Tech Express | August 26, 2026 Nvidia to Cut RTX 50 Series Production

1. Nvidia to Cut RTX 50 Series Production, Gamers Face Shortages

Source: Mydrivers

On August 26, Taiwanese component channel sources confirmed that Nvidia is about to cut production across its entire RTX 50 series of graphics cards. After August's price surge, gamers may now struggle to buy a card even at a premium.

Channel sources estimate that, due to the production cuts, consumer-market supply will be extremely tight in the fourth quarter. Besides flagship models, even entry-level RTX 50 cards face shortages, leaving gamers with only the five-year-old RTX 30 series as an option.

Retail prices are already badly distorted: the RTX 5090, with a suggested price of 71,990 New Taiwan dollars, is now sold for over 159,990 New Taiwan dollars, a premium exceeding 120 percent, while the RTX 5060 Ti has generally surpassed 4,000 yuan in China.

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2. Altman: AI's Bottleneck Is Shifting to Human Behavioral Inertia

Source: Huxiu

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appeared on David Senra's channel on August 23, and in a conversation lasting over an hour, he discussed the friction AI faces in entering the real economy. He said AI's bottleneck is shifting from "whether models are smart enough" to "whether humans actually change the way they work."

Altman admitted that when GPT-4 arrived in 2023, he expected the software industry to be reshaped quickly, but three years later he realized he had underestimated the inertia of the economy and of people. As an example, he noted that he already has Codex, yet he still clicks through emails, copies and pastes, and maintains to-do lists the way he has for twenty years.

He also said AI has yet to experience its "iPhone moment," and that OpenAI hopes to position itself as a platform company offering a unified AI entry point and open APIs, rather than building every application itself. In his view, massive compute buildout is becoming "one of the most expensive infrastructure projects in history."

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3. Moonshot AI Reportedly in Talks With Microsoft, Amazon, Google on K3 Revenue Sharing

Source: Lianhe Zaobao

Reuters reported, citing three sources, that Chinese AI company Moonshot AI is in talks with Microsoft, Amazon and Google over revenue-sharing agreements that would allow these US cloud giants to host its popular Kimi K3 model.

If reached, it could be the first major revenue-sharing deal between a Chinese AI company and major US cloud providers. The sources said Moonshot AI, which is preparing for an IPO, hopes to secure up to 30 percent of related service revenue, though the talks are still at an early stage and a deal is not guaranteed.

The report added that despite Washington restricting AI chip exports to China over national security concerns, Chinese AI models are gaining traction in the US because they are typically much cheaper than Western counterparts.

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4. Claude Designs Proteins From Scratch, Far Outpacing Human Experts

Source: Mydrivers

On August 18, Anthropic announced that it used its Claude model to design from scratch a batch of proteins that have never existed in nature, even spelling out the company name "ANTHROPIC" with them. Over the weekend, founder Dario Amodei claimed on X that with AI, humans could conquer most diseases within five to ten years.

According to the report, Claude generated 1,320 designs across 15 protein targets, with 14 targets producing proteins that could bind, achieving a hit rate of 22 to 35 percent, versus the industry's typical 10 to 15 percent. On the RBX1 target, human participants hit only 3.7 percent, while Claude reached 40 percent on a single target.

The article cautioned, however, that designing a binder is only the first step of drug development; manufacturability, toxicity, clinical trials and regulatory approval still require humans, and no protein drug designed from scratch by AI has reached the market. Anthropic also classifies the technology as "dual-use," and Claude's protein design feature is not yet open to ordinary users.

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5. Samsung Unveils World's First LPDDR-PIM Memory for On-Device AI

Source: Mydrivers

On August 26, Samsung announced the world's first LPDDR-PIM, a next-generation memory for mobile and on-device AI that integrates computing functions into mobile memory to boost AI processing speed and cut power consumption.

At the Hot Chips 2026 conference held at Stanford University, Samsung publicly showed the structure and specifications of LPDDR5X-PIM. In tests using Meta's 8-billion-parameter open-source model Llama 3.1, LPDDR5X-PIM completed processing in 5.4 seconds, about 2.3 times faster than standard LPDDR5X's 12.3 seconds, reaching 81.3 tokens per second versus the existing 27 TPS.

