Embodied intelligence company Daimon Robotics announced the completion of a strategic financing round led by Ant Group, involving several hundred million RMB.

Existing shareholders also participated in the round. Current investors include China Merchants Venture Capital, Lenovo Capital, CHINA MOBILE (00941.HK), and CHINA TELECOM (00728.HK).

Daimon has served more than 200 customers in aggregate globally, including over 50 overseas clients, and has completed deliveries to leading global enterprises and institutions including OpenAI, Figure, Physical Intelligence, Skild AI, Meta, BMW and Google DeepMind.

The company is also advancing multiple model deployment and POC collaborations, while entering the supply chains of leading industrial automation and robotics enterprises including Inovance and Tesla suppliers.
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The global tablet market entered a downcycle in 2Q, with shipments declining 10% YoY to 36 million units, Omdia's latest research showed. This marked the first time in recent years that tablet shipments broke the seasonal trend of QoQ growth in 2Q propelled by back-to-school demand.

Apple Inc. (AAPL.US) charted global iPad shipments of 13.5 million units in 2Q. Despite a 7.5% YoY decline, it accounted for 38% of global iPad shipments and maintained its leading position. Samsung remained the second-largest tablet vendor, with tablet shipments approaching 6 million units, down 13% YoY.

Among leading vendors, LENOVO GROUP (00992.HK) was the only company to achieve shipment growth, with shipments increasing 27% YoY. While part of the growth was driven by genuine end-user demand, it was also supported by channel inventory stocking ahead of expected price increases and major retail promotional campaigns.

XIAOMI-W (01810.HK) ranked fourth, with tablet shipments of 2.8 million units, down 7% YoY. Its performance continued to be supported by strong domestic demand and stable momentum across other Asia-Pacific regions. Huawei ranked fifth with shipments of 2.7 million units, representing a 16% YoY decline.

Looking ahead, Omdia Research Manager Himani Mukka said that under the current environment of constrained component supply, vendors are unlikely to broadly prioritize the tablet category. Instead, they will concentrate limited resources on flagship and premium models, further shifting their product portfolios toward high-end devices.
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Regarding market rumors that the A20 Pro processor produced by TSMC (TSM.US) for Apple (AAPL.US) using the 2-nm/ N2 process could not complete final packaging, Ming-Chi Kuo, a reputable Apple analyst at TF International Securities, said industry checks confirmed that Apple has indeed lowered shipment plans for some hardware products this year owing to memory shortages, but this does not mean the supply chain has fallen into a passive situation of "producing first and waiting for materials later".

He explained that Apple's supply chain management follows a strict "material-driven production" principle, usually planning processor production schedules at TSMC at least three months in advance, rather than allowing TSMC to mass produce processor work-in-progress inventory, namely semi-finished wafers, ahead of time. However, this does not mean TSMC will never produce in advance and maintain a certain level of semi-finished inventory.
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A consortium including Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN.US) founder Jeff Bezos and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin is close to acquiring around a one-third stake in Premier League club Liverpool Football Club, UK's Sky News reported.

FSG, which has owned Liverpool F.C. since 2010, may announce the deal as early as this week.

The consortium is reportedly valuing Liverpool F.C. at USD6 billion. The final transaction size could be larger than previously expected and may involve more than a 30% equity stake.
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NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA.US) signed memorandums of understanding (MOUs) with Apollo Global Management, Inc. (New) (APO.US), Blackstone Inc. (BX.US), BlackRock, Inc. (BLK.US), Brookfield Asset Management Inc (BAM.US), Goldman Sachs Group (GS.US) and KKR & Co. Inc. (KKR.US) to establish a "compute financing platform" aimed at deploying more than USD500 billion of capital over the coming years to help provide financing for customers purchasing computing power.

The initiative aims to mobilize more than USD500 billion of third-party capital for hyperscale cloud service providers, frontier AI laboratories and enterprises to build data centers and acquire NVIDIA hardware, marking a potentially major shift in how AI infrastructure is financed.

