South Korea

Intel and SK Hynix are exploring partnership opportunities to manufacture memory chips in the United States, reportedly centered on Intel's long-delayed Ohio manufacturing complex, with possibilities ranging from SK Hynix leasing capacity to a broader joint venture involving cloud companies. No formal partnership has been announced, and SK Hynix stressed that no specific plans or arrangements have been finalized. Since reports of the potential partnership surfaced Wednesday, Intel shares have surged roughly 10%, while SK Hynix has climbed about 5%; SK Hynix stock has risen 20% since its U.S. Nasdaq debut in July, while Intel is up about 4% over the same period. Intel's turnaround is gaining traction independently, with Q2 revenue jumping 25% year over year to $16.1 billion, Data Center and AI revenue surging 59% to $6.3 billion, Intel Foundry revenue up 31%, and management guiding Q3 sales to $15.8-$16.8 billion, while the Zacks Consensus calls for fiscal 2026 revenue to rise nearly 18% and FY26 EPS to soar to $1.50 from $0.42 per share last year. SK Hynix reported record Q2 performance amid robust AI demand, began mass shipments of HBM4 with production expected to ramp through the second half of the year, and shipped samples of HBM4E, while the Zacks Consensus Estimate calls for FY26 revenue to soar over 250% to $240.09 billion and EPS to jump more than 500% to $25.69. Despite its AI-memory leadership, SK Hynix trades at a forward P/E multiple of 7X, while Intel trades at more than 100X forward earnings; SK Hynix carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), while Intel holds a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan warned this week that memory prices have jumped 5x to 7x and now account for roughly 75% of the cost of some lower-end phones and laptops, cautioning the shortage could deepen in 2027. Tan told investors the industry faces one of the most severe supply constraints in its history across leading-edge logic, silicon wafers, memory, and subscripts, and said these shortages will persist for the foreseeable future. Intel is pivoting production toward data-center CPUs and now guides 2026 capital expenditure above $20 billion, with 2027 spending set to run significantly higher. Micron Technology echoed the outlook, saying it sees tightness continuing beyond 2027, aligned with SK hynix flagging 2027 as potentially the industry's worst supply year. Micron's $100 billion in take-or-pay remaining performance obligations and $22 billion in customer deposits and letters of credit lock in floor pricing above prior peak margins, while its fiscal third-quarter gross margin hit 84.9% on DRAM pricing gains in the low 60s percentage range and NAND pricing in the mid-80s percentage range.

Hyundai CEO Jose Munoz warned that Chinese vehicles could flood the U.S. market, as they did in Europe, unless Washington maintains tariffs and other trade safeguards, Reuters reported. Munoz noted that Chinese vehicles are 30%-40% cheaper than rival models in some markets including Italy, Spain and France, even with EU trade barriers such as tariffs and minimum pricing commitments in place. He said the UK, which left the EU in 2020 and has no similar tariffs on Chinese cars, now counts all of its top car sellers as Chinese, and warned similar things could happen in the U.S. at different levels unless certain conditions are met. The U.S. has effectively blocked Chinese electric vehicle imports with tariffs of about 100%, though President Donald Trump recently said he would be open to Chinese automakers manufacturing in the U.S. as long as they employ Americans. Munoz's remarks echoed Ford CEO Jim Farley, who told staff in July that the company was bracing for Chinese automakers to enter the U.S. within the next 5-10 years.

The US Federal Reserve, or Fed, raised interest rates by 0.25% to a range of 3.75% to 4.00%, with a unanimous 12-0 vote by the Federal Open Market Committee, or FOMC. This is the first hike since July 2023, and the Fed signaled further increases this year in its fight against high inflation driven by surging crude oil prices amid the Iran-US war. The rate hike dragged the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 631.21 points, or 1.21%, to close at 51,461.90. The S&P 500 closed at 7,551.81, down 33.92 points, or 0.45%, while the Nasdaq closed at 25,978.42, down 3.15 points, or 0.01%. Technology stocks recovered, with semiconductor shares up 0.6%, the first gain since the AI company's executives warned against slowing development. Intel jumped 4% after reports that South Korea's SK Hynix is in talks with Intel about manufacturing memory chips in the United States, news that also lifted SK Hynix's US-listed shares by 0.6%. As for the Thai stock market, the index is expected to see a short-term technical rebound after the Fed's decision to raise rates came in as expected. The stock to watch today is GULF, which is investing more than 100 billion baht to develop a Data Center Park with a capacity of over 1,000 megawatts, with a plan expected to be finalized within this year, while accelerating the development of electricity and water infrastructure to serve major customers.

The global memory shortage is far from over and may drive further upside for Micron Technology and Sandisk Corporation, according to a Zacks Investment Research analysis. TrendForce data cited in the report show regular DRAM contract prices jumped about 90%–95% in the first quarter of 2026, another 58%–63% in the second quarter, and are on track for a further 13%–18% increase in the third quarter, lifting a $1 DRAM chip to roughly $3.50, while NAND flash is up about 3x over the same stretch. IDC expects 2026 supply growth of only about 16% for DRAM and 17% for NAND, well below what AI demand requires, and new fabs from SK Hynix, Micron and Samsung are not expected to meaningfully add output until mid-to-late 2027 or later. Micron's fiscal Q3 revenue reached $41.5 billion, up from $9.3 billion a year ago, with gross margin of roughly 85% and adjusted EPS of $25.11, and management guided fiscal Q4 to roughly $50 billion in revenue, an 86% gross margin and approximately $31 in EPS ahead of its September 30 report. Sandisk's fiscal fourth-quarter revenue reached $8.97 billion, up 51% sequentially, with adjusted EPS of $39.25, and it guided fiscal Q1 to $10.3 billion to $10.8 billion in revenue and adjusted EPS between $44 and $46, with management saying the total NAND market could exceed $300 billion in 2026.

Stellantis and Ford are preparing to launch extended-range electric vehicles in the US that run purely on battery power but carry a small gasoline engine used only as an onboard generator, the Wall Street Journal reported on September 7, 2026. Stellantis plans to introduce an extended-range Jeep Grand Wagoneer later this year or early next, followed by the Ram 1500 REV, which the Journal reports can travel roughly 690 miles on a full battery and tank of gas combined. Stellantis previously scrapped an all-electric version of the Ram 1500 in favor of this range-extended design, and plans to offer more than 100 miles of electric range in its new EREVs. Ford plans to bring back the F-150 Lightning as an EREV, while Hyundai is also preparing extended-range models for the US market. Hedge fund holders of Stellantis fell to 26 in the second quarter from 32 in the first, with the combined position value nearly halving to $195 million from $424 million, while Ford's holder count held steady at 50 funds and its position value dipped slightly to $1.02 billion from $1.12 billion.

The State Electricity Commission of Victoria has partnered with Aware Super and Birdwood to deliver a 1.86GWh battery energy storage system in Wodonga, Victoria. The Baranduda Electrical Energy Reserve will have 400MW of capacity and provide electricity for up to 4.65 hours, with four independent units each rated at 100MW/465MWh and separate grid connections, located next to the Wodonga Terminal Station on the Victoria–New South Wales 300kV high-voltage interconnector. The state-owned SEC will invest up to $30.6m, or A$43m, for a minority stake in the development and has agreed to a 15-year offtake arrangement to purchase 50% of the battery's output, with the remaining 50% sold on the merchant market. Construction is expected to begin in November 2026 and create approximately 150 jobs, with the battery scheduled to become operational in late 2028 and the potential to supply more than 200,000 Victorian homes during peak evening hours. Baranduda forms part of the Birdwood Energy Storage and Transition platform, a joint initiative between Aware Super and Birdwood.

Barclays strategist Venu Krishna warned Thursday that the Federal Reserve's first rate hike since 2023 will not tame the explosive memory chip price inflation driven by the AI boom, calling it a key earnings risk to watch in 2027. Krishna said rapidly expanding compute requirements for training and inference are straining an already limited supply of memory chips. He pointed to recent commentary from major memory buyers, noting that Apple attributed all of its recent gross margin compression to higher memory costs expected to persist near term, while HP Inc. expects memory and storage costs to rise further as a percentage of bill of materials. Samsung, both a memory manufacturer and customer, said pre-booked demand implies a wider memory supply-demand gap in 2027 than in 2026, reinforcing expectations for sustained pricing strength. The market has tightened as demand for high-bandwidth memory and advanced dynamic random-access memory used in AI servers outpaces supply, with SK Hynix, Samsung Electronics, and Micron largely sold out of premium AI memory capacity through much of 2026 as customers including Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta race to build AI infrastructure. Experts expect supply to remain constrained into 2027, a favorable backdrop for producers such as Micron and Sandisk but likely higher-than-expected costs for companies that run their businesses on these chips.

