New figures from Counterpoint Research estimate that the bill of materials (BOM) for the upcoming iPhone 18 Pro Max could rise nearly US$300 compared with the iPhone 17 Pro Max released in September last year. Ballooning memory costs largely account for this increase, although Apple may be better placed than most other smartphone brands to weather such price hikes.

Shipments of smartwatches with edge AI features leaped 70% in the first quarter of 2026, with Apple overwhelmingly leading the charge, according to Counterpoint Research. This market is taking off as health-focused users gain access to deeper insights through AI advancements, and as brands lean on wearables to offset weak smartphone sales.

Huawei has joined more than 20 Chinese technology companies and research bodies to launch OPEN NPO, the country's first multi-source agreement for near-packaged optics, in an effort to standardise high-speed optical interconnects for AI supernodes and large-scale computing clusters.

OpenAI has expanded its push beyond conversational AI with the launch of ChatGPT Work, an agentic workspace that combines ChatGPT with its Codex coding capabilities, underscoring the industry's rapid shift toward AI agents that can complete complex tasks rather than simply answer questions. The announcement positions OpenAI at the center of an increasingly competitive market, where rivals including Anthropic and Cursor are racing to build autonomous workplace assistants.

When the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) opens on July 17, its exhibition halls will double as a statement: China now fields a domestic AI stack running from silicon to agentic devices, at a moment when US export controls are tightening around the country's access to the most advanced foreign chips and models.

UMA, a Physical AI company, unveiled the design of its first humanoid robot at Machina Summit and introduced Real-Time Learning, an architecture that allows robots to learn new tasks from demonstrations rather than manual programming.

China's AI model race is moving beyond parameter size, benchmark rankings and user buzz. Investors are now asking which companies can turn model spending into durable revenue, pricing power and enterprise workflows.

Mistral AI has introduced its first robotics navigation model, extending the French AI startup's push into physical AI and industrial automation.

OpenAI and SpaceX have released new models laden with features that show the direction of frontier AI model development, including voice interaction, agentic workloads, coding capabilities, and token efficiency. Their new products arrive at a time of intense competition among model makers, and soon after, SpaceX filed for its record-breaking IPO and OpenAI began its own public listing process.

AI-defined vehicles (AIDVs) are built on software-defined vehicles (SDVs), and Tesla is arguably the world's most representative company at integrating and commercializing these technologies. Yet the market rarely hears Tesla emphasize or explain the AIDV concept.