These are the most-read DIGITIMES Asia stories from June 2 to June 8, 2025. Top highlights include Arm's strategic rebrand and entry into proprietary chip design, Huawei's aggressive R&D-driven resurgence, and growing momentum across Asia in AI semiconductors and advanced packaging. As global tech giants recalibrate in response to shifting supply chain dynamics, export controls, and rising open-source threats, the week's top stories reflect deepening fault lines—and fresh opportunities—across the semiconductor and system architecture landscape.
Amazon.com Inc. launched its AWS Asia Pacific (Taipei) regional data center, committing over US$5 billion for construction and operations in Taiwan to serve customers across the region with reduced latency.
Heran, a Taiwan-based smart appliance maker, is stepping up its drive into next-generation connected living, laying out an ambitious strategic roadmap at its latest shareholders' meeting. As augmented reality (AR) and artificial intelligence of things (AIoT) technologies reshape the modern home, Heran is staking its position at the nexus of connectivity, intelligence, and sustainability.
International research teams are accelerating efforts to enable human-like collaboration among robots using vision-language-action (VLA) models, aiming for interactions as natural and seamless as those between people. These advances could open the door to widespread applications in healthcare, caregiving, and food service—if current technological limitations, particularly energy efficiency, can be overcome.
Taiwan's digital economy has grown by leaps and bounds in 2024 with more than NT$1 trillion (approx. US$33.3 billion) in output value for the year, reaching the milestone earlier than scheduled, according to Digital Affairs Minister Yen-nung Huang at a press conference on June 3. In addition, the Ministry of Digital Affairs (MODA) will continue to pursue its three main policies: enhancing digital resilience, developing the digital economy, and strengthening anti-fraud measures.
IBM's Condor and Atom Computing's Phoenix have advanced quantum computing with 1,121 and 1,180 qubits, respectively. Meanwhile, Taiwan is just beginning its journey in 2024 with a prototype quantum computer featuring five qubits.
MetaAge, a subsidiary of Qisda, has outlined its ambitious roadmap for 2025, with a core focus on expanding its Managed Service Provider (MSP) offerings, artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and cybersecurity services.
Taiwan's long-anticipated Artificial Intelligence Basic Law will not be reviewed at the Executive Yuan's May 29 meeting, missing the critical window to be submitted to the Legislative Yuan before its summer recess in late June. The delay has reignited market concerns that Taiwan's push to lead in AI hardware may falter without a matching commitment to cultivating domestic software capabilities.
Acer Cyber Security Inc. (ACSI), the cybersecurity arm of Acer Group, expects stronger momentum in the second half of 2025 and is targeting double-digit revenue growth for the full year, according to President Rex Wu. Speaking at the company's May 27 shareholders meeting, Wu cited sustained demand for cybersecurity solutions and the firm's expanding system integration business as key growth drivers.
Meta Platforms Inc. has done all it can in court to fight back at the US Federal Trade Commission's claims that it's a monopoly. Now it's up to a federal judge to decide whether the company should be broken up.
Salesforce Inc. has agreed to buy Informatica Inc. for about US$8 billion, sealing the deal on a software firm that had seen its shares plunge by as much as 59% since the companies' first talks failed last year. Informatica shareholders are set to receive US$25 in cash per share, according to a statement on May 27, representing a 30% premium over its closing price on May 22, before Bloomberg reported that Salesforce and Informatica were in advanced talks.
Since May, major software giants, including Microsoft, Google, SAP, and IBM, have hosted developer conferences or annual meetings, converging on a shared focus: artificial intelligence (AI) agents, cross-platform interoperability, and enterprise applications. These themes mark a shift away from the previous emphasis on isolated, proprietary services, signaling a broader push toward open ecosystems and standardized communication in AI development.
At the 2025 Osaka-Kansai Expo, Japan's NTT presents its corporate pavilion under the theme "Parallel Travel." Through a narrative that transcends time and space, the company offers an experimental glimpse into the future of communication.
At Momo's annual shareholders' meeting, Fubon Group chairman Daniel Tsai acknowledged that while not all expectations were met, the e-commerce platform delivered a record-breaking consolidated revenue of NT$112.56 billion (US$3.78 billion) in 2024. The result marked a 3% year-over-year increase, with Momo outperforming Taiwan's broader online retail market despite mounting external challenges.
Huawei recently unveiled its first HarmonyOS-powered computer, a significant milestone in the company's technological evolution. According to a report by China's state-run CCTV, the new PC is equipped with the cutting-edge Kirin X90 chip built on 5nm process technology, alongside Huawei's proprietary operating system, HarmonyOS. CCTV further emphasized that "domestic semiconductor devices have, for the first time, achieved a self-sustaining, complete ecosystem in terms of performance and other facets."
At the Momo shareholders' meeting held on May 27, Fubon Group chairman Daniel Tsai addressed Taiwan's growing energy concerns, suggesting that the government consider restarting the Maanshan Nuclear Power Plant (Nuclear Plant 3) as a backup power source. The comments came just days after the facility was officially decommissioned, marking a milestone in Taiwan's transition to a non-nuclear energy policy.
China officially launched its Computing Power Internet Pilot Network on May 17, 2025, in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, during the World Telecommunication and Information Society Day. Led by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) and supported by China Telecom, China Mobile, and China Unicom, the initiative aims to unify and virtualize compute infrastructure across the country.
Taiwan has geared up efforts to develop distilled versions of large language models (LLM) in a bid to accelerate the development and penetration of AI applications.
Taiwan Mobile has officially become the first major Taiwanese corporation to launch a cryptocurrency trading platform, marking a significant strategic pivot into decentralized finance under the leadership of its innovative CEO, Jamie Lin. The company's wholly owned subsidiary, Fu Sheng Digital, debuted the TWEX virtual asset exchange on May 22 as a cornerstone of its push into the Web3 space.
Fusheng Digital, a wholly owned subsidiary of Taiwan Mobile, announced on "Bitcoin Pizza Day"—May 22—that the Taiwan Virtual Asset Exchange (TWEX) platform is officially online. TWEX has become the first virtual asset exchange platform in Taiwan operated and invested by a major corporate group.
AWS previously announced that its new data center in Taiwan would launch in early 2025. Yet as midyear approaches with no official update, questions have begun to circulate.
German enterprise software leader SAP has announced strategic partnerships with US-based AI search startup Perplexity and data analytics firm Palantir, aiming to advance its business AI offerings and build a more interconnected ecosystem of AI agents.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella emphasized new benchmarks in AI computing during his keynote at the 2025 Microsoft Build developer conference, stating that true AI performance should be measured by three key metrics: token throughput, power consumption (watts), and cost. He introduced the company's latest advancement in AI infrastructure—the ND GB200 v6 virtual machine—which delivers a record 865,584 tokens per second, significantly surpassing the 24,528 tokens per second achieved by last year's H100 v5-based systems.
Foxconn is accelerating its entry into the digital health sector, unveiling a series of AI-driven healthcare solutions at the 2025 GTC Taipei. Key announcements included the launch of the AI nursing robot Nurabot, collaborative smart hospital digital twin projects, and a new AI model contributed to the open-source MONAI medical imaging platform.
