Global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company has released its "Global Banking Annual Review" and "The State of AI: Global Survey 2025," based on a survey of 2,000 companies across finance, technology, retail, and other sectors.

As generative AI advances, applications are shifting from simple content creation to autonomous action. AI agents have become central, focusing on understanding goals, making independent decisions, and completing tasks with minimal human input. This marks AI's evolution from a tool to an intelligent system that works autonomously.

Apple Inc. has unveiled an AI imaging technology called DarkDiff, designed to improve photo clarity in low-light conditions by integrating generative diffusion models into the camera's image signal processor (ISP). While effective in reducing blur and enhancing detail, the technology's high computational demands currently limit its deployment on consumer devices.

OpenAI launched its AI browser, ChatGPT Atlas, allowing AI agents to access web pages and assist users with tasks such as editing emails. However, this innovation comes with heightened cybersecurity threats from prompt injection attacks, which OpenAI concedes are challenging to fully eradicate.

Huawei is clarifying how it intends to compete in global AI computing despite being cut off from leading-edge foundries and US-origin GPUs. Instead of chasing rivals on single-chip performance, the company is leaning into scale, systems engineering, and vertical integration—a strategy it is now preparing to test outside China, beginning with South Korea.

The space industry is undergoing a profound transformation. What was once the domain of government agencies has become a strategic battleground. Commercial innovation, military priorities, and economic competition now converge beyond Earth's atmosphere.

As 2025 draws to a close, the US-China AI compute market is entering a phase of guarded competition and selective cooperation. While the US government has launched an inter-agency review of Nvidia's H200 exports to China—and Nvidia is reportedly planning deliveries ahead of the Lunar New Year—Huawei has already set a clear timetable. Its next-generation AI chip, the Ascend 950PR, is scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2026.

Nvidia is set to include innovations from Groq, an AI inference chip startup, into its product ecosystem by the end of 2025, responding to an expected surge in AI inference demand. CEO Jensen Huang estimated in early 2025 that AI inference workload could grow by up to one billion times in the coming years, driving the company's strategic pivot.

McKinsey Taipei recently released its "Global Banking Annual Review 2025" and "The State of AI: Global Survey 2025," surveying 2,000 companies across finance, technology, and retail sectors worldwide. Senior adviser Victor Kuan and senior partner Violet Chung at McKinsey & Company noted that Taiwan's financial industry faces multiple pressures from geopolitical tensions, macroeconomic volatility, and intensifying competition.

Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) are drawing significant attention because of their flexible and rapid deployment capabilities as AI's electricity demand continues to skyrocket. Kaori Thermal Technology, a key supplier to SOFC fuel cell leader Bloom Energy, stated that customer demand remains strong, enabling both capital and workforce expansion. The company said its 2026 capex will be the largest since its founding, and its headcount is set to increase by more than 40%.

As AI workloads intensify and data centre architectures evolve, optical communications vendors are positioning co-packaged optics (CPO) and silicon photonics (SiPh) as core mid- to long-term growth markets. LuxNet expects 800G products to surpass 400G as the market mainstream in 2026, with 1.6T products entering initial shipments and supporting growth over the next two to three years. TrueLight is moving into the AI high-performance computing (HPC) supply chain via continuous-wave (CW) laser foundry services and expects the foundry revenue share in 2026 to exceed 2025 levels.

Eric Wu, founder of Shinkong InnovHUB, announced on December 23, 2025, that the facility is scheduled to open in 2027, offering a dedicated testing and demonstration site for autonomous vehicles. Wu simultaneously revealed the formal launch of Gaia Capital, a NT$5 billion (US$158 million) fund designed to help Taiwanese startups in the autonomous vehicle sector expand into global markets.

Nvidia has agreed to buy key assets from AI accelerator startup Groq in the company's largest acquisition to date, a move that underscores how the battle in artificial intelligence is increasingly shifting from training dominance toward inference efficiency and cost control.

Chunghwa Telecom (CHT) is expanding its AI and infrastructure footprint by establishing a shared AI exhibition space and research and development office at Kaohsiung's Pier F on December 22, 2025. The company will also assist Kaohsiung in building Taiwan's first city-level generative sovereign AI demonstration base.

The Legislative Yuan has passed the AI Basic Act in its third reading, designating the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) as the competent authority (CA). However, questions remain over how the executive branch will interpret and implement this law, how the NSTC will shoulder the heavy responsibilities of AI governance, and whether the relevant subordinate regulations should be managed by the Ministry of Digital Affairs (MODA) or the NSTC.

Following ByteDance's early December 2025 launch of the Doubao AI Phone with Nubia, a ZTE subsidiary, Jiemian News and National Business Daily reported that the company is expanding partnerships with smartphone makers. ByteDance has been pushing AI phone collaborations with Vivo, Lenovo, and Transsion. The most direct goal is finding a compliant, stable, and sustainable system identity for AI agents.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has openly criticized the integration performance of the company's AI assistant, Copilot, especially its connection with email platforms such as Gmail and Outlook. According to PYMNTS, which cited a report by The Information, Nadella personally reviewed the product and has demanded accelerated improvements from the engineering team.

Deloitte Taiwan released a report on December 23, 2025, highlighting that AI has moved beyond proof of concept to large-scale commercial deployment, rapidly expanding across core areas such as smart manufacturing, generative content, personalized marketing, and integration with 5G/6G and edge computing. Notably, advances in agentic AI are becoming a major driver of industrial growth. Taiwan continues to hold a critical position as a global node for AI and semiconductors.

Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) announced on December 23, 2025, that export orders from the US reached US$28.45 billion in November 2025, up 12.5% sequentially and 56.1% year-over-year. Orders for information and communications products, focused on artificial intelligence (AI) servers, rose by US$6.43 billion, marking a sharp year-over-year increase of 117.7%.

The rapidly increasing electricity demand from global artificial intelligence (AI) data centers is placing significant pressure on power grids worldwide. Chinese battery, energy storage, and transformer manufacturers are well-positioned to benefit from their technological expertise, cost efficiency, and rapid delivery capabilities. As data center operators seek solutions to upgrade aging power infrastructure, the reliance on Chinese suppliers is growing sharply.

Traditional encryption systems are facing challenges as AI and quantum computing advance. In early 2025, international financial institutions and automotive supply chains began adopting post-quantum cryptography (PQC) to prepare for potential threats posed by quantum computers. Now, AI data centers and industrial applications are also integrating PQC.

A recent report from Stanford University reveals that Chinese open-source artificial intelligence (AI) models are rapidly catching up to, and, in some cases, surpassing their US closed-source counterparts. This shift highlights changes in the global technology landscape, as Chinese models gain popularity among developers worldwide.

The rapid growth of generative AI and large-scale models has significantly increased power consumption in computing chips, pushing thermal management into critical focus. High-end AI accelerators now consume power at kilowatt levels, producing concentrated heat fluxes that challenge existing cooling methods, potentially limiting performance and reliability across data center systems.

Backed by South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) and the National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA), a new cohort of Korean startups are accelerating their push into global markets, highlighting how "digital content" now extends far beyond traditional games and films into generative AI, extended reality (XR), human-machine interface (HMI), digital healthcare, and educational technology.