The global memory industry is facing its most severe supply crunch in more than a decade. DRAM and NAND prices are rising at record speed, while high-bandwidth memory capacity is increasingly absorbed by artificial intelligence data centers.

Revenue data for January 2026 highlights uneven momentum across Taiwan’s AI server supply chain, spanning power, substrate, and thermal management suppliers, and reflects shifting demand patterns, product mix upgrades, and capacity constraints.

Taiwan’s small and medium enterprises — the backbone of the island’s economy — are getting a major government push into the AI era. On February 12, the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) unveiled a four-part plan to help SMEs adopt AI and navigate a world reshaped by labor shortages and supply chain upheaval. The roadmap goes beyond broad ambition, laying out concrete measures industry by industry, with a clear goal: break through the bottlenecks that have long stalled transformation.

The memory shortage and price surge have disrupted smartphone shipments, VisEra Technologies — a TSMC-affiliated optical component maker — warned, noting the global smartphone market is entering an adjustment phase as end-market demand forecasts grow more conservative. Mid- to low-tier models are expected to face initial shipment cuts.

Rising DRAM and CPU prices are feeding through the display supply chain, with AUO estimating that end-product prices could increase by 10% to 30%. While LCD panel prices have firmed on tighter supply, upstream semiconductor cost inflation is reducing demand visibility for consumer electronics in 2026.

OpenAI has hired Peter Steinberger, founder of open-source AI agent OpenClaw, signalling a strategic shift toward autonomous personal AI agents as a core product focus.