Microsoft is expanding its data center footprint in Taiwan from two facilities to four as global demand for AI computing power continues to surge. The company says demand currently exceeds supply.
UBTECH has started mass deliveries of its UWorld U1 consumer companion humanoids in China, with first handovers in mid-September 2026 after the June 30 Shenzhen launch. Pricing runs from RMB 119,800 for the U1 Lite to about RMB 990,000 for the U1 Ultra, with cumulative orders past 13,361 units at launch.
ByteDance's consumer Doubao phone assistant is rolling out with an agent architecture that prefers structured MCP and A2A protocol calls, falling back to GUI-agent screen control in Beta. The SAEP protocol lets developers declare page-, intent- and action-level automation boundaries, with a 30-day window limiting automation to system, ByteDance and opt-in apps.
Alibaba Cloud has signed an AI cooperation agreement with China's New Unigroup, a company that traces its roots to Tsinghua Unigroup's court-led debt restructuring in 2022. Financial terms and details of the deal were not disclosed.
Light Origins has open-sourced Light-O1-Preview, a roughly 6-billion-parameter whole-body action model released under Apache 2.0 on Hugging Face and GitHub. Pretrained on human actions recovered from video, it outputs whole-body motion at 20 fps and reached a 79.3% macro success rate across 24 RoboCasa GR-1 simulation tasks.
Unitree Robotics has launched the Dex5-S, a human-scale five-finger dexterous hand with 22 degrees of freedom, priced from about RMB 39,900 (~US$6,500) per hand in China. Every joint is motor-driven and backdrivable with dual-encoder control, and peak per-hand payload is around 2 kg.
Hygon will introduce a new CPU1000-series processor in Shenzhen on September 22, moving beyond data-center CPUs into low-power edge silicon for robotics, machine vision and smart manufacturing. Clocks, core counts, TOPS ratings and power envelopes have not been disclosed ahead of the event.
Harvard researchers analyzed carbonaceous chondrite meteorites using three oxygen isotopes and found that their organic matter retains pristine signatures from the birth of the Solar System. The isotope marks stayed largely unchanged for 4.5 billion years, suggesting the molecules formed in the cold outer protoplanetary disk.
ASML has started operations in India with an initial team of 20-30 engineering graduates. The company says any further expansion depends on Tata Electronics delivering the country's first 12-inch wafer fab on time.
China launched nine satellites on a commercial rocket, including the country's first integrated rocket-and-satellite AI computing project. The move advances plans to deploy AI computing infrastructure in space.
Researchers at the University of Zurich transplanted human neural stem cells into mice one week after stroke. The cells survived five weeks, became neurons and reversed motor impairments, while also boosting blood vessel growth and reducing inflammation.
YMTC's investment arm has joined an FD-SOI project, accelerating the formation of China's 12-inch silicon-on-insulator supply chain. The move expands local chipmaking capacity that sidesteps restrictions on advanced nodes.
KKR said it expects more deals in South Korea after investing about $3 billion in the country. Together with local funds, it put 3.1 trillion won (US$2.22 billion) into SK Telecom's data-center business.
Apple asked the court to let its experts review forensic images and documents on OpenAI's hardware development, including metal finishes, power management and batteries. OpenAI calls the requests overbroad and an attempt to "snoop on a competitor."
Huawei Cloud has introduced CodeArts, which it calls the world's first AI coding agent for HarmonyOS. Details on capabilities and availability were not disclosed.
Amid a severe global memory shortage driven by AI and cloud demand, Chinese memory makers CXMT and YMTC are shifting toward domestic competition and preparing for patent disputes. The industry expects a tougher fight over technology and markets.
Global AI stocks rallied after early signs of success for Meta Platforms' new personal agent revived optimism about chip demand. The gains followed a recent slump driven by calls to slow down AI development.
Xbox plans to lay off hundreds of employees this week in its second major staff reduction this year, according to a person briefed on the plans. The Microsoft-owned company also intends to consolidate several of its game studios.
LG Electronics has received Nvidia DSX Ready certification for its 2.5 MW coolant distribution unit (CDU) for the DSX AI Factory platform. The unit is designed to cool groups of about 20 racks with Blackwell accelerators, where power density reaches 2.4–2.5 MW. LG previously secured approval for 600 kW and 1 MW CDUs.
Chinese EV maker Xpeng is planning to offer its technology to foreign automakers beyond Volkswagen, according to people familiar with the matter. Technology licensing is emerging as a new revenue engine for the company.
Hanwha Aerospace will invest $2.2 billion (about 3 trillion won) to build a large ammunition production hub at Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas. Over seven years it plans a Hanwha Advanced Manufacturing Campus for 155mm shell components and propellants, creating about 400 jobs.
Vivo unveiled the X500, X500 Pro and X500 Pro Max in China. The Pro models run on a 2nm MediaTek Dimensity 9600 Pro, add a 200MP ZEISS APO telephoto and pack up to an 8,000mAh battery, while the base X500 uses a 3nm Dimensity 9600M and a 7,500mAh cell. Prices start at CNY5,499, with a Malaysia launch teased for late October.
An international team from NASA, SwRI and the Weizmann Institute used computer models to study how large impacts affect subsurface oceans on icy moons of Saturn and Uranus. They found that collisions do not create new ocean worlds, but instead shrink existing oceans and shorten their lifespan, since sinking rock prevents water from accumulating and the ocean freezes over.
LG and Microsoft signed a strategic partnership on Sept. 21 covering AI data centers, physical AI and AI transformation. LG will supply cooling, power and IT infrastructure for Microsoft's data centers and adopt Microsoft 365 E7: Frontier Suite with Copilot across its workforce.
Nintendo posted artwork of the world map for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake on Switch 2, due out this November. The map shows Hyrule Field, Hyrule Castle, Death Mountain, Zora's Domain, Kokiri Forest, Lake Hylia and Gerudo Valley.
A poll by Gergely Orosz on X drew about 4,000 responses: macOS got 61.6%, Linux 24.2% and Windows 12.8%. A similar LinkedIn poll returned 66%, 20% and 12%, while the global Stack Overflow 2025 survey still puts Windows first among professional developers at 49.5%.
Over seven days, unknown clients requested a site's .env file 20 times while claiming to be ClaudeBot. GreyNoise counted 824 addresses forging AI crawler names between July 28 and August 23, none of which ever requested robots.txt.
TSMC will occupy two buildings at Baipu Industrial Park in Taiwan, housing an AI chip packaging lab and a training center.
DigiCert has made its AI Trust Manager generally available as part of the DigiCert ONE platform. The solution issues cryptographically signed AI Passports that verify an agent's identity and owner, define its authorised actions, and use an automated kill switch to revoke authority and quarantine the agent when trust changes.
The European Central Bank has launched Pontes, a blockchain platform for markets. It initially operates from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. CET on business days.
