We have put together stories from our coverage last weekend to help you stay informed about news across Asia and beyond. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. China’s visa-free waivers spark Korean travel boom, underpin tourism revival 2. China’s PLA tightens fuel rules as US investigates cause of twin air crashes 3. Failures on 2 fronts led to Hong Kong’s...
We have put together stories from our coverage last weekend to help you stay informed about news across Asia and beyond. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. China’s visa-free waivers spark Korean travel boom, underpin tourism revival 2. China’s PLA tightens fuel rules as US investigates cause of twin air crashes 3. Failures on 2 fronts led to Hong Kong’s seat belt U-turn, experts say 4. China’s new YJ-18C missile: a logistics killer for US Navy? 5....
AI spending is just getting started. Although there are fears of an AI bubble forming, one area where that isn't happening is in the computing space. The reality is, AI hyperscalers are spending as much money as they can get their hands on to build out their computing footprint. After that's accomplished, we'll see what the true return on investment for AI spending is. It may or may not pan out. Y...
AI spending is just getting started. Although there are fears of an AI bubble forming, one area where that isn't happening is in the computing space. The reality is, AI hyperscalers are spending as much money as they can get their hands on to build out their computing footprint. After that's accomplished, we'll see what the true return on investment for AI spending is. It may or may not pan out. Yet there's one thing for sure: The companies that are selling the computing equipment are bound to thrive. I think that's the best place to look for investments in the AI sector, and I've got three stocks that will lead the way. Taiwan Semiconductor No matter where you start analyzing AI spending, nearly all roads circle back to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM 2.65%). Taiwan Semiconductor is the world's largest chip foundry, and makes logic chips that power essentially every computing device used in artificial intelligence. While there are some other foundry options, none are as large or technologically advanced as TSMC (as the company is known). With each company involved in the AI buildout pushing the limits of what's possible, it makes little sense to explore an alternative supplier, so most go with the best regardless of cost, which is why Taiwan Semiconductor has excelled as of late. Expand NYSE : TSM Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Today's Change ( -2.65 %) $ -8.99 Current Price $ 330.56 Key Data Points Market Cap $1.7T Day's Range $ 329.10 - $ 339.90 52wk Range $ 134.25 - $ 351.33 Volume 95K Avg Vol 13M Gross Margin 59.02 % Dividend Yield 0.93 % TSMC's management foresees massive AI chip demand and announced its expectation to spend between $52 billion and $56 billion on increased production capacities. CEO C.C. Wei noted that he was "nervous" about spending that much money on increasing production capacities, but after meeting with several of his clients over the past few months, he's confident in that decision. This is reflected in their long-term outloo...
Find winning stocks in any market cycle. Join 7 million investors using Simply Wall St's investing ideas for FREE. Li Auto (NasdaqGS:LI) is dismantling its autonomous driving team as part of a major organizational restructuring. The company plans to develop humanoid robots alongside its automotive operations, with embodied intelligence set as a core pillar of its future strategy. Autonomous drivin...
Find winning stocks in any market cycle. Join 7 million investors using Simply Wall St's investing ideas for FREE. Li Auto (NasdaqGS:LI) is dismantling its autonomous driving team as part of a major organizational restructuring. The company plans to develop humanoid robots alongside its automotive operations, with embodied intelligence set as a core pillar of its future strategy. Autonomous driving efforts and related work are being realigned under a broader hardware focused entity inside the company. Li Auto, best known for its extended range and electric vehicles in China, is now tying its future more closely to advanced AI hardware through this restructuring. By folding autonomous driving work into a hardware centric entity and adding humanoid robots to its roadmap, the company is redefining how it allocates talent, capital, and R&D attention across its portfolio. For you as an investor following NasdaqGS:LI, this move raises fresh questions about execution risk, capital intensity, and time horizons for any new product lines. It also puts Li Auto in a broader group of companies looking at AI, robotics, and vehicles as a connected ecosystem, which could influence how the market eventually thinks about its business mix and long term optionality. Stay updated on the most important news stories for Li Auto by adding it to your watchlist or portfolio. Alternatively, explore our Community to discover new perspectives on Li Auto. NasdaqGS:LI 1-Year Stock Price Chart How Li Auto stacks up against its biggest competitors The restructuring pushes Li Auto’s autonomous driving work into a broader hardware-centric group while adding humanoid robots to the same umbrella. This signals a leadership decision to treat vehicles and robots as one product family of embodied-intelligence devices. For you, that raises questions about whether management can keep focus on core vehicle programs at a time when January deliveries fell 7.55% year on year and the company is already dealing wi...
franckreporter U.S. stock futures fell on Sunday as gold and silver extended last Friday’s steep selloff, setting a cautious tone at the start of a new month on Wall Street. The S&P 500 ( SP500 ) fell 0.43%, the Dow (
franckreporter U.S. stock futures fell on Sunday as gold and silver extended last Friday’s steep selloff, setting a cautious tone at the start of a new month on Wall Street. The S&P 500 ( SP500 ) fell 0.43%, the Dow (
Taiwan has overtaken China as the market with the top weighting in a key emerging-markets stock index for the first time in nearly two decades, driven by a rally in artificial-intelligence shares. The Asian chipmaking hub now accounts for 21.06% of the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, edging past China’s 20.93% weight at the end of January. It marks the first time Taiwan has surpassed China since July...
