Chinese notebook original design manufacturers (ODMs) are rapidly catching up, with supply chain sources saying Huaqin and Luxshare have won major orders from HP and Dell, sending shock waves through Taiwan's supply chain and threatening the future position of Taiwanese ODMs. Industry sources said the impact extends beyond 4-5 ODMs and will also hit more than 100 component suppliers.
Chicony Electronics said it has entered the supply chain of a US robotics startup, expanding into embodied AI and physical AI as it seeks higher-value markets. The move could strengthen global robot development by improving the data and vision systems that help machines perceive, interpret, and act in real-world settings.
The global household cleaning robot market grew by double digits in 2025, making it a key area for smart home development and intense competition in smart home devices. After filing for bankruptcy at the end of 2025 and completing its restructuring in January 2026, US-based robot vacuum maker iRobot is targeting the Taiwanese market.
The traditional market divide between the third-generation semiconductors gallium nitride (GaN) and silicon carbide (SiC) is seeing greater overlap in 2026, with SiC increasingly encroaching on GaN's territory.
Thailand's industrial landscape may shift further toward China as global supply chains continue to move across Southeast Asia. More broadly, the trend highlights how lower costs, trade realignment, and investment incentives are reshaping manufacturing networks, while also raising questions about local supply chains, land use, and economic dependency.
AI server supply chains are accelerating their shift toward regional manufacturing. However, the labor access, wage costs, and capacity expansion constraints of US manufacturing are forcing manufacturers to raise automation levels to balance delivery speed and production efficiency. That has pushed Foxconn and Nvidia to jointly invest in precision assembly automation research, with an eye toward reducing manual handling.
At IROS 2026, one of the world's top robotics conferences, held in Pittsburgh at the end of September, a robot startup's booth featured a dual-arm robot catching, in midair, sticks dropped at random from above. The demonstration is one of many this year showing robots dancing, doing parkour, and even running half marathons—but the real question is what those performances actually prove about physical AI.
Demand for agentic AI in commercial and consumer markets was rising rapidly, and the market appeal of consumer services such as Meta Muse was expanding. In agentic AI tasks, large language model (LLM) inference was mainly handled by GPUs or application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), while many other functions relied on CPUs, which was expected to boost CPU demand. Consumer-facing harness applications were expected to adopt enhanced general-purpose servers, while enterprise core automation would use high-density CPU racks deployed inside AI data centers.
BenQ Materials showcased its eco-friendly performance fabric brand Xpore at the Taipei Innovative Textile Application Show (TITAS) 2026, marking the brand's second appearance at the event. The company introduced three core green technologies, six product lines and the commercial rollout of Xpore e2cycle, its electronic-waste recycling process, as it seeks a larger role in the global green materials supply chain.
AMD CEO Lisa Su said the company plans to further increase investment in Taiwan's semiconductor supply chain as demand for CPUs, GPUs, and AI computing continues to outpace available capacity.
Physical AI is shifting from a hardware niche into the next foundational computing platform, driving record investor capital into embodied intelligence systems.
BizLink-KY said September revenue climbed as it ended summer shutdowns at its European facilities and consolidated Interplex Datacom's data communications business, underscoring how global supply chains and AI infrastructure demand are reshaping sales trends worldwide. The company said momentum should remain strong as data center orders expand and new products ramp up.
Samsung Electronics says its India operations, which it set up in 1995, have evolved from a manufacturing base into a global innovation hub. The South Korean company is pitching the country as a source of technology for its worldwide business, rather than only as a market and production base.
AI data center plans and computing demand are expanding far faster than physical infrastructure can be built, creating a widening gap between planned and actually deployed compute. A review tracking construction progress and satellite imagery shows that while US data center construction continues to accelerate, bottlenecks in chip supply, advanced packaging, power, transformers and permitting could become key constraints on AI compute deployment.
Kawasaki Heavy Industries plans to launch an AI-powered fully autonomous humanoid robot as early as 2030, using a physical AI platform under development by Japan's Noetra. Nikkei reported that Noetra is backed by 44 Japanese companies, including SoftBank and Kawasaki Heavy Industries.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has said Marvell's optical technology could help make it the next trillion-dollar company, and Marvell took a step toward that goal on September 17 by expanding its partnership with GlobalFoundries (GF). The deal came as the AI computing race shifted from a simple chip contest into a system-level battle spanning interconnects, memory, and networking.
Driven by strong momentum in AI and consumer electronics, Foxconn reported consolidated revenue of NT$1.158 trillion (US$36.7 billion) for September 2026, marking the first time its monthly revenue has surpassed the NT$1 trillion threshold.
Pegatron's AI server business is ramping up in 2026, with co-CEO Kuang-Chih Cheng recently saying new orders from a US client have begun shipping and are expected to lift September revenue. He added that the company still sees AI server revenue growing by triple digits next year, with the business potentially accounting for 10% of sales.
AMD CEO Lisa Su arrived in Taiwan on October 5 for a lightning visit, less than five months after her May trip. No major public events are scheduled, but meetings with key suppliers are planned. Industry sources said her core mission was to meet TSMC and, more importantly, to coordinate capacity with packaging, testing, and substrate suppliers that are facing tight supply and rising prices.
Taiwanese suppliers currently control approximately 90% of the global AI server market. However, a recent survey by Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs showed that the proportion of export orders produced overseas rose in August 2026, a clear reflection of Taiwanese AI server makers accelerating capacity expansion in the US and Mexico.
The AI server boom is spreading into the market for collaborative robots (cobots). The share of cobots on AI server production lines is rising as Wiwynn expands their use at its Mexico and Texas plants, while Quanta has also deployed robotic arms from Techman Robot on its server lines.
The rapid iteration of AI-capable hardware, following an industry-wide push toward integrating AI-processing capabilities into PCs, is bringing renewed attention to what AI could offer as its presence extends further into the notebook market. But beneath the expanding promise of these machines lies a less straightforward question: what is actually compelling buyers to bring them into their businesses and homes?
Japanese companies sharply reduced their footprint in China over the past two years, with the number operating there falling 22.4% from 13,034 to 10,118 as of the end of June 2026, according to a survey released by Teikoku Databank on September 28, 2026. The total was the lowest since the data series began in 2010, and 29.7% below the 2012 peak of 14,394.
Amazon is considering moving about US$8 billion worth of high-end Nvidia chips off its balance sheet through a sale-leaseback structure, according to the Financial Times and Reuters. The plan would shift thousands of Nvidia Grace Blackwell chips from data centers in Nevada and Virginia into an external special purpose vehicle, while Amazon would continue using the hardware under lease arrangements.