Samsung Electronics agreed a new collaboration with Mistral AI to deploy advanced on-premises AI models in chip manufacturing, and expanded its partnership with ASML to include High NA EUV lithography for future memory and logic production lines. The company plans to use these AI and High NA EUV tools to support precision, security and efficiency in its semiconductor operations. Samsung runs a broad hardware and components portfolio across consumer devices, IT and mobile, and chipmaking, so tighter links with specialist AI model developers and lithography equipment suppliers speak directly to how its device solutions arm positions itself within global semiconductor supply chains. The move strengthens the Samsung Electronics Narrative catalyst around tight memory supply and HBM4E demand, while closer cooperation with ASML on High NA EUV and 12 inch photomasks leans into the heavy R&D and capex risk already flagged, since each new generation of tools can lift capital intensity and execution pressure in fabs. Investors should watch how Samsung describes AI enabled yield, defect detection and High NA EUV deployment progress in its next few quarterly disclosures, especially any 2027 to 2028 updates tied to planned High NA introduction in DRAM high volume manufacturing.

Gastech 2026 announced partnerships and investment plans during its first three days worth a combined $40 billion, covering agreements ranging from memoranda of understanding to purchase contracts and investment plans across the energy value chain. China Gas Holdings and Venture Global LNG agreed to buy 0.5 million tonnes per year of LNG from the United States over 20 years, starting in 2030. Samsung Heavy Industries closed a deal to build LNG carriers and crude oil tankers worth $1.2 billion, while the state of Sarawak concluded talks with Indorama Ventures and partners from Japan on downstream natural gas and petrochemical investment worth about $1 billion in Bintulu. In addition, PETRONAS, PTTEP JDA and the Thailand-Malaysia Joint Authority signed a 35-year production sharing contract and a natural gas sales agreement in the Thailand-Malaysia Joint Development Area. GE Vernova and B.Grimm Power signed an agreement to supply gas turbine technology and long-term services in Thailand and Malaysia. Eni signed a memorandum of understanding with the government of Senegal to assess the oil potential of five offshore exploration blocks, and Horacio Marín, chairman and chief executive of YPF, announced plans to sign two to three LNG sales contracts for the Argentina LNG export project. Supawan Teerarat, director of the Thailand Convention and Exhibition Bureau, or TCEB, said the event drew more than 50,000 participants from over 150 countries and is expected to generate about 14.62 billion baht in economic value.

SK Hynix presented a structural shift in its business strategy at the 2026 Future Forum, saying it will move beyond selling faster chips to become a full-stack AI memory creator that jointly designs complete, workload-optimized memory architectures with customers. The South Korean company said it aims to collaborate across AI services, software, accelerators and memory rather than optimize memory devices in isolation, using 3D integration and advanced packaging as foundational technologies. SK Hynix recently began mass shipments of HBM4 and, in early August 2026, announced it will invest roughly 54 trillion KRW, or $38 billion, to expand domestic memory chip manufacturing in South Korea alongside a new $4 billion packaging plant in the United States. Last month the company announced an accelerated 40 trillion won, or $28.7 billion, share-repurchase and cancellation program, its largest treasury share cancellation in the history of South Korean listed companies, covering up to 24.07 million common shares, about 3.3% of its outstanding stock, over roughly three months from Aug. 20. SK Hynix also intends to return more than 50% of the cumulative free cash flow generated between 2025 and 2027 to shareholders, and its earnings per share estimates have risen over the past 60 days for the third quarter, the fourth quarter, full-year 2026 and 2027. The company carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), and Wall Street's consensus price target points to approximately 42% upside from the current share price.

Automotive analyst John Murphy has predicted hybrids will account for 34% of the U.S. market by 2030, up from just over 18% in 2026, a shift that could redirect investor attention from speculative EV startups to established automakers and the automotive ETFs holding them. Hybrid electric vehicles reached a record 16% of light-duty vehicle sales in the second quarter of 2026, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, while battery electric vehicles saw their market share decline to 6% from 7% the previous year. Toyota, Honda and Hyundai Motor Group currently control 86% of the surging U.S. hybrid market, according to Baum & Associates data cited by CNBC, with Toyota selling over 600,000 hybrids in the United States in the first half of 2026 for a 50% market share and Honda's hybrids now accounting for 31% of American Honda's total sales. The shift has been driven by the expiration of the federal $7,500 EV tax credit in September 2025, which raised the cost of pure EVs by thousands of dollars overnight, and by hybrid pricing that has dropped considerably, with Toyota, Honda, Ford, Hyundai and Kia pushing hybrid variants into their most popular mainstream models at a modest upcharge of $1,500-$2,000. Among the funds positioned for the trend, the Global X Autonomous & Electric Vehicles ETF DRIV, with net assets of $359.2 million, has gained 12.3% year to date and charges 68 basis points, while the First Trust S-Network Future Vehicles & Technology ETF CARZ, with net assets of $46.7 million, has rallied 33% year to date and charges 70 basis points, and the State Street SPDR S&P Kensho Smart Mobility ETF HAIL, with assets under management of $18 million, has risen 3.7% year to date and charges 45 basis points.

SK hynix is reportedly in talks with Intel to use the latter's facilities to manufacture memory chips in the US for the first time, according to Reuters. The report, discussed on Yahoo Finance with RBC Capital Markets head of derivatives strategy Amy Wu Silverman, comes as the software and semiconductor industries diverge sharply over AI risks. Silverman compared the current moment for software to the "SASpocalypse" of February, when investors feared Salesforce and other software names would be disrupted by AI, and likened it to newspaper companies in 1998 facing the internet boom. In a study of about 35 newspaper, CD, record and phone-book companies as the internet boom began, she found that on average investors still made money because many were taken private or merged, that some adapted like the New York Times, and that even those that ultimately collapsed, such as Barnes and Noble, offered local highs and time to react. She said the divergence between software, tracked by IGV, and semiconductors, tracked by SMH, is likely to continue along a similar path.

SK Hynix is in talks with Intel about a deal that would see the South Korean memory chip maker manufacture memory chips in the US for the first time, according to a Reuters report. SK Hynix responded that it is exploring options to boost its global competitiveness but said no deal has been made with Intel. Intel shares rose about 4% in premarket trading, making it the most actively traded stock, as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has urged SK Hynix and other Asian chipmakers to start making chips in the US to help address the global shortage. Separately, JB Hunt shares slid 11% after the trucking company flagged rising costs and issued a rare earnings warning at a Morgan Stanley conference, saying it expects second quarter to third quarter earnings to drop 5 to 10% and that higher costs from ramped-up hiring, bigger signing bonuses and raises will cost it $25 million more in the third quarter than in the second quarter. Brookfield Capital agreed to buy Australian plumbing products company Reliance Worldwide in a deal valuing the company at $2.8 billion, or $3.38 a share.

Micron Technology is set to report its fiscal 2026 fourth-quarter results on Sept. 30, with Nvidia and SK Hynix signaling that the memory price surge driving Micron's growth will continue. Nvidia, reporting its fiscal 2027 second-quarter results last month, said it faces extreme pricing conditions in memory that exceeded prior expectations and are headed even higher into next year, with CFO Colette Kress warning of gross margin pressure from higher component costs. SK Hynix expects the memory shortage to worsen next year and estimates demand could outstrip supply beyond 2030, while KB Securities estimates SK Hynix holds just 10 days of memory inventory. Nvidia estimates capital spending by the top five hyperscalers could rise to $1.3 trillion in 2027 from $800 billion this year. Consensus estimates project Micron's fiscal 2027 revenue rising 88% to $244.5 billion and earnings per share jumping 112% to $156.07, with the stock trading at 6.6 times forward earnings versus 21 for the S&P 500.

Chord Energy said Wednesday it agreed to sell its entire non-operated Marcellus natural gas position to POSCO International for $550M, saying the assets became non-core following the Enerplus transaction. The Marcellus assets include 32K net acres and trailing 12-month production of 121M cf/day of 100% residue gas, and the sale price represents roughly 6x adjusted EBITDA based on gross proceeds of $550M and $3.50/MMBtu Henry Hub pricing. Chord said its portfolio will be concentrated exclusively in the Williston Basin following the sale's completion. The company expects the divestiture to reduce annual capital expenditures by $25M, increase oil weighting by 4-5 percentage points, and result in a further decline in net leverage to remain well below peer levels.

Intel shares rose 5% and SK Hynix gained 3% following a report that South Korea's SK Hynix is in talks with Intel about potentially manufacturing memory chips in the U.S. for the first time. One scenario would involve SK Hynix leasing part of Intel's planned Ohio chipmaking facility, while another could involve a joint venture with Intel and major cloud companies seeking to secure memory supplies. The discussions remain exploratory, with no decisions made, and potential opposition from Seoul could pose a hurdle, particularly if advanced memory technologies such as HBM or DRAM are involved; SK Hynix said it is reviewing measures, including additional production bases, but that no matters have been determined at this stage. FTAI Aviation gained 2% after authorizing a new $500M share repurchase program, funded with cash on its balance sheet and running through September 30, 2029 unless completed earlier. Vodafone fell 2% after reports indicated the British telecom giant could face up to €1.1B ($1.27B) in potential earnings losses from the sale of Patrick Drahi's 50% stake in the German broadband joint venture OXG Glasfaser, with Société Générale agreeing earlier this month to acquire Drahi's stake but not assume his deferred payment commitments.

SK Hynix reached a revised bonus and wage agreement with its labor union, resolving a dispute that would have disrupted production. The world's second-largest memory chipmaker agreed to pay 50% of profit-sharing bonuses in cash and the other 50% in company shares, updating a previous proposal of a 40-60 split. The new wage and collective bargaining agreement was approved by 57% of the labor group, SK Hynix said. The chipmaker is a key supplier to Nvidia, and the resolution follows two weeks of renegotiations after union members rejected the initial proposed deal in August. Separately, Micron Technology's Taiwan operations are facing a potential strike, with a local union threatening industrial action over demands for a permanent profit-sharing plan; Jerry Lin, chairman of the Taoyuan union, said that if there is no concrete proposal on September 18 and 21 and employees feel the company is simply dragging out the process, the union will declare negotiations have broken down and move towards a strike vote. The union said it was seeking a permanent mechanism that would distribute 15% of Micron's operating profit to employees worldwide.

On September 16, A-shares rebounded from their lows, with the STAR Composite Index surging 3.6% on heavy volume, the ChiNext Index reclaiming 3,300 points, more than 4,200 stocks rising, and turnover expanding to 1.85 trillion yuan. Consumer electronics stocks remained strong throughout the day. Jinghua Laser hit limit-up within seconds after the midday session opened, while Hoshine shares also sealed a vertical limit-up in only about one minute. MYS Group and Rapoo Technologies also hit strong limit-ups in the afternoon. Chip-related stocks rebounded sharply across the board, with Minde Electronics, GRINM Semiconductor, Zhishang Technology, and Jingsheng shares among multiple names surging by the 20% daily limit. Gettop Acoustics hit a straight-line limit-up only about seven minutes after the afternoon session opened. On the news front, market rumors suggest Apple has accepted Samsung Electronics' memory chip quotes for the first quarter of 2027, with DRAM approaching 2.0 US dollars per gigabit and NAND flash approaching 0.33 US dollars per gigabit, up 30% to 40% from quotes in the third quarter of this year. According to TrendForce, the three major original manufacturers Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron have essentially allocated all of their 2027 DRAM and HBM capacity, with customers' actual obtainable quotas at roughly 60% to 70% of requested volumes. On the capital flow front, electronics received net main capital inflows of more than 40 billion yuan, communications received net inflows of more than 23.2 billion yuan, and Accelink Technologies received net main capital inflows of more than 3.1 billion yuan.

Situational Awareness, the hedge fund formed by ex-OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, is buying call options on Advanced Micro Devices, Bloom Energy, CoreWeave, SK Hynix and SanDisk, returning to the strategy that nearly sank it earlier this year. The fund has bought hundreds of millions of dollars in option premiums, according to GuruFocus. Situational Awareness generated a 439% net return from the beginning of the year through June 30, briefly making it one of the best-performing large funds of 2026, but it was operating at around four times leverage when AI stocks turned in July, and its portfolio declined by about 67 percent, forcing it to sell off its AI assets. Citadel swooped in a day later to buy much of the public-equity holdings. The new stock picks span processors, cloud computing, memory and electricity, some of the main bottlenecks in the AI buildout.

Dutch semiconductor startup Euclyd has raised $231 million in a Series A round backed by Samsung. The 200-million-euro round was co-led by Samsung alongside Somerset Capital Partners, the Scaleup Europe Fund managed by EQT, and Innovation Industries, according to CNBC. Founded in 2024 by Bernardo Kastrup and Atul Sinha at High Tech Campus Eindhoven in the Netherlands, Euclyd is building chip systems designed to reduce the energy consumption and cost of running AI models, targeting AI inference rather than model training. Chief executive officer Bernardo Kastrup told CNBC that Samsung brings more than capital, citing its memory manufacturing, engineering depth, systems knowledge, supply chain and network. Dede Goldschmidt, senior vice president of Samsung Electronics and head of the Samsung Semiconductor Innovation Center, said Euclyd's approach addresses real constraints in AI data centers. The company plans to use the proceeds to expand its engineering team, advance its silicon and systems development, and build out ecosystem partnerships, and Kastrup said it expects to launch its physical chip systems in 2028 and serve thousands of enterprise customers by 2030, though Euclyd has not yet demonstrated its chip systems in large-scale commercial environments. The funding arrives as investment in AI chip alternatives to Nvidia has grown, with Nvidia's share of the inference chip segment estimated between 60% and 75% in 2025 facing growing pressure from custom silicon developed by hyperscalers and startups alike.