By leveraging institutional credit, insurance capital and private capital to back GPUs and data centers, NVIDIA is helping end users secure financing without touching their own balance sheets.

These companies said the platform will provide funding to NVIDIA customers at attractive interest rates. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said these financing platforms will help customers access computing power at scale and build AI factories.
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Microsoft Corporation (MSFT.US) plans to launch its new Maia 300 AI chip this fall, with the earliest possible release as soon as next month, The Information, citing sources, reported.

Microsoft has reportedly been in talks with TSMC (TSM.US) to secure production capacity for more than 300,000 chips next year, with the ultimate goal of obtaining capacity for more than 1 million Maia 300 chips.

The company also hopes to persuade major cloud customers such as Anthropic to adopt the chip.
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Meta Platforms, Inc. (META.US) said it will open-source its most powerful AI models and launch new models designed for consumer devices, as it competes with leading laboratories such as OpenAI and Anthropic.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an Instagram video on Monday that the company will release the weights of its latest AI model, Muse Spark 1.2, allowing the public to download and use them. Weights refer to the computations and rules that determine how AI operates and behaves.

Zuckerberg also said the company will launch a new series of open-source models called Muse Glimmer, which can run on laptops.

Meta shares have sagged about 10% year to date as investors scrutinize the company's spending plans and its ability to compete with major AI leaders.

Zuckerberg is attempting to assure investors that Meta Superintelligence Labs, established last year, is making progress, and that capital expenditures expected to reach as much as USD145 billion this year will generate returns.

While Anthropic and OpenAI mainly focus on closed AI models, Chinese competitors ranging from Alibaba to DeepSeek and Moonshot AI have been actively launching open-weight models and competing with the leading technologies of US companies in certain areas.

Zuckerberg on Monday published a 6,500-word article on AI, positioning Meta's initiatives as a challenge to China's open-source technology and urging Washington to support related US development.
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Soaring prices of components such as memory chips have shored up the cost of Apple Inc. (AAPL.US)'s upcoming iPhone 18 series, TrendForce's latest smartphone industry research report indicated.

The cost of the iPhone 18 Pro 256GB model, expected to launch in 3Q26, is projected to be about 38% higher than that of the new model launched in the same period last year. As memory chip costs are estimated to continue rising in 2027, the increment in iPhone production costs may further sharpen.

With reference to the pricing strategy of recent MacBook products, Apple may reduce the magnitude of price hikes for the iPhone 18 Pro series by adjusting gross margins to stabilize shipment volumes, TrendForce said.
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Global humanoid robot shipments ballooned more than two times YoY to 19,100 units in 1H26, with Chinese humanoid robot manufacturers accounting for more than 97% of global shipments, indicating that China is leading US competitors in the sector, Smart Analytics Global data showed.

Smart Analytics Global forecast global humanoid robot shipments to increase to about 60,000 units in 2026 and reach 500,000 units by 2030.

Chinese humanoid robot company AgiBot logged shipments of 8,400 units in 1H26, representing 44% of global shipments, while Unitree Robotics shipped 5,900 units.
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As mass production of new iPhone models begins, contract manufacturer Foxconn is stepping up hiring efforts to cope with the production ramp-up, CSJ Taurus reported, citing sources. The peak production season at some Foxconn plants is expected to continue until the end of 2026.

Some recruitment agencies are purportedly hiring workers around Foxconn's Guanlan plant in Shenzhen. One recruiter said the plant mainly produces Apple smartphones, with relatively sufficient orders in 2H26. The comprehensive hourly wage is RMB23 per hour.

At present, Foxconn's Zhengzhou plant is an important production base for iPhones. Public data showed that Zhengzhou Foxconn's output value topped RMB500 billion last year, with production of more than 88 million Apple smartphones, up 12.9% YoY.
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