At OCP 2026 NVIDIA showed a single-Vera BlueField-4 STX server built for context memory, a cheaper platform than the earlier dual-Vera design, while Intel claimed the industry's only high-volume 300mm indium-phosphide silicon photonics capability.
Huawei-linked SiCarrier says every product line it sells has entered mass production and is running at multiple Chinese wafer fabs while adding photomask and AI wafer-inspection tools, and NAURA plans a RMB 405 million acquisition of a hybrid bonding specialist.
Mediterranean Shipping Co and German defence group Rheinmetall were awarded the auction for Romania's bankrupt Mangalia shipyard at 138 million euros, while COSCO Shipping Bulk contracted a further 16 multipurpose grain carriers at Fujian Shipbuilding in an order estimated near $800m.
ChangXin Memory Technologies forecast RMB 265-270 billion of revenue for the first nine months of 2026, more than sevenfold higher year on year, but told shareholders that third-quarter net profit growth slowed to just 1-4% sequentially as DRAM price gains moderate.
Market Pulse Scope's North American cobalt metal marker fell 9.0% over seven sessions to $35,705 a tonne on Oct 19, as hopes of a further tightening in Congolese export quotas went unmet and Chinese electrolytic cobalt, cobalt sulphate and cobalt chloride all posted weekly losses.
Market Pulse Scope's WTI crude series rose 10.4% over seven sessions to $101.41 a barrel on Oct 19, the steepest weekly gain on the site's energy board, as a fresh wave of tanker attacks in the Strait of Hormuz cut Persian Gulf loadings and pushed Brent back above $110.
Chinese yards took about 94% of the 62 firm orders tracked in the week to 18 October, headlined by MISC's five 174,000 m3 LNG carriers at Hudong-Zhonghua and up to 20 vessels at Fujian Shipbuilding.
MediaTek's Google TPU v9 programme may not ship until the first quarter of 2028 after a Core A redesign, even as Taiwanese ASIC designers posted September revenue growth of 97.8% and 496% on AI accelerator demand.
Morgan Stanley lifted its fourth-quarter NAND contract forecast to +15-20% and enterprise SSD to +23-28%, as US cloud buyers switch from TLC plus HDD to QLC for AI inference caching while PC DRAM output is set to fall over 20%.
Vale says rising fuel and shipping costs have pushed about 10% of its iron ore output below breakeven just as Chinese port inventories climbed to 173.69 million tonnes and daily hot metal eased to 2.3366 million tonnes.
Market Pulse Scope's China coke benchmark fell 8.3% to CNY 2,125 a tonne after steelmakers pushed through a second round of procurement cuts effective 12 October, leaving independent coking plants about CNY 52 a tonne in the red.
Market Pulse Scope's China methanol benchmark fell 18.2% in a week to CNY 3,967 a tonne, the first close below CNY 4,000 in a month, as coastal MTO shutdowns multiplied and port inventories posted their first sustained build.
Chinese liquid ammonia fell 12.97% to CNY 2,616.67 a tonne in the week to 16 October, the steepest drop on the fertilizer board, as restarted units lifted supply while phosphate and compound-fertilizer run rates stayed near seasonal lows.
ASML patent filings point to a die-to-wafer hybrid bonder aimed at Besi, while TrendForce says co-packaged optics testing - still over 100 seconds per photonic IC - is the new bottleneck before 2027 mass production.
Barclays data show DDR4 contract prices up 24% in three months against 20% for DDR5, while 4Q26 DRAM contracts were revised to +10-15% and NAND to +15-20%, pushing global handset shipments down 20%.
Reports that Washington may license sanctioned tankers knocked up to 13% off Asian shipping equities, while International Seaways agreed a $370m takeover of Bruton that values modern VLCCs far above their yard cost.
Record LNG tightness has flipped Europe's remaining coal-fired fleet back into profit, with German lignite generation margins near $72/MWh against zero a year ago, and the IEA now expects a slower decline in European coal use.
Chinese lithium salts fell another 10-12% in the week to 16 October, taking industrial-grade carbonate to CNY 99,000 a tonne and leaving prices at roughly half their May peak as ore inventories rebuild at the ports.
NVIDIA opened its Vera Rubin rack and compute-tray designs and pushed an 800 VDC architecture at OCP 2026, while Delta showed a 660 kW in-row power rack and a 2.5 MW liquid-to-liquid cooling unit aimed at racks heading toward 250 kW.
TSMC's third-quarter net profit rose 68.7% to a record NT$763bn with 2nm at 8% of wafer revenue, and brokerages responded by lifting capex forecasts to as much as $105bn for 2028 while raising ASP and CoWoS capacity assumptions.