Taiwan Tech Giant Foxconn’s 2024 Profit Misses Forecasts 

The logo of Foxconn is on display during the Smart City Summit & Expo pre-event press conference in Taipei, Taiwan, 11 March 2025. (EPA)
The logo of Foxconn is on display during the Smart City Summit & Expo pre-event press conference in Taipei, Taiwan, 11 March 2025. (EPA)
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Taiwan Tech Giant Foxconn’s 2024 Profit Misses Forecasts 

The logo of Foxconn is on display during the Smart City Summit & Expo pre-event press conference in Taipei, Taiwan, 11 March 2025. (EPA)
The logo of Foxconn is on display during the Smart City Summit & Expo pre-event press conference in Taipei, Taiwan, 11 March 2025. (EPA)

Taiwanese tech giant Foxconn reported on Friday a lower-than-expected net profit for 2024 as consumer electronic gadgets underperformed, although demand for its artificial intelligence servers remained robust.

The world's largest contract electronics manufacturer has been moving beyond assembling devices such as Apple's iPhones into areas ranging from electric vehicles to AI servers.

The company said full-year net profit rose seven percent to NT$152.7 billion (US$4.6 billion).

That compares with an average forecast of NT$159.4 billion, according to a Bloomberg News survey of analysts.

Full-year revenue rose 11 percent to NT$6.9 trillion, beating the market forecast of NT$6.8 trillion.

Foxconn, also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry, has been riding a wave of global demand for generative AI in recent years.

The company reported a "strong performance" in its AI server business, with revenue up 150 percent, according to documents released ahead of an earnings call with analysts.

This year would be the "Year of AI", the company said, with shipments increasing in every quarter.

The earnings announcement comes as US President Donald Trump imposed tariffs against major trading partners including China, Canada and Mexico, igniting trade wars and causing markets to fall.

While Foxconn has plants around the world, the bulk of its operations is based in China, which has been hit by 20 percent levies on products shipped to the United States.

Foxconn is building a mega-AI server plant in Mexico, which a local official told Bloomberg recently would be completed in a year despite Trump's tariff threats.

The $900 million assembly plant near Guadalajara will become the world's largest to be powered by Nvidia's GB200 AI chips, Jalisco Governor Pablo Lemus Navarro said.

Foxconn has also been in the spotlight over potential cooperation with Japanese automaker Nissan after its merger talks with rival Honda fell through in February.

Chairman Young Liu said previously that Foxconn was open to buying French auto giant Renault's stake in Nissan and was looking into a cooperation with Nissan, not a merger.

Foxconn has been looking to expand into the Japanese EV market and Liu said last month the company would announce "good news" in EVs within one or two months.



Google Says to Build New Subsea Cables from India in AI Push

A logo of Google is on display at Bharat Mandapam, one of the venues for AI Impact Summit, in New Delhi, India, February 17, 2026. REUTERS/Bhawika Chhabra
A logo of Google is on display at Bharat Mandapam, one of the venues for AI Impact Summit, in New Delhi, India, February 17, 2026. REUTERS/Bhawika Chhabra
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Google Says to Build New Subsea Cables from India in AI Push

A logo of Google is on display at Bharat Mandapam, one of the venues for AI Impact Summit, in New Delhi, India, February 17, 2026. REUTERS/Bhawika Chhabra
A logo of Google is on display at Bharat Mandapam, one of the venues for AI Impact Summit, in New Delhi, India, February 17, 2026. REUTERS/Bhawika Chhabra

Google announced Wednesday it would build new subsea cables from India and other locations as part of its existing $15 billion investment in the South Asian nation, which is hosting a major artificial intelligence summit this week.

The US tech giant said it would build "three subsea paths connecting India to Singapore, South Africa, and Australia; and four strategic fiber-optic routes that bolster network resilience and capacity between the United States, India, and multiple locations across the Southern Hemisphere".


Mark Zuckerberg Set to Testify in Watershed Social Media Trial 

Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on online child sexual exploitation at the US Capitol in Washington, US, January 31, 2024. (Reuters)
Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on online child sexual exploitation at the US Capitol in Washington, US, January 31, 2024. (Reuters)
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Mark Zuckerberg Set to Testify in Watershed Social Media Trial 

Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on online child sexual exploitation at the US Capitol in Washington, US, January 31, 2024. (Reuters)
Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on online child sexual exploitation at the US Capitol in Washington, US, January 31, 2024. (Reuters)

Mark Zuckerberg will testify in an unprecedented social media trial that questions whether Meta's platforms deliberately addict and harm children.

Meta's CEO is expected to answer tough questions on Wednesday from attorneys representing a now 20-year-old woman identified by the initials KGM, who claims her early use of social media addicted her to the technology and exacerbated depression and suicidal thoughts. Meta Platforms and Google’s YouTube are the two remaining defendants in the case, which TikTok and Snap have settled.

Zuckerberg has testified in other trials and answered questions from Congress about youth safety on Meta's platforms, and he apologized to families at that hearing whose lives had been upended by tragedies they believed were because of social media.

This trial, though, marks the first time Zuckerberg will answer similar questions in front of a jury. and, again, bereaved parents are expected to be in the limited courtroom seats available to the public.

