The Samsung pay deal is the moment Korean unions changed register
The Samsung pay deal is the moment Korean unions changed register

Samsung’s 10.5%-of-profit bonus formula is only the second written profit-share agreement at a major Korean firm. Kakao’s union is already asking for more. Samsung Electronics’ unionised workforce voted in favour of the government-mediated pay agreemen…

Taiwan suspects NVIDIA chips were smuggled to China via a Japan transshipment route
Taiwan suspects NVIDIA chips were smuggled to China via a Japan transshipment route

Three suspects, including a Super Micro senior vice president, are accused of exporting US-restricted servers through false documents to Japan and then on to mainland China. Taiwanese prosecutors suspect that three individuals successfully smuggled at …

Samsung commits $1.5bn to a Vietnam chip-testing plant, with $2.5bn more on the table
Samsung commits $1.5bn to a Vietnam chip-testing plant, with $2.5bn more on the table

Samsung Electronics will invest 39 trillion dong, or about $1.5bn, in a semiconductor testing plant in Vietnam, according to a document seen by Reuters on Wednesday. Construction has already begun in an industrial park 60 kilometres north of Hanoi, wit…

SPARQ opens $8.5M seed round for AI-native game engine, with a16z’s scout fund on the cap table
SPARQ opens $8.5M seed round for AI-native game engine, with a16z’s scout fund on the cap table

SPARQ, a UAE-based startup building what it calls an AI-native game engine, has opened an $8.5m seed round with early participation from the a16z Scout Fund, the vehicle Andreessen Horowitz uses to back early-stage deals through external scouts. The ch…

South Korea’s deputy PM says AI wealth must benefit the public. The Samsung strike showed why.
South Korea’s deputy PM says AI wealth must benefit the public. The Samsung strike showed why.

South Korea’s Deputy Prime Minister Bae Kyung-hoon said the wealth created by artificial intelligence must benefit the wider public, warning that the labour tensions that nearly shut down Samsung Electronics this week are not an isolated event but a pr…

Taiwan moves to detain three over alleged illegal high-end AI server exports to China
Taiwan moves to detain three over alleged illegal high-end AI server exports to China

The investigation is the island’s first formal semiconductor-smuggling crackdown and ties back to the wider Supermicro-linked diversion network that has been routing Nvidia Hopper systems into Chinese customers through Hong Kong and third-country relay…

Manus eyes $1bn raise to buy itself out of Meta acquisition after Chinese block
Manus eyes $1bn raise to buy itself out of Meta acquisition after Chinese block

Beijing has ordered the Singapore-via-China agentic AI startup to reverse Meta’s $2bn-plus December acquisition. Manus’s response, on Bloomberg’s reporting, is to raise the capital required to buy itself back out. Manus AI, the Singapore-headquartered …

AMD commits more than $10bn to Taiwan’s AI ecosystem with ASE, SPIL and Helios as the visible deliverables
AMD commits more than $10bn to Taiwan’s AI ecosystem with ASE, SPIL and Helios as the visible deliverables

Lisa Su’s Taiwan announcement covers advanced silicon, packaging and manufacturing partnerships for the company’s rack-scale Helios platform, set for deployment in the second half of 2026. AMD announced on Wednesday more than $10bn of investments acros…

Malaysia issues a statutory demand to TikTok over content moderation failures
Malaysia issues a statutory demand to TikTok over content moderation failures

The MCMC’s first formal Section 39 enforcement under the Online Safety Act 2025 lands on TikTok, with a maximum financial penalty of RM10 million in play if the platform fails to deliver an enforceable moderation plan. Malaysia’s Communications and Mul…

OpenAI plants its first overseas applied-AI lab in Singapore, with a $235M commitment
OpenAI plants its first overseas applied-AI lab in Singapore, with a $235M commitment

The company will scale to about 200 staff in the city-state and align the lab’s work to Singapore’s public-sector, finance, healthcare, and digital-infrastructure priorities. OpenAI said on Wednesday it will open its first applied-AI lab outside the Un…