From AI Agents to Robots: Computex’s Big Themes

From laptops designed for the artificial intelligence era to advances in robotics and sky-high tech shares, here are five hot topics at Taipei’s huge Computex trade show:

“2026 is the year of agents,” Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon said on stage - referring to the emerging world of AI systems that can carry out real-life tasks for users, from sending emails to online shopping. The agent craze has been fuelled by the sudden global popularity of OpenClaw, an agent tool known for its red lobster mascot.

Tech bosses including Rene Haas of British semiconductor design giant Arm said agentic AI - which has moved the technology beyond a simple chatbot to one that acts on your behalf - was ramping up demand for computer processors. “Agents, unlike humans, don’t sleep,” Haas said. US hardware titan Nvidia unveiled a chip on Monday for next-generation Windows laptops that it says can easily run agent tools.Making memories

Nvidia said PCs containing its new RTX Spark chip, made by the likes of Dell, Asus and Lenovo, will go on sale this autumn. Prices have not been announced, but could be pushed up by the global shortage of memory chips created by the race to build AI data centers.

Massive demand has sent profits skyrocketing for memory chip makers like South Korea’s SK hynix and Samsung Electronics, whose workers’ union recently agreed a deal on bonuses after threatening to strike. To address the shortage, “we will double our total production capacity (of silicon wafers, which power AI technology) within the next five years”, Chey Tae-won, chair of SK hynix’s parent company, told reporters at Computex. Chey also reiterated his prediction that memory shortages could persist until 2030, with chip factories taking at least three years to build. Nvidia head Jensen Huang, who will visit South Korea from Friday, signed a memory chip display at the SK hynix booth in Taipei, writing: “Please make more”.