IBM lowered its full-year revenue growth target after a second-quarter miss, saying clients shifted spending toward scarce hardware and away from software deals. Management framed the weakness as delayed demand rather than lost business, while reaffirming free cash flow growth, margin expansion plans, and confidence in the company's long-term software and mainframe franchises.
Wistron opened its D1 AI smart factory in Fort Worth, Texas, on July 21 local time, and began mass production of the first Nvidia GB300 compute baseboard made in the US. The nearly US$700 million plant, which spans about 324,000 square feet, was unveiled by Wistron chairman Simon Lin and Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang.
Nvidia is moving to lock down the networking layer of the world's largest AI data centers, unveiling its Spectrum-6 Ethernet switch as the backbone for what it calls "gigascale" AI factories built around its next-generation Vera Rubin platform. The launch, detailed on the company's blog on July 21, is a reminder that networking — not just GPUs — has become a central battleground as operators scale toward clusters of more than 100,000 accelerators.
Xpeng is transforming into a physical AI supplier over the next 10 years, with robotaxi, humanoid robots, and flying cars as its three core product lines, chairman Xiaopeng He told Automotive News. The company also aims to move beyond the carmaker label and adopt a Tier 1 supplier model, working with operating partners around the world to build a business model that can be replicated globally.
Specialty chemicals maker Johnson Fine Chemical has won approval from the Taiwan Stock Exchange for its listing plan and is now targeting an IPO as soon as late 2026 to early 2027. In recent years, the company has used specialty amine curing agents to break into the AI server and high-end tech hardware supply chains, meeting the demanding requirements of next-generation high-frequency, high-speed copper-clad laminates (CCL) for heat resistance, dimensional stability, low water absorption, and long-term reliability.
When Wistron opened its 324,000-square-foot plant in Fort Worth, Texas on July 21, it was easy to read the moment as a single company's strategic bet on the US market. But it is something larger than that.
Intel has confirmed a fresh round of job cuts in its Data Center Group (DCG), although it did not disclose the number of positions affected or the timing of the reductions. The move shows that Intel is continuing to restructure and cut costs even as demand for artificial intelligence data centers rises, and it reflects chief executive Lip-Bu Tan's continued focus on improving operational efficiency since taking the helm.
ASEAN's AI boom is taking on a dual role as both a "no-man's land" and an international hub from Singapore's perspective, while investors from the Middle East and China are also pushing into the region. According to industry sources, ASEAN's AI industry will be driven not only by local demand, but also by China's market.
The AI industry may be riding a wave of momentum, but two clouds have recently unsettled the outlook: growing public opposition to data center construction across the United States, and a dramatic leap in the rankings by Chinese-developed model Kimi K3, which has renewed fears of AI overinvestment. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang addressed both concerns directly on July 21.
Nvidia's newly detailed Vera Rubin NVL72 is being pitched less as a faster chip and more as a cheaper unit of AI output. This shift matters most for the power-constrained data centers now defining the ceiling of the industry's growth. In its July 21 announcement, Nvidia said the rack-scale system delivers roughly 10 times more tokens per megawatt than its current Grace Blackwell NVL72, and about one-tenth the cost per million tokens of the GB200 NVL72. This framing positions electricity, not silicon, as the scarce resource.
Chinese GPU developer Biren Technology unveiled a next-generation near-packaged optics (NPO) super node at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) 2026, targeting the growing computing demands of large language models and AI agents.
