The recent cyber breach at Indian Apple supplier Tata Electronics has become propaganda gold for Beijing, as leaders vie to keep international companies locked into China‘s supply chains.

“Something like this would never happen in China,” said Ma Shouhua, an iPhone repair specialist in China’s biggest electronics marketplace, Huaqiangbei.

Ma recently posted a viral video outlining the purported specifications of Apple’s soon-to-be-released iPhone 18 Pro models that were part of the materials leaked after the breach.

Tata Electronics confirmed a “cybersecurity incident” to CNBC but said it “had no impact on our operations across businesses.” The company did not say if any materials or data were stolen.

Reuters reported in June that hacking group World Leaks claimed responsibility for the attack and that stolen data included parts lists, suppliers and photos of Apple’s unreleased iPhone 18 Pro.

Apple declined to comment on the leak or its supply chain plans.

With geopolitical tensions rising, dependence on China has become riskier for U.S. companies, leading Apple and other companies to make greater efforts to diversify. Last year, Apple produced its top devices — the iPhone 17 series — in India for the first time.

The competition with India for iPhone production and other manufacturing has alarmed Chinese authorities.

The Communist Party’s Global Times newspaper warned in July of “systemic weaknesses in ‘Made in India'” and argued that replicating supply chains in other countries is “no easy task.”

China is competing with lower-cost countries to retain all supply chains for jobs and leverage over its trading partners.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce wrote in a May report with Rhodium Group that China is “using regulations and economic coercion” to reinforce its control over critical supply chains.

“It has tightened controls on critical minerals and processing technologies, extended restrictions to downstream products through extraterritorial rules, and introduced new legal instruments that raise the cost for firms and governments seeking to diversify away from China,” the report stated.

Shares of Zhongji Innolight fell 5% on Thursday after the Chinese optical transceiver maker made its trading debut on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

The company raised HK$53.4 billion ($6.8 billion) after pricing its initial public offering at HK$980 per share, below the maximum indicated price of HK$1,010.

The deal was Asia’s second-largest listing this year, behind Chinese memory-chip maker CXMT $8.6 billion Shanghai listing.

Zhongji, which is also listed in Shenzhen, supplies components used in artificial intelligence data centers, cloud computing and high-speed networking.

The company is also the world’s largest provider of optical interconnect solutions by revenue, accounting for 21.2% of the global market in 2025, according to consultancy CIC as cited in its prospectus. 

The Hong Kong tranche drew orders for roughly 16.8 times the shares available to retail investors, while for international it was 9.7 times.

Zhongji plans to use the proceeds to fund research and development, expand overseas production capacity, strengthen its supply chain and pursue potential acquisitions. 

Apple supplier Luxshare Precision Industry plans to raise as much as $24.27 billion Hong Kong dollars ($3.1 billion) through a Hong Kong share sale, according to a stock exchange filing Tuesday. 

The Shenzhen-listed electronics manufacturer intends to offer 383.5 million H shares at a maximum price of HK$63.28 each, its prospectus showed.

About 90% of the shares will be allocated to international investors, with the remainder offered to Hong Kong retail buyers. Trading is expected to begin on July 9.

The company is expected to determine the final offer price by July 7, with pricing and allocation results due the following day. 

Luxshare, one of Apple’s key manufacturing partners, is the largest provider of precision intelligent manufacturing solutions in mainland China and the world’s fifth largest by 2025 revenue, according to Frost & Sullivan. 

The company manufactures components and systems spanning consumer electronics, automotive electronics, communications and data centers.

The listing comes as Luxshare seeks to diversify beyond consumer electronics, which accounted for nearly 80% of revenue last year. Automotive electronics has emerged as a fast-growing business, contributing 11.8% of sales in 2025, up from 3.9% two years earlier.

Shares in Victory Giant Technology surged as much as 60% on Tuesday, after the Chinese company’s blockbuster initial public offering — the biggest in Hong Kong this year.

The Chinese company, which supplies printed circuit boards to Nvidia, priced its shares at 209.88 Hong Kong dollars in the IPO. Shares were last trading 46% higher at HK$306.8.

Victory Giant had raised about HK$20.1 billion ($2.57 billion) in the city’s biggest listing in about seven months. This makes Victory Giant Hong Kong’s biggest IPO since Zijin Gold International‘s $3.2 billion IPO in September.

Investor interest in large listings in Hong Kong has been growing, especially in tech-related sectors, which have remained resilient despite market volatility tied to the current Middle East conflict.

In the first quarter of 2026, Hong Kong’s IPO market raised HK$109.9 billion across 40 new listings, according to a KPMG report. That was nearly six times the amount raised and three times the number of new listings in the same period last year, KPMG said.

“Nearly 80% of funds raised came from A+H and specialist technology listings; both segments are expected to continue supporting strong IPO performance this year,” it added, referring to companies listed in both mainland China and Hong Kong.

Other major IPOs on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange so far this year include Chinese chip designer Montage Technology, whose shares surged more than 60% on its trading debut in February.

Shares of China-based AI startup MiniMax Group also doubled on its first day of trading in Hong Kong, becoming the second major Chinese developer of large language models to go public.

On Thursday, shares of Hangzhou-based developer Manycore Tech, the first of Hangzhou’s “six little dragons,” tripled in its Hong Kong debut.

As Meta tries to rapidly construct massive data centers to keep pace with the artificial intelligence craze, it’s turning to a 175-year-old glass manufacturer for help.

Meta has committed to paying Corning up to $6 billion through 2030 for fiber-optic cable in its AI data centers, Corning CEO Wendell Weeks told CNBC in an exclusive interview about the deal from a cable factory in Hickory, North Carolina.

Corning is expanding the facility to accommodate growing demand from Meta and other big spenders like Nvidia, OpenAI, Google, Amazon and Microsoft as part of an extended industry buildout that’s reaching into the trillions of dollars. When the project is complete, Corning says it will be the largest fiber-optic cable plant in the world.

“Almost every phone call I get from my customers is trying to see, how do we get them more?” Weeks said. “I think next year the hyperscalers will be our biggest customers.”

Shares of Corning, once a boom-and-bust dot-com era story, have risen more than 75% in the last year, with optical communications as the company’s largest and fastest-growing business segment. Corning is among a wider swath of providers to the data center boom seeing historic levels of demand as the stack gets refreshed for the AI age.

Meta’s AI strategy, on the other hand, has puzzled Wall Street. The stock, which underperformed the market in 2025, had its worst day in three years in October after the company announced ambitious AI spending but without a clear monetization plan. The next month, Meta committed to spending $600 billion in the U.S. by 2028, on data centers and the infrastructure they require. Corning is part of that.

Meta’s plan for 30 data centers includes 26 facilities in the U.S.

“We want to have a domestic supply chain that’s available to support that,” Joel Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, said in an interview.

In addressing concerns that China could win the AI race, Kaplan said, “If we as a country don’t make the right policy choices and the right investments, that’s a real risk.”

Two of Meta’s largest data centers currently under construction are its Prometheus one-gigawatt site in New Albany, Ohio, and five-gigawatt Hyperion site in Richland Parish, Louisiana. Both will include Corning fiber-optic cable as part of the new deal.

Having lived through a prior tech bubble, Corning is familiar with the narrative that’s emerging in parts of the market, with skeptics questioning whether all of this building turns into new, sustainable businesses. AI announced more than $1 trillion in compute deals in 2025, leading some industry experts to predict a new bubble is forming.

Fiber brought Corning huge success in the dot-com boom due to demand for communications equipment. The stock multiplied by about eightfold from the beginning of 1997 through its peak in September 2000, before losing over 90% of its value…

South Korea’s SK Hynix on Wednesday confirmed that it is weighing a U.S. listing as the memory chