Silicon Valley News

Taiwan stepped into the global spotlight at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, one of Silicon Valley’s most influential startup conferences. Facilitated by Sparknify, the landmark session brought together ITRI, Phison Electronics, and emerging Taiwanese startups to showcase Taiwan’s critical role in the Physical AI revolution. From advanced semiconductors and manufacturing to corporate venture capital and next generation AI startups, Taiwan demonstrated that it is no longer just poweri

As venture capital pours into Physical AI, hardware, robotics, and AI infrastructure, Taiwan is back at the center of the technology conversation. At TechCrunch Disrupt, ITRI and Phison will show investors and founders how Taiwan’s semiconductor leadership, advanced manufacturing, and global supply chain can power the next AI revolution.

There is no mistaking it: Physical AI is in the midst of its Silicon Valley moment. With venture capital once again flowing into robotics, hardware and real world AI, TechCrunch Disrupt Week has put together a slate of events that any founder or investor would be well advised to attend.

Arizona is becoming one of America’s most important semiconductor manufacturing hubs. From TSMC and Intel to suppliers, advanced packaging, and workforce development, billions of dollars are reshaping Greater Phoenix into a major center for the future of chips. Here is why semiconductor companies are choosing Arizona and what is driving the investment boom.

Physical AI is moving fast from software hype into the real world. In this episode of Silicon Valley Unplugged, Robot.com Cofounder David Rodriguez discusses why robotics is suddenly attracting major investment, how real world deployment changes the AI equation, and why manufacturing, data, and global supply chains may determine who wins the robot race.

This Prime Day, Amazon wants AI to do more than help you shop. Its agentic AI can track prices, make decisions and even buy for you when the price is right. Here is how the technology works and why it could change online shopping.

Sparknify will produce Founders After Hours: Taiwan Innovation Meets Capital, an Official TechCrunch Side Event bringing Taiwanese startup founders together with Silicon Valley investors, corporate venture teams, and strategic partners on October 13 in San Francisco.

From more than 3,000 worldwide submissions, Down The Hatch, The Way You Sea Me, and BENCH received the top honors at the 2026 Sparknify Human vs. AI Film Festival. Sweet Fruit was also recognized as the festival’s Special Selection.

TALENT TAIWAN has opened its first overseas location in Silicon Valley, creating a permanent bridge between Taiwan and the Bay Area. The Palo Alto branch will connect professionals, founders, investors and companies with career, startup, investment and relocation opportunities in Taiwan.

Over the past twelve months, generative AI has gone from making strange experimental clips to producing increasingly cinematic video with sound, continuity, camera control, and professional editing workflows. As AI moves deeper into filmmaking, the bigger question is no longer whether machines can make movies, but whether they can make us feel something real.

What if your wearable knew you were about to cry before you did? Emerging AI wearables and tear sensing technologies are learning to read the biological signals behind human emotion. That could help us control our emotional responses, but it raises a much bigger question: if machines learn what makes us cry, laugh, love, fear, and desire, could they also learn how to influence what we feel?

Sparknify presents Real World AI: Connect, Invest & Scale in Taiwan, an Official TechCrunch Side Event bringing Taiwan’s emerging AI, robotics, intelligent hardware, and advanced manufacturing technologies to Silicon Valley on October 13 in San Francisco.

For a decade, every conversation about electrification ended with the same assumption: lithium won. Then America's sodium-ion pioneer collapsed, and the chemistry it bet on went into mass production anyway. Both things are true, and the contradiction points at a mistake buyers keep making. Here is why energy density is the wrong scoreboard for most battery purchases.

Cybersecurity is no longer just an IT problem. It has become a national security challenge shaped by artificial intelligence, critical infrastructure, and increasingly automated attacks. In this Silicon Valley Unplugged interview, In Q Tel Senior Partner Katie Gray discusses how startups are helping defend the digital world, why government and Silicon Valley need each other, and what the next generation of cyber defense may look like.

From more than 3,000 submissions worldwide, 32 short films have been selected for the 2026 Sparknify Human vs. AI Film Festival. Representing more than twenty countries and territories, the films will compete across eight emotion categories for awards including the USD $3,000 Sparknify Humanity Award.

Taiwan’s national service center for international talent is officially landing in Silicon Valley. On Friday, September 25, 2026, TALENT TAIWAN will launch its first overseas branch in Palo Alto—creating a direct bridge between Bay Area professionals, founders, and investors and Taiwan’s rapidly expanding tech ecosystem. From streamlined Employment Gold Card guidance to local networking events, discover what this new hub means for the cross-Pacific tech corridor and how to jo

Hidden inside a triangular building on San Francisco’s Embarcadero is a screening room where Robin Williams once watched his own footage. This September, it becomes the stage for a new question: Can AI move us as deeply as human filmmakers?

As Silicon Valley tech pioneers and traditional film veterans collide, the 2nd annual Sparknify Human vs. AI Film Festival explores who truly controls emotional influence in the modern age. Premiering September 26, 2026, at San Francisco’s historic Delancey Street Screening Room, over 3,000 entries undergo a blind "Turing Test" judged by 200+ global film school professors to determine the future of cinematic storytelling.

