From smartphones and smartwatches to emerging AI glasses, electric vehicles, autonomous driving systems, and the rapidly expanding drone industry, batteries have become the indispensable power source behind virtually every next-generation technology. More than just the "heart" of these products, batteries have also become one of the world's largest strategic growth markets.

South Korean internet giant Naver is accelerating its move into defense AI after falling short in the country's independent AI foundation model race, seeing the sector as its next growth engine. Through Naver Cloud, the company has set up a dedicated defense AI team and dispatched field engineers into military systems for customized deployments.

Chinese optical transceiver suppliers are trying to calm investors after reports that the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) may restrict new China-made data-center components, threatening a supply chain central to global AI infrastructure.

AI memory startup NEO Semiconductor has unveiled X-SRAM, a new architecture designed to address the difficulty of scaling conventional SRAM at advanced logic process nodes.

Drones, robots and self-driving vehicles are becoming the new proving ground for artificial intelligence. Machines are taking on more decision-making themselves, rather than relying on the cloud. The reason is speed. When a system has to react in milliseconds, waiting on a round trip to external servers is not an option, whether it's avoiding a collision or detecting an unauthorized drone. Elan Microelectronics chairman I-hau Yeh says this shift, moving AI processing from edge computing directly onto the device itself, is becoming essential for unmanned systems. Few applications demand more speed and accuracy than counter-unmanned aircraft systems, or C-UAS: technology built to detect and respond to unauthorized drones.

CHT Security posted strong results for the first half of 2026, with consolidated revenue rising 21% year-on-year to NT$1.182 billion (US$36.6 million), net profit after tax growing 13% year-on-year to NT$251 million, and earnings per share of NT$6.16. Both revenue and profit set new highs for the period, driven by surging corporate cybersecurity demand amid growing AI adoption. Additionally, July revenue rose 9% year-on-year to NT$210 million, bringing cumulative revenue for the first seven months of the year to NT$1.392 billion, up 19% year-on-year and also marking a new high.

Chinese robotics company Unitree is entering a critical stage in its initial public offering. The IPO is expected to raise about CNY4.2 billion (approximately US$622 million), while the company's post-listing valuation could range from CNY40 billion to CNY50 billion. It would become the first company on China's A-share market whose primary investment theme is humanoid robotics.

On August 5, Taiwan's National Science and Technology Council said it had completed the central government's 2027 budget plan, with NT$182.3 billion (US$5.7 billion) earmarked for technology spending, up about 9.5% from 2026. The biggest increase goes to sovereign AI computing power and infrastructure as Taipei pushes ahead with its Smart Nation 2.0 initiative.

ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming recently said that the company would not use distillation to train its AI models, even if they fall behind those of other Chinese rivals. His comments come as China's advances in AI have accelerated faster than expected, leading to accusations that its developers are training them based on outputs from US models.

SpaceX's first earnings disclosure delivered a stronger-than-expected quarterly performance, but the greater significance of the call lay beyond the headline beat. It gave investors their clearest look yet at how the company intends to extend its ambitions beyond rocket launches or broadband connectivity alone.

Soonest Express said strong AI shipments and the traditional second-half peak are extending its supply-chain visibility into 2027. The freight forwarder expects better performance in the third quarter of 2026 than in the second quarter, and a stronger second half than the first. The company said the air and sea freight market in the second half of 2026 is becoming an environment where "space is king" as demand tightens.

Anthropic is building an in-house team to design custom chips for its Claude AI models, according to Reuters, moving ahead with a plan first reported in April as the startup responds to a shortage of processors needed to run and develop more advanced AI systems.

Microsoft Corp. has given the first clear accounting of its revenue from OpenAI: US$24.1 billion for the year ended in June, likely close to 70% of its actual AI sales. The figure puts a hard number on a reliance the software giant has quietly worked to reduce ever since the two companies became partners.