The case, along with two others, has been selected as a bellwether trial, meaning its outcome could impact how thousands of similar lawsuits against social media companies would play out.

A Meta spokesperson said the company strongly disagrees with the allegations in the lawsuit and said they are “confident the evidence will show our longstanding commitment to supporting young people.”

One of Meta's attorneys, Paul Schmidt, said in his opening statement that the company is not disputing that KGM experienced mental health struggles, but rather that Instagram played a substantial factor in those struggles.

He pointed to medical records that showed a turbulent home life, and both he and an attorney representing YouTube argue she turned to their platforms as a coping mechanism or a means of escaping her mental health struggles.

Zuckerberg's testimony comes a week after that of Adam Mosseri, the head of Meta's Instagram, who said in the courtroom that he disagrees with the idea that people can be clinically addicted to social media platforms.

Mosseri maintained that Instagram works hard to protect young people using the service, and said it's “not good for the company, over the long run, to make decisions that profit for us but are poor for people’s well-being."

Much of Mosseri's questioning from the plaintiff's lawyer, Mark Lanier, centered on cosmetic filters on Instagram that changed people’s appearance — a topic that Lanier is sure to revisit with Zuckerberg.

He is also expected to face questions about Instagram’s algorithm, the infinite nature of Meta’ feeds and other features the plaintiffs argue are designed to get users hooked.


US Tech Giant Nvidia Announces India Deals at AI Summit

FILED - 04 February 2026, Bavaria, Munich: The NVIDIA logo is seen during a press conference at the opening of Telekom and NVIDIA's AI factory "Industrial AI Cloud". Photo: Sven Hoppe/dpa
FILED - 04 February 2026, Bavaria, Munich: The NVIDIA logo is seen during a press conference at the opening of Telekom and NVIDIA's AI factory "Industrial AI Cloud". Photo: Sven Hoppe/dpa
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US Tech Giant Nvidia Announces India Deals at AI Summit

FILED - 04 February 2026, Bavaria, Munich: The NVIDIA logo is seen during a press conference at the opening of Telekom and NVIDIA's AI factory "Industrial AI Cloud". Photo: Sven Hoppe/dpa
FILED - 04 February 2026, Bavaria, Munich: The NVIDIA logo is seen during a press conference at the opening of Telekom and NVIDIA's AI factory "Industrial AI Cloud". Photo: Sven Hoppe/dpa

US artificial intelligence chip titan Nvidia unveiled tie-ups with Indian computing firms on Wednesday as tech companies rushed to announce deals and investments at a global AI conference in New Delhi.

This week's AI Impact Summit is the fourth annual gathering to discuss how to govern the fast-evolving technology -- and also an opportunity to "define India's leadership in the AI decade ahead", organizers say.

Mumbai cloud and data center provider L&T said it was teaming up with Nvidia, the world's most valuable company, to build what it touted as "India's largest gigawatt-scale AI factory".

"We are laying the foundation for world-class AI infrastructure that will power India's growth," said Nvidia boss Jensen Huang in a statement that did not put a figure on the investment.

L&T said it would use Nvidia's powerful processors, which can train and run generative AI tech, to provide data center capacity of up to 30 megawatts in Chennai and 40 megawatts in Mumbai.

Nvidia said it was also working with other Indian AI infrastructure players such as Yotta, which will deploy more than 20,000 top-end Nvidia Blackwell processors as part of a $2 billion investment.

Dozens of world leaders and ministerial delegations have come to India for the summit to discuss the opportunities and threats, from job losses to misinformation, that AI poses.

Last year India leapt to third place -- overtaking South Korea and Japan -- in an annual global ranking of AI competitiveness calculated by Stanford University researchers.

But despite plans for large-scale infrastructure and grand ambitions for innovation, experts say the country has a long way to go before it can rival the United States and China.

The conference has also brought a flurry of deals, with IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw saying Tuesday that India expects more than $200 billion in investments over the next two years, including roughly $90 billion already committed.

Separately, India's Adani Group said Tuesday it plans to invest $100 billion by 2035 to develop "hyperscale AI-ready data centers", a boost to New Delhi's push to become a global AI hub.

Microsoft said it was investing $50 billion this decade to boost AI adoption in developing countries, while US artificial intelligence startup Anthropic and Indian IT giant Infosys said they would work together to build AI agents for the telecoms industry.

Nvidia's Huang is not attending the AI summit but other top US tech figures joining include OpenAI's Sam Altman, Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis and Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other world leaders including French President Emmanuel Macron and Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva are expected to deliver a statement at the end of the week about how they plan to address concerns raised by AI technology.

But experts say that the broad focus of the event and vague promises made at previous global AI summits in France, South Korea and Britain mean that concrete commitments are unlikely.

Nick Patience, practice lead for AI at tech research group Futurum, told AFP that nonbinding declarations could still "set the tone for what acceptable AI governance looks like".

But "the largest AI companies deploy capabilities at a pace that makes 18-month legislative cycles look glacial," Patience said.

"So it's a case of whether governments can converge fast enough to create meaningful guardrails before de facto standards are set by the companies themselves."