30 Mar
Latest News and Trends

SoftBank secures US$40 billion loan to fund OpenAI investment

SoftBank Group Corp. has secured a US$40 billion bridge loan to support its ongoing investment in US artificial intelligence developer OpenAI, marking one of the largest dollar-denominated borrowings in the Japanese conglomerate’s history. The unsecured loan, arranged with JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Mizuho Bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp., and MUFG Bank, is set to mature on March 25, 2027, according to Jiji Press, The Japan Times, Reuters, and TechCrunch.

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30 Mar
Latest News and Trends

Sony raises PlayStation 5 prices amid memory costs spike

Sony Group’s gaming subsidiary, Sony Interactive Entertainment, announced on March 27 that it would raise the global retail price of its flagship home console, the PlayStation 5, effective April 2. In Japan, the suggested retail price of the standard model will climb to JPY97,980 (approx. US$613), a steep increase of roughly 23%. A Japan-only version, introduced in 2025 without a disc drive and limited to the Japanese language, will remain unchanged at JPY55,000.

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29 Mar
Latest News and Trends

Samsung’s 2026 strike poses bigger challenges despite economic shift and tripled scale

Samsung Electronics is facing a looming labor strike in May as its memory and foundry businesses take off, marking a more complex challenge than the initial 2024 walkout. The upcoming strike reflects significant changes in industry conditions and union size, highlighting Samsung’s structural difficulties with labor issues amid evolving laws and its broad business portfolio.

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29 Mar
Latest News and Trends

Innodisk says AI success depends on software-hardware integration, signaling shifts for edge and industry deployments

Innodisk told attendees at the 2026 AI EXPO that effective AI deployment requires more than raw computing power; it depends on tight integration between software and hardware, and on selecting components tailored to specific environments. The company argued that edge AI has progressed from image recognition and language models to autonomous learning and decision-making.

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29 Mar
Latest News and Trends

Adata invests US$3 million in KonstTech to boost AI computing infrastructure

Amid the rapid development of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and large language models (LLM), global demand for high-performance computing (HPC) continues to rise. Memory module maker Adata Technology announced a US$3 million investment in the Series A funding round of artificial intelligence (AI) computing infrastructure provider KonstTech (Konst).

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29 Mar
Latest News and Trends

AI race turns into real-time elimination game as advantages fade within months

The global AI is entering a new phase where competitive advantages are increasingly short-lived, often eroding within months or even weeks. Across models, products, and platforms, no single player appears able to maintain a durable lead. Instead, the likely long-term winners will be those that can continuously adapt, integrate capabilities into everyday user workflows, and control distribution at scale—rather than those that simply build the most advanced models.

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