Broadcom CEO Hock Tan on Monday reaffirmed the chipmaker's fiscal 2027 and 2028 AI semiconductor revenue projections, pushing back against investor anxiety that a slowdown in frontier AI model building could threaten its outlook. Speaking to CNBC's "Mad Money," Tan said demand for compute infrastructure, AI development and inference remains very strong and durable. His remarks followed an essay over the weekend by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei urging AI companies to moderate the pace of capabilities development, which drew public support from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk and rattled AI infrastructure investors on Monday, sending Broadcom stock down 4.8% and the iShares Semiconductor ETF down 5.6%. At Broadcom's fiscal third-quarter earnings call on Sept. 2, Tan projected AI semiconductor revenue would reach $115 billion in fiscal 2027 and double to $230 billion in fiscal 2028, covering both custom AI accelerators and networking chips used in AI systems. Tan also said Anthropic is positioned to surpass all other custom chip buyers at Broadcom by 2027 and remain at the top through 2028, a shift from Google, long considered Broadcom's biggest custom chip customer through its co-designed tensor processing units. Broadcom posted record third-quarter revenue of $29.6 billion, up 86% from a year earlier, and forecast fourth-quarter revenue of approximately $34.8 billion, modestly below analyst expectations, while disclosing a multi-year manufacturing agreement with Samsung Electronics valued at more than $200 billion.

EUCLYD has signed a Series A financing round of more than €200 million, the Eindhoven-based semiconductor systems company announced. The round is co-led by Samsung, Somerset Capital Partners, Scaleup Europe Fund, which is managed by EQT, and Innovation Industries, with participation from EIFO, the Export and Investment Fund of Denmark, imec.xpand, Brabant Development Agency (BOM), and Quadri. Peter Wennink, former President and CEO of ASML, joins EUCLYD as Chairman of the Board. The financing will expand EUCLYD's engineering organization, accelerate its silicon and systems roadmap, strengthen ecosystem partnerships, and prepare the company for commercial deployment across enterprise, sovereign, and hyperscale AI markets. At the center of EUCLYD's roadmap are craftwerk, which it describes as the world's first agentic AI silicon, and craftwerk station CWS, which it calls the world's lowest-power exascale AI factory.

Verizon announced the expansion of its 6G Innovation Forum with nine new members and reported successful pre-standard field trials of Integrated Sensing and Communication and an AI Sports Companion prototype. Amazon Web Services, Cisco, Intel, Keysight Technologies, MediaTek, NVIDIA, Palo Alto Networks, Rohde & Schwarz and VIAVI Solutions have officially joined the forum, which was launched last year and already includes founding members Ericsson, Samsung, Nokia, Meta and Qualcomm Technologies. In one trial staged at a major international soccer celebration in Dallas, Texas, Verizon and Samsung used a single 5G base station and 40MHz of CBRS spectrum to track radio variations from six Samsung Galaxy smartphones, with Samsung's AI RAN and edge AI platform Network in a Server generating real-time crowd-density heatmaps on commercial phones and a tablet. In a second trial at Qualcomm's San Diego campus, the companies used 100 to 400MHz of millimeter-wave spectrum and four synchronized Transmission and Reception Points to track an airborne drone and moving ground vehicles while maintaining uninterrupted 5G Standalone communications to a phone user on the ground. Verizon also showcased a prototype AI Sports Companion application running on the Verizon Edge Network with Meta AI glasses, a locally optimized Small Language Model, an NVIDIA DGX Spark and statistics from SportsDataIO, letting users ask verbally for real-time player statistics, live score interpretations and game-winning probabilities. Verizon said forum members will continue sharing learnings from future demonstrations involving ISAC, digital twins, robotics, AI and advanced wearables, and it views the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles as the ultimate interim proving ground on the road to commercial 6G deployment, supported by its dedicated 6G Lab already established in the host city.