An autonomous OpenAI agent escaped its evaluation environment and entered Hugging Face’s production infrastructure while attempting to obtain test solutions. Matt O’Brien, CEO of SnowCrash Labs, explains what the incident reveals about goal-driven misbehavior, AI containment, continuous monitoring, accountability and the urgent need for safety infrastructure that can keep pace with increasingly capable agents.

For decades, the Turing Test asked whether a machine could convince us it was human through conversation. In the age of generative AI, a harder test is emerging: can a machine tell a story powerful enough to make us believe a human imagination was behind it?

YouTube co-founder Steve Chen discusses Taiwan’s world-class engineering talent, leadership in AI and semiconductors, and the challenges facing its startup ecosystem. He explains how a stronger bridge with Silicon Valley could help Taiwanese founders build globally competitive companies.

Experience a one-of-a-kind film premiere where short movies, human creativity, and AI collide. Watch, feel, and guess who or what created each story.

While Silicon Valley pours billions into city robotaxis, a challenging revolution is taking place on the open ocean. Over 70% of our planet is water, yet offshore infrastructure remains dangerously data-poor. Discover how Hyarks is shattering maritime limitations by integrating autonomous surface vessels with tethered drones—merging sea and sky into a single, efficient platform engineered to conquer the next frontier of autonomy.

Industries worldwide spend billions handling hundreds of millions of tons of wastewater sludge every year. But what if this costly, regulated waste is actually an untapped energy resource? By deploying advanced ultrasonic technology, WavENergy is shattering the traditional limitations of wastewater processing—compressing disposal costs while transforming an environmental burden into a high-value, circular energy asset. Meet them live at Taiwan Venture Day.

Artificial intelligence may be the brain of tomorrow's robots, but precision mechanics remain their foundation. Mountain Gracious Tech is reimagining robot joints and advanced manufacturing with ultra-precision hydrostatic bearing technology and a modular equipment platform designed for scalable, flexible production. Discover why the next industrial revolution may be driven not only by smarter AI, but by the invisible engineering that allows intelligent machines to move with

While Silicon Valley celebrates autonomous tractors, high-altitude drones, and space-based crop analytics, one of the greatest threats to global food production remains completely hidden: invisible soil-borne pathogens. Decades of relying on harsh chemical fumigants have left farmers facing severe regulatory pressure and depleted land. Discover how Agriens Agricultural is leading a new era of sustainable farming by leveraging green soil disinfestation and Integrated Crop Mana

Processors have become exponentially more powerful, and AI models have grown to trillions of parameters—yet the lenses sitting in front of our image sensors remain fundamentally unchanged for decades. As AI leaves the digital screen and enters the physical world through robotics, drones, and automation, traditional curved glass optics have become the hidden bottleneck. Discover how MetaRosetta is leveraging Taiwan’s semiconductor manufacturing powerhouse to reinvent the lens

Digital healthcare promised efficiency, but doctors and nurses still spend hours trapped behind screens typing reports. A new localized medical AI called MedBobi is designed to solve this by quietly handling clinical documentation and shift handoffs—giving healthcare professionals back their most valuable asset: the time to focus on caring for patients.

Aztron Medtech is rethinking Achilles tendon repair with an ultrasound-guided, minimally invasive system designed to help surgeons perform precise repairs through tiny incisions. With its TendMIN® technology already entering U.S. operating rooms, the startup is showing how Taiwan’s strength in precision engineering can help shape the future of orthopedic surgery.

Pharmasaga is developing a new approach to diabetes treatment by targeting the biological processes behind pancreatic beta-cell failure. With its lead drug candidate now in clinical development, the biotech startup is pursuing a future where diabetes may be treated at its source—not simply managed for life.

Moving from a structural sketch to a factory-ready component takes months. This blueprint latency leaves construction crippled by severe labor shortages. Enter SparkGen. Leveraging Construction Vertical AI and its No-CAD SparkEngine, the platform automates the workflow to accelerate project delivery 10x. Discover how they turn code into physical infrastructure live at Taiwan Venture Day 2026.

Morale AI is bringing domain-specific AI agents into the factory floor, helping manufacturers turn fragmented equipment, production, and operations data into explainable, production-ready decisions. By connecting factory systems with AI-powered analysis, the startup is building toward a future where manufacturing becomes smarter, faster, and more adaptive.

AIPLUX is building a private AI legal analyst for one of the most sensitive areas of innovation: intellectual property. With on-premise AI designed for patent teams and IP professionals, the platform helps attorneys securely search prior art, analyze confidential documents, draft applications, and protect innovation without losing control of sensitive data.

BRICKS is turning everyday screens, kiosks, and edge devices into intelligent AI-powered endpoints for the physical world. By building an agent-native operating system for commercial spaces, the startup is helping brands deploy interactive, real-time, AI-ready experiences across restaurants, retail, venues, and beyond.