Taiwan has overtaken China as the market with the top weighting in a key emerging-markets stock index for the first time in nearly two decades, driven by a rally in artificial-intelligence shares. The Asian chipmaking hub now accounts for 21.06% of the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, edging past China’s 20.93% weight at the end of January. It marks the first time Taiwan has surpassed China since July 2007, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. MSCI hasn’t replied to a request for comment. Taiwan’s rise highlights the popularity of AI-linked trades and the importance of local companies in the industry, in contrast with China’s two-speed economy being weighed down by weak consumer demand. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is the single biggest weighted stock in the EM gauge, and has climbed about 13% this year. It “shows how dominant the AI theme has become,” said Joshua Crabb , head of Asia-Pacific equities at asset manager Robeco. “It underscores increasing interest in the laggard plays in Asia AI given better valuations.” MSCI’s Taiwan Index rose more than 11% in January, compared with a 5% gain in the MSCI China benchmark. While Chinese stocks remain cheaper than Taiwan’s in earnings-based valuations, Taiwan’s MSCI index is expected to deliver earnings growth of 37% in the next 12 months, compared with 15% for the China gauge, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Citigroup Inc. strategists upgraded Taiwan equities to overweight from neutral in December, citing their exposure to global AI supply chains and a more favorable earnings outlook. By contrast, the bank downgraded China to neutral from overweight on weaker earnings and a subdued macroeconomic outlook, strategists including David Groman wrote in a Dec. 22 note. Another Asian semiconductor hub, South Korea, has moved past India to become the third-largest market by weighting in the emerging-markets benchmark. Surging memory chip prices have propelled shares of Korean chipmaker giants Samsung Electro...
JHVEPhoto/iStock Editorial via Getty Images One of the biggest beneficiaries of the rapid expansion of the artificial intelligence ("AI") networking infrastructure market is Ciena Corporation ( CIEN ). The company entered fiscal year ("FY") 2025 with a forecast of 8-11% growth. It exited FY 2025 delivering 19% revenue growth. When Ciena's Chief Strategy Officer ("CSO") David Rothenstein was asked ...
JHVEPhoto/iStock Editorial via Getty Images One of the biggest beneficiaries of the rapid expansion of the artificial intelligence ("AI") networking infrastructure market is Ciena Corporation ( CIEN ). The company entered fiscal year ("FY") 2025 with a forecast of 8-11% growth. It exited FY 2025 delivering 19% revenue growth. When Ciena's Chief Strategy Officer ("CSO") David Rothenstein was asked at the 28th Annual Needham Growth Conference about what drove the company's performance in 2025, he responded: It really, in a word, it was driven by AI, which is not going to be a surprise to anyone really across our customer segments and across our portfolio...This past year was driven heavily by the cloud providers, both the hyperscalers and now this kind of new group of neoclouds or Neoscalers [new AI-focused cloud providers like CoreWeave ( CRWV )] coming online. And what happened was they found themselves needing to build out more AI training clusters and the connectivity infrastructure to support them. They found that, they had too, had underinvested in data centers and networks as a result, there's a hypercompetitive intensity amongst them to build out. Ciena Fiscal Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Presentation Many AI companies trained their early models in a single data center. However, due to power and space constraints, training the newest, largest AI models in a single data center is no longer viable. The industry is shifting to networking multiple data centers together to train the largest new frontier AI models, such as GPT‑4 , Llama 3, and Gemini Ultra, which require "connectivity infrastructure" such as Ciena's Data Center Interconnect ("DCI") and long-haul optical products. Additionally, AI infrastructure companies are shifting from emphasizing AI training in massive central data centers to focusing on building AI inference networking infrastructure to enable back-and-forth data transfer between users and graphics processing units ("GPUs") in distributed "edge...
Investor Gary Black, who is the managing director of The Future Fund LLC, shared his insights on why a merger between Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) and SpaceX does not make sense for the EV giant's shareholders. Does Not Make Mathematical Sense In a post on the social media platform X on Sunday, the investor shared that the decision to potentially merge the Elon Musk-led companies did not make "sense m...
