Morning Scan

The last business day of H1 2026 closes with capital flowing hard into chips, robots, and AI infrastructure, as a few incumbents find that scale doesn't automatically mean safety. The half-year ends with more construction announcements than product launches.

$590B — South Korea's committed investment to build a new chip complex anchored by Samsung and SK Hynix — the kind of number that makes every other semiconductor announcement look like a rounding error. (Financial Times)

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South Korea Bets $590B on a New Chip Megacomplex (paywall)

Samsung and SK Hynix are co-anchoring a new national chip campus with four fabs and a packaging cluster — the most expensive industrial bet of the year, by a wide margin. (Financial Times)

Memory Prices Set to Surge 40–50% in Q3

Jefferies sees no meaningful relief from Chinese producers until 2028, which is bad news for anyone buying servers, PCs, or most anything with RAM. (Wccftech)

Why Wall Street Thinks Micron Is the Next Nvidia

With HBM demand exploding and supply constrained, investors are hunting for the next AI infrastructure proxy — and Micron keeps coming up. (TechCrunch)

Baidu's Chip Unit Eyes $50B Hong Kong IPO — With a Catch

Kunlunxin is asking IPO investors to also pre-commit to buying chips worth 3–7x their investment, which is either genius vertical alignment or a creative way to juice demand. (The Information)

China's LineShine Supercomputer: A Deep Dive

LineShine pairs 304-core Arm CPUs with HBM to hit the Top500 without a GPU in sight — a meaningful proof point that China is building around, not just through, US export controls. (The Next Platform)

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Apptronik Raises ~$1B at ~$5B Valuation, Mercedes Is a Backer (paywall)

The humanoid robot maker has Apollo units already running on Mercedes factory floors — the gap between demo and deployed is closing faster than most expected. (Bloomberg)

Ex-Anthropic Researchers Raise $200M for Self-Improving AI

Mirendil hit a $1B valuation on the pitch that it will sell AI systems capable of improving themselves, which is either the most important startup of 2026 or the most dangerous-sounding one. (The Next Web)

Nvidia Backs a 360 MW AI Data Center in Indonesia (paywall)

Firmus is partnering with Nvidia on a DSX AI factory campus in Batam — Southeast Asia's infrastructure land grab is still accelerating. (Bloomberg)

Momenta Files for Hong Kong IPO, Seeking Up to $751M

The Shanghai-based driver-assist firm counts Toyota, Mercedes, and Audi as customers in China. Its IPO will be a useful read on how investors value the non-Tesla autonomy stack. (Reuters)

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Axon CEO: AI Is the Future of Policing — Revenue Up 700%+ YoY (paywall)

Rick Smith has turned Taser's parent into a policing software company, and the growth rate suggests law enforcement agencies are buying in fast — the public debate has not kept pace. (Wall Street Journal)

Disconnected Military Databases May Have Caused the Iranian School Strike

Sources say the February 28 incident may trace back to siloed intel systems, and the proposed fix — more AI — is giving some analysts pause for exactly the reasons you'd expect. (Los Angeles Times)

Amazon's India Push Wipes $15B Off Eternal and Swiggy

Investors decided Amazon's long-telegraphed entry into Indian quick commerce is now a real threat — both incumbents shed billions in market cap before Amazon has fully launched. (The Next Web)

PuffPal Cannabis App Leaked ~1 Million Users' Passports

A Spanish cannabis club membership app left roughly 985,000 identity documents exposed — a niche product with a surprisingly large blast radius. (The Verge)