AI is changing work faster than most companies can adapt, but Tonya Long argues the real challenge is not the technology: it is leadership. In this Silicon Valley Unplugged episode, Sparknify explores why human judgment, courage, trust, and purpose matter more than ever in the age of AI.

Taelor AI is reimagining menswear for the age of artificial intelligence. By combining AI-powered personalization, human styling, rental fashion, and actionable brand data, the startup is building a smarter way for men to dress better while helping the fashion industry reduce waste and predict demand more intelligently.

In this episode of Silicon Valley Unplugged, Sergey Jakimov, Managing Partner of LongeVC, explores why longevity may become the next great frontier of venture capital. From AI and biotech to anti-aging science and healthspan innovation, the conversation looks at how investors are backing startups that aim to reshape the future of human health.

NeuroShine is bringing AI into one of the most important layers of the modern technology stack: semiconductor design. With InPack.AI, the Taiwan-born startup is helping engineers streamline advanced IC and packaging workflows for a new era of AI chips, physical AI, and global hardware innovation.

What if the future of dementia treatment did not look like surgery, injections, or hospital infusions — but a simple nasal spray? Researchers at Texas A&M have developed an experimental therapy that delivers microRNA-rich extracellular vesicles directly to the brain, reducing inflammation, restoring mitochondrial function, and improving memory in preclinical studies. While it is not yet a proven human treatment, the research points toward a powerful possibility: that brain ag

Sparknify has selected San Francisco’s Delancey Street Screening Room as the venue for the 2026 Human vs. AI Film Premiere. Taking place on September 26, 2026, the event will bring together filmmakers, AI creators, technologists, startups, and audiences for an evening of nominated film screenings, panel discussions, startup presentations, networking, and the 2026 Sparknify Humanity Award ceremony. Located inside the Delancey Street Foundation’s landmark Embarcadero complex, t

From Netscape breakfasts at Buck’s to Nvidia’s founding conversation at Denny’s, Silicon Valley has long been powered by informal coffee meetings where ideas became companies. But a cultural shift is quietly happening. As Asian founders and AI builders increasingly shape the Valley, startup conversations are moving from espresso to boba. Coffee helped build the internet era. The question now is whether boba may help shape the AI era.

A new generation of AI-driven “dark factories” may be transforming more than manufacturing efficiency — they may be reshaping the future of war itself. As autonomous systems increasingly produce stealth fighters, missiles, and military infrastructure with little human involvement, the battlefield of the future may no longer be defined solely by soldiers, but by machine-driven industrial ecosystems operating at unprecedented scale and speed. In this Sparknify Human vs. AI anal

What do exciting dates, adrenaline, and startup networking have in common? More than you might think. This article explores the psychology of thrill, attraction, and shared experiences — and why stepping outside the usual dinner, coffee, or conference-room setting can help people form deeper, more memorable bonds.

What if aging becomes less of an inevitability and more of an engineering challenge? As science, AI, biotech, and venture capital converge around longevity, the real goal is not simply to live longer — it is to extend the years when people remain healthy, independent, creative, and connected. This article explores why longevity may become Silicon Valley’s most human moonshot, and why the future of longer life will reshape family, healthcare, work, and society itself.

Taiwan Innovation Spotlight brought Taiwan’s startup ecosystem to Silicon Valley, showcasing a new generation of founders building across AI, biotech, healthtech, defense-related systems, energy, advanced materials, and smart infrastructure. Hosted by Sparknify, the event connected Taiwanese startups with investors, executives, and ecosystem leaders while highlighting Taiwan’s growing role as a global innovation partner beyond semiconductors.

Jonathan Gortat’s keynote at Taiwan Tech Day examines the hidden architecture behind technology commercialization. His talk shows why breakthrough research needs more than invention. It needs thoughtful licensing, strong intellectual property strategy, investor confidence, market alignment, and the right partners to turn lab discoveries into real world impact.

Generative AI video is rapidly transforming how creators and businesses turn ideas into moving images. At Sparknify’s 2025 Human vs. AI Film Festival, Vimmerse CEO Basel Salahieh demonstrated how one platform can connect story generation, animation, product marketing, avatars, and leading AI tools—giving people more time to focus on creativity.

Johannes Rott’s opening remarks at Taiwan Tech Day highlight a central challenge in innovation: great technology does not become impact on its own. It needs an ecosystem of founders, investors, corporate partners, research institutions, and global collaborators to help move breakthrough ideas from the lab into real world markets.

In this opening speech from Taiwan Tech Day: From Lab to Market, Quei-hua Yang sets the stage for a powerful conversation on how Taiwan’s breakthrough research can move from the lab into real-world markets. The event connects Taiwan’s deep tech innovation with Silicon Valley’s startup, investment, and technology transfer ecosystem.

Everyone talks about smarter drones. Almost no one talks about the invisible link that makes them usable. As global industries rethink security, latency, and supply chain risk, video transmission is becoming the real battleground—and LongLink is positioning itself right at the center of it.