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Taiwan's stock exchange placed MediaTek — the chip designer behind silicon used in Samsung phones, Chromebooks and a growing share of AI hardware — under trading restrictions from May 7 through May 20 after its market value surged past NT$5 trillion (about US$165 billion) on strong demand for its custom AI chips. The Financial Supervisory Commission said it would review the rules that triggered the move....

MediaTek announced the opening of a new research and development data center at the Tongluo Science Park in Miaoli, Taiwan, aimed at supporting growing demand for edge AI and cloud AI development....

Advantech reported sharply accelerated first-quarter 2026 order momentum but cautioned that tight component supply and rising material costs will constrain its near-term outlook, even as management remained optimistic about full-year 2026 visibility....

Chinese semiconductor equipment makers CCtech and Nextool Technology are expanding into Southeast Asia's OSAT hubs as Malaysia and Singapore emerge as key packaging and testing centers amid global supply chain restructuring and southbound shifts. Both companies said surging AI demand and fast growth in power electronics are setting up a new upcycle for test and packaging equipment....

Network equipment maker Gemtek Technology, following the launch of its 800G linear-drive pluggable optics (LPO) optical module in 2025, announced on April 6 that it has successfully developed its next-generation 1.6T octal small form-factor pluggable (OSFP) optical transceiver module. The product targets hyperscale cloud data centers and is expected to enter mass production in the fourth quarter of 2026....

Nuvoton is seeing stronger demand for baseboard management controller (BMC) chips as AI servers drive higher requirements for remote server control and system monitoring. The company said the number of BMCs needed in a single rack has increased from 80 to 120, reflecting the growing complexity of AI server systems....

WinWay said April 2026 revenue fell nearly 20% from the previous month due to its customer mix and product profile, but still rose more than 50% from a year earlier as orders for AI and high-performance computing (HPC) applications surged. The test interface maker said its Coaxial Socket high-end test socket capacity kept coming online....

Headquartered in Singapore, MPics Innovations is staffed by several former executives from Broadcom's isolation products division. The company has long focused on the automotive, industrial, and medical markets, known collectively as the AIM market, which demand high reliability....

As global supply chains continue shifting under "China+1" and "Taiwan+1" strategies, Southeast Asia has emerged as a key destination for semiconductor and electronics investment. For Taiwanese power and automation company Delta Electronics, Malaysia is becoming a central part of that regional expansion strategy....

Global semiconductor sales reached US$298.5 billion in the first quarter of 2026, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) reported, underscoring robust worldwide demand with possible implications for technology supply chains, pricing, and production investment. The results come as markets eye a potential US$1 trillion year, driven by broad regional growth across Asia Pacific, the Americas, and China....

Apple said it is increasing investment in renewable energy and water sustainability projects globally, including new solar and water initiatives in India, as the company pushes toward its goal of becoming carbon neutral across its entire value chain by 2030....

Affected by the US-Iran war and notebook price hikes, global notebook shipments are likely to increase only 4.4% quarterly in the second quarter of 2026....

Meta is reportedly developing AI agents for consumer use, including an agentic shopping tool for Instagram and an OpenClaw-like agent known within the company as "Hatch". The efforts follow Meta's announcement of enormous AI investments, which have caused unease among investors....

The SEMI Silicon Manufacturers Group reported a 13.1% year-over-year rise in global silicon wafer shipment area to 3,275 million square inches in the first quarter of 2026, signaling stronger demand for wafers used in AI data centers and reshaping supply and production priorities across the global semiconductor supply chain....

Elon Musk is rapidly expanding his ambitions beyond rockets and electric vehicles (EVs), positioning SpaceX at the center of a vertically integrated artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure strategy spanning semiconductors, data centers, AI models, robotics, and space systems....

South Korea plans to provide KRW500 billion (US$344.3 million) in state funding for a large-scale research and development project aimed at localizing next-generation power semiconductors, ETNews reported....

The Pentagon has deployed more than 100,000 AI agents through its GenAI.mil platform, marking a broader shift toward algorithm-driven warfare and expanding the US military's push into AI-powered combat operations....

Alphabet has significantly expanded its global borrowing program to finance artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, raising nearly US$17 billion through euro- and Canadian dollar-denominated bonds in its latest funding push, according to Bloomberg. The move includes its largest-ever euro bond sale and its first issuance in Canadian dollars, underscoring the scale of capital required for AI-related investments....

Darfon Electronics reported that its first-quarter 2026 profit and gross margin improved as consolidated revenue rose 9.9% year on year to NT$6.025 billion (US$192.11 million). The company announced on May 6 that its gross margin recovered to 18% from 15.7% in the fourth quarter of 2025 and that second-quarter order momentum remained positive as it pursued a full-year twin-growth target....

APMIC announced that its Traditional Chinese language model ACE-1 ranked in the global top 5 overall and secured the top spot on a "Taiwan values" metric in a language-model evaluation published on May 6 by the AI Product and System Evaluation Center under the Ministry of Digital Affairs. The results highlighted ACE-1's strength in local context understanding and reinforced the company's push for sovereign AI capabilities tailored to Taiwan's institutions and social and cultural environment....