Investor Gary Black, who is the managing director of The Future Fund LLC, shared his insights on why a merger between Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) and SpaceX does not make sense for the EV giant's shareholders. Does Not Make Mathematical Sense In a post on the social media platform X on Sunday, the investor shared that the decision to potentially merge the Elon Musk-led companies did not make "sense mathematically" for Tesla's shareholders unless there were "huge cost or revenue synergies" for the EV maker. "The 35% dilution is just too great given the relative P/E (price to earnings) differences," he said, then explained that the automaker would need to issue 35% new shares to match SpaceX's "$800B market cap equity at a 400x P/E." He also noted that Tesla's $1.5 trillion market capitalization was at a 200x P/E ratio, making the combined company’s market cap $2.3 trillion. "Many existing TSLA institutional shareholders would balk at the uncertainty of 25% profits coming from space travel/communications and sell their shares," Black said. Lack Of Industrial Logic The investor further shared his doubts on the merger, saying that the "industrial logic of a TSLA/SpaceX merger escapes me," adding that despite the merger making it easier for Musk to run the companies as Tesla could "fund SpaceX's negative cash flows," but it wasn't truly a concern for Tesla's shareholders. The talks of a merger have also been questioned by "The Big Short" fame investor Michael Burry, who called Musk a "desperately incentivized futurist" in a post on the social media platform X last week. He then outlined his past predictions about the EV giant, which, according to Black, meant that his claims had "some credibility" and that he knows what he was talking about. Towards the end of the post, Black highlighted that Tesla had "underperformed Nasdaq for 5 years (TSLA +48% vs NDX +90%), including over the past year (TSLA +12% vs NDX +20%)." According to Benzinga Edge Rankings, Tesla scores well on t...
Key Points Navitas Semiconductor's stock is up over 200% in the past year. A strategic pivot away from mobile and consumer businesses and into AI infrastructure caused a short-term revenue decline. 10 stocks we like better than Navitas Semiconductor › Where 2025 was a transitional year for Navitas Semiconductor Corporation (NASDAQ: NVTS), 2026 is when the company will really see the fruits of a st...
Key Points Navitas Semiconductor's stock is up over 200% in the past year. A strategic pivot away from mobile and consumer businesses and into AI infrastructure caused a short-term revenue decline. 10 stocks we like better than Navitas Semiconductor › Where 2025 was a transitional year for Navitas Semiconductor Corporation (NASDAQ: NVTS), 2026 is when the company will really see the fruits of a strategic pivot into more lucrative applications. Last year, Navitas moved away from lower-margin lines, specifically in the mobile and consumer business, and shifted into data center infrastructure and industrial electrification. These are higher-margin businesses with significant long-term promise. The data center total addressable market could reach $1 trillion annually by 2030, according to IOT analytics. Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue » A change in strategy will pay off The pivot away from those segments was not without near-term headwinds. As Navitas also focused on streamlining its distribution network and reducing inventory to further implement the pivot, this led to a near-term reduction in revenue. As of its third-quarter 2025 earnings, Navitas reported revenue of $10.1 million and expected a further reduction to $7 million in the fourth quarter. Full-year 2025 and Q4 earnings are due to be released on Feb. 24. Despite the recent challenges, I'm optimistic that this business transformation will begin to pay off later this year. I predict that Navitas will outperform many of its peers by year's end in both revenue growth and stock appreciation. As we move deeper into the year, Navitas' semiconductors will be well-positioned to work with artificial intelligence (AI) industry leaders. Navitas has already partnered with Nvidia on a development project, and the company's customers include electric vehicle manufacturers and PC makers such as Dell. Room to grow if you're a...
AMD EPYC Embedded™ 2005 Series offers high compute density and power efficiency in a compact package for power, thermal and space-constrained environments Supports PCIe® Gen5, high-speed DDR5 memory, and advanced RAS and security features, enabling reliable and scalable designs for long-life deployments Optimized for networking, storage, and industrial systems requiring 24/7 operations and outstan...
AMD EPYC Embedded™ 2005 Series offers high compute density and power efficiency in a compact package for power, thermal and space-constrained environments Supports PCIe® Gen5, high-speed DDR5 memory, and advanced RAS and security features, enabling reliable and scalable designs for long-life deployments Optimized for networking, storage, and industrial systems requiring 24/7 operations and outstanding performance per watt AI-driven workloads are transforming the performance and efficiency requirements of embedded infrastructure systems. From networking switches, routers, and DPU control planes to cold cloud storage, aerospace and robotics applications, today’s embedded computing system architects must deliver higher compute density, energy efficiency, and extended longevity—within smaller, power-constrained designs. AMD is addressing these evolving requirements with the introduction of the AMD EPYC™ Embedded 2005 Series processors delivering high-performance, energy efficiency, and advanced reliability and security in a small BGA (ball grid array) footprint for network, storage and industrial infrastructure systems requiring 24/7 operation. Exceptional Performance and Efficiency in a Compact Design AMD EPYC Embedded 2005 processors deliver strong performance per watt and I/O throughput in a highly integrated 40mm × 40mm BGA package, which is 2.4 times smaller than comparable Intel Xeon 6500P-B solutions1. The BGA package enables designers to optimize both performance and system cost by allowing for a higher density of I/O connections, shorter electrical paths for increased signal integrity, and superior thermal management. Powered by the proven “Zen 5” architecture, the series features up to 16 x86 cores and 64 MB of shared L3 cache, along with configurable thermal design power (TDP) ranging between 45W and 75W with precise tuning for diverse thermal and power profiles. EPYC Embedded 2005 processors provide up to a 28 percent higher boost CPU frequency and 35 percen...