing as a subtle challenge to US technological dominance. Tien-Chong Cheng, chairman of Aurotek, attributes this swift growth to two key drivers: maintaining high market competition and freedom, and allowing the industry itself to shape development strategies.

Thursday 19 March 2026

Nvidia hosts Taiwan night at GTC 2026, Huang vows to defend Taiwan

Nvidia's GTC 2026 is well underway, with the event reaching a record scale as among the major annual events in the AI landscape. Despite a packed schedule, CEO Jensen Huang attended the conference's "Taiwan Night" on March 18 (local time) to engage with Taiwanese partners and express his appreciation for their work.

Thursday 19 March 2026

Analysis: GTC 2026 widens US-China AI compute gap

The annual Nvidia GTC conference has become a global barometer for the artificial intelligence (AI) industry. In a nearly two-hour keynote, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang laid out a clear vision for AI's future: a shift in focus from model and algorithm competition to competition over computing power, efficiency, and commercial deployment.

Thursday 19 March 2026

Nvidia positions Groq 3 LPUs alongside Vera Rubin for an inference-first era

The 2026 Nvidia GTC keynote signaled a clear industry shift toward inference. CEO Jensen Huang declared that "training is just the beginning — inference is the core battleground for AI commercialization." Attendees expected AI agents to dominate the event's agenda.

Thursday 19 March 2026

Taiwan turns to Stargate playbook: private capital powers AI infrastructure

Foxconn (Hon Hai) plans to build an AI data center in Taiwan by 2027 with over 10,000 GPUs. That figure dwarfs the Ministry of Digital Affairs' (MODA) target of just 140 GPUs by the end of 2026. MODA minister Yi-Jing Lin has acknowledged the gap is real. Taiwan's answer, she says, is to follow the US Stargate playbook — mobilizing private investment through government tax incentives rather than direct public spending.

Thursday 19 March 2026

Taiwan's AI supply chain scales at GTC 2026: Foxconn, Wiwynn, Advantech, BizLink deepen Nvidia ties

Taiwanese hardware vendors expanded their presence at Nvidia GTC 2026, underscoring a coordinated push into AI servers, edge computing, robotics, and data center infrastructure. Foxconn, Wiwynn, Wistron, Advantech, and BizLink showcased capabilities spanning AI factories, rack-scale systems, and power interconnects, reflecting Taiwan's deeper integration into Nvidia's next-generation computing ecosystem.

Thursday 19 March 2026

Meta's AI agent goes rogue, triggers data breach from within

A rogue AI agent at Meta triggered an internal security breach, exposing sensitive company and user data to unauthorized employees, according to The Information. The exposure lasted two hours before it was contained — a brief but alarming window that has reignited concerns about the industry's headlong rush to deploy AI agents, one of the most fiercely contested frontiers in tech today.

Thursday 19 March 2026

AI and memory drive semiconductor output to surpass US$1 trillion in 2026

The global surge in AI demand and tightening memory supply have pushed prices higher, propelling the semiconductor industry into a new growth cycle. Global chief marketing officer and president of Taiwan at SEMI, Terry Tsao, said the sector's output is expected to break the US$1 trillion mark ahead of schedule in 2026, with projections reaching US$2 trillion by 2035, outpacing previous forecasts. However, he also highlighted talent recruitment as the biggest bottleneck facing the semiconductor industry over the next three years.

Thursday 19 March 2026

Groq anchors Nvidia's inference strategy; CPU redefines architecture for AI agents

As AI evolves from generating information to executing tasks, inference scenarios characterized by coding agents and requiring low latency and high throughput are ushering in the next phase of AI infrastructure commercialization. However, even powerful systems like Vera Rubin face challenges when confronted with extreme generation demands. While Nvidia remains the undisputed leader in throughput, traditional GPU architectures appear too heavy for ultra-low-latency token generation. This is why Jensen Huang moved quickly to secure IP licensing and talent from Groq ahead of Christmas 2025.

Thursday 19 March 2026

Tencent to double AI spending on 13% revenue growth as chip curbs reshape capex

Tencent is preparing a sharp escalation in artificial intelligence investment, with plans to more than double spending to over CNY36 billion (US$5.2 billion) in 2026, even as chip export restrictions have disrupted its earlier capital expenditure strategy.

More AI coverage