Taipei—Korea IT Times Reporting Team
COMPUTEX 2026 opened at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center, setting the stage for one of the clearest industry shifts yet: artificial intelligence is no longer confined to screens, servers and chat interfaces. It is beginning to move into the physical world.
Walking through the exhibition halls this year, the change was difficult to miss. A few years ago, COMPUTEX was dominated by laptops, graphics cards and servers. More recently, generative AI and large language models shaped nearly every conversation. In 2026, the mood is different. AI is beginning to act.
Across TaiNEX, robots followed visitors, industrial machines recognized their surroundings, and AI-powered systems responded to natural-language commands before deciding what to do next. COMPUTEX 2026 felt less like a conventional IT trade show and more like an early glimpse of the Physical AI era.
The four-day event, running through June 5, brings together about 1,500 companies from more than 33 countries, with roughly 6,000 booths across the venue. Organizers expect more than 80,000 business visitors from 150 countries.
This year’s slogan, “AI Together,” was visible from the entrance. On the surface, it refers to cooperation across the technology ecosystem. On the show floor, however, it carried a sharper meaning: AI can no longer advance alone.
Chipmakers, robotics companies, PC manufacturers, server vendors and data-center infrastructure firms were no longer presenting separate pieces of the industry. They were presenting parts of the same system. The center of competition is moving from model performance alone to the ability to apply AI in real industrial environments.
AI Robotics Zone draws the largest crowds
One of the most crowded areas this year was the newly established AI Robotics Zone.
Visitors formed long lines around robots powered by NVIDIA’s Jetson platform. ASUS, Advantech and other companies showcased industrial and humanoid robots designed for logistics, manufacturing and service environments.
What stood out was not simply that the robots moved. It was how they moved
Older industrial robots typically repeated pre-programmed tasks. Many of the robots on display this year appeared to understand natural-language instructions, adjust to changing conditions and decide their next action based on context.
One robot answered a visitor’s question, then shifted its task sequence without a manual reset. A person familiar with the demonstration described the change this way: robots are becoming less like machines that execute programs and more like physical computers powered by AI agents.
NVIDIA and Qualcomm point to the agent era
The most repeated phrase at COMPUTEX 2026 was not generative AI or large language model. It was Agentic AI.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang used his keynote to describe 2026 as the beginning of the Agentic AI era, in which AI systems observe, reason, plan and act with greater autonomy.
Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon delivered a similar message, arguing that 2026 will be the year of AI agents. Qualcomm used the event to highlight low-power, high-efficiency Snapdragon platforms for AI PCs and robotics, positioning on-device AI as a central part of the next computing cycle.
The message from both companies was clear. AI is moving beyond answering questions. It is moving toward executing tasks.
For the technology industry, this marks a deeper shift. The benchmark is no longer only how well an AI model speaks, writes or summarizes. The new question is whether AI can operate reliably in the real world.
The hidden battle is inside AI infrastructure
Away from the robotics displays, another battle was unfolding across the exhibition floor: AI infrastructure.
As AI models become larger and more widely deployed, power consumption and heat have become defining constraints. At COMPUTEX 2026, immersion cooling systems drew strong attention, with servers shown operating inside specialized cooling liquids.
High-speed optical interconnect technologies were also presented as a key part of the next-generation AI data center. Companies including Marvell highlighted faster connectivity solutions aimed at reducing bottlenecks between chips, servers and data-center clusters.
These displays made one point clear: the future of AI will not be determined by algorithms alone. It will also depend on electricity, cooling, memory, networking and manufacturing capacity.
Taiwan’s supply chain meets Silicon Valley software
Industry executives at the show described this year’s COMPUTEX as a turning point for the commercialization of Physical AI.
Taiwan’s hardware and semiconductor ecosystem, led by companies such as TSMC, MediaTek and Foxconn, is increasingly converging with AI platforms and software architectures from Silicon Valley. That combination is accelera
Editorial Contact: Korea IT Times Technology Team (monica@koreaittimes.com | info@koreaittimes.com)
