PART 1: AI Chip Competition Intensifies as Liquid Cooling Gains Traction in Data Centers By 2026, driven by increased capital expenditure from North American cloud service providers (CSPs) and the rise of sovereign clouds globally, demand for AI data center infrastructure is expected to surge. Global AI server shipments are projected to grow over 20% year-on-year. NVIDIA, the current market leader, will face heightened competition from AMD’s MI400 full-rack solutions, North American CSPs’ in-house ASIC development, and China’s tech giants like ByteDance, Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei, and Cambricon, all advancing proprietary AI chips.

As AI chip performance scales, thermal design power (TDP) per chip will rise from 700W (NVIDIA H100/H200) to over 1,000W (B200/B300), necessitating liquid cooling systems for high-density heat dissipation. This will drive liquid cooling adoption to 47% by 2026. Microsoft is also pioneering microfluidic cooling at the chip packaging level. Short-to-medium-term solutions will focus on cold plate liquid cooling, transitioning from L2A (Liquid-to-Air) to L2L (Liquid-to-Liquid) designs, with long-term evolution toward chip-level thermal management.

PART 2: HBM and Optical Tech Break Bandwidth Barriers for AI Explosive growth in AI training/inference data and memory bandwidth demands has exposed speed and energy bottlenecks. HBM and optical communication technologies are emerging as key solutions. HBM4, with higher channel density and wider I/O bandwidth, will support AI GPU/accelerator workloads. However, cross-chip/module data transfer remains a bottleneck, driving adoption of co-packaged optics (CPO) and silicon photonics (SiPh) in AI switches by 2026 for high-bandwidth, low-power interconnects.

PART 3: NAND Flash Innovations for AI Workloads NAND Flash suppliers are accelerating specialized solutions like Storage-Class Memory (SCM) SSDs and Nearline QLC SSDs to bridge performance gaps in AI datasets. QLC’s 33% higher density per die versus TLC will cut storage costs, with enterprise SSD penetration reaching 30% by 2026.

PART 4: Energy Storage Becomes Core to AI Data Centers AI data centers’ large-scale clustering and power stability needs are shifting energy storage from backup to a central role. Mid-to-long-duration (2–4 hours) storage systems will grow rapidly, with deployments evolving from centralized BESS to rack/cluster-level units. North America leads this market, while China’s “East Data West Computing” strategy promotes green energy-powered data centers. Global AI data center storage capacity is forecast to surge from 15.7GWh in 2024 to 216.8GWh by 2030 (46.1% CAGR).

PART 5: 800V HVDC and SiC/GaN Adoption in Data Centers Data centers are transitioning to 800V high-voltage direct current (HVDC) architectures for efficiency and compact design, fueled by SiC/GaN semiconductors. SiC handles high-voltage conversion, while GaN optimizes power density. Their penetration is expected to reach 17% by 2026 and exceed 30% by 2030.

PART 6: 2nm GAAFET and Advanced Packaging 2nm GAAFET production marks a shift toward higher transistor density and heterogeneous integration via 2.5D/3D packaging (e.g., TSMC’s CoWoS, Intel’s EMIB, Samsung’s I-Cube). Balancing yield, cost, and reliability remains a challenge for foundries.

PART 7: Humanoid Robots to Grow 700% by 2026 Commercialization of humanoid robots will accelerate, with shipments surpassing 50,000 units in 2026. AI adaptivity and task-specific designs (e.g., manufacturing, logistics) will drive adoption.

PART 8: OLED Displays Dominate High-End Laptops, Foldables Approach Tipping Point Apple’s 2026 OLED MacBook Pro will spur a shift from mini-LED, raising OLED laptop penetration to 5% in 2025 and 9–12% by 2027–2028. Foldable phones, led by Apple’s anticipated 2026–2027 entry, may exceed 30 million units by 2027, pending hinge/panel reliability improvements.

PART 9: Meta Drives AR Display Innovation with LEDoS Meta’s LCOS-based Ray-Ban AR glasses pave the way for brighter, higher-contrast LEDoS displays by 2027–2028, supported by Apple, Google, and others. Cost reductions will expand adoption.

PART 10: ADAS and Robotaxi Expansion L2+ ADAS penetration will exceed 40% by 2026, fueled by cost-effective single-chip solutions. Meanwhile, L4 Robotaxis will expand beyond China/U.S. to Europe, the Middle East, Japan, and Australia, aided by regulatory easing and AI model advancements.