Samsung first unveiled HBM-PIM for high-bandwidth memory back in 2021; it is now bringing PIM to the LPDDR low-power memory widely used in smartphones. Following LPDDR5X-PIM, Samsung has begun standardization work on LPDDR6-PIM.

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6. iPhone 17 Tops Q2 2026 Global Smartphone Bestseller List

Source: Mydrivers

Research firm Counterpoint Research published its global smartphone bestseller list for the second quarter of 2026. The top three were all iPhones — the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro Max and iPhone 17 Pro — with the iPhone 17 alone accounting for 6 percent of total global smartphone shipments.

Apple and Samsung each held five spots in the top ten, together taking 26 percent of global shipments, up 2 percentage points year over year, even as the overall market fell 11 percent. Apple still posted 5 percent shipment growth.

Counterpoint attributed the iPhone 17's strong performance to Apple's "more for the same price" strategy: the standard model got a 120Hz ProMotion display for the first time, doubled base storage from 128GB to 256GB, while keeping the starting price at 5,999 yuan.

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7. Xiaomi's September Lineup to Feature Foldable With Xuanjie O3 Chip

Source: Mydrivers

According to the roadmap CEO Lei Jun has shared, Xiaomi's Pengcheng series products will launch in early September, with the much-anticipated Xiaomi 18 Fold flagship appearing at the same event, followed by a dedicated launch for the Xiaomi 18 Pro series at the end of the month.

The Xiaomi 18 Fold will be the first device powered by the Xuanjie O3 AI flagship processor, which will also ship in the Xiaomi Pad 9 Pro Max. The Xuanjie O3 is built on a 3nm process with a 133-square-millimeter die and 24 billion transistors, a 26 percent increase in hardware scale over the previous Xuanjie O1.

Media commentary suggests that, after Huawei, Xiaomi now has the strength to compete head-to-head with Apple in the premium market. With the Xuanjie O3, O100 and D100 self-developed chips plus the foldable hardware, Chinese phone makers are gaining an independent voice in core computing.

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8. MIIT: HarmonyOS Is Now the World's Third-Largest Mobile OS

Source: Mydrivers

According to media reports, the State Council Information Office held a press conference on August 25 on accelerating new industrialization. A Ministry of Industry and Information Technology official said that since the 14th Five-Year Plan period, China's foundational software supply has improved greatly, with HarmonyOS becoming the world's third-largest mobile operating system and open-source HarmonyOS ecosystem devices surpassing 1.35 billion units.

Earlier, Huawei's executive director and consumer BG chairman Richard Yu announced that HarmonyOS 6 devices have exceeded 80 million units. HarmonyOS 6 was released in October 2025 and debuted on the Huawei Mate 80 series.

In March, Yu said the user base was growing rapidly, with HarmonyOS 5 and HarmonyOS 6 devices combined already surpassing 47 million units and adding hundreds of thousands of new users daily.

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9. MIIT to Accelerate 6G Core Technology Research

Source: Mydrivers

On August 26, the State Council Information Office held a press conference on the "15th Five-Year Plan" launch. An MIIT official said the ministry will accelerate 6G core technology research, continue 6G technical trials and standards development, and prepare for commercial deployment.

The industry generally expects 6G to deliver more than ten times the capability of 5G, with commercial use around 2030. GSMA Greater China President Sihan Bo earlier said China is expected to be among the leaders in 6G deployment, with penetration reaching 60 percent by 2035.

Compared with 5G, 6G is seen as a super-intelligent network with integrated space-air-ground-sea coverage, featuring high-precision sensing and on-site AI computing at base stations. A fiber-wireless fusion scheme proposed by Peking University and others achieves hundreds of Gbps per channel, enough to download a 4K movie in one second.

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10. SpaceX to Invest $100 Billion in Its Largest Launch Site

Source: Guancha

According to US media reports, SpaceX announced on August 25 local time that it will invest $100 billion to build its "largest" launch site in Vermilion Parish, Louisiana, aiming for thousands of launches per year.

CEO Elon Musk wrote on X on the 25th: "Louisiana Starbase will eventually have more than ten launch towers, supporting over 30 Starship flights per day, becoming the largest launch site on Earth."

Louisiana's state government said the project is expected to create 3,000 direct jobs over the next decade, with an average annual salary of $92,600. CNN reported, however, that Starship is not yet in operation, and the project must still complete environmental, wetland and natural-resource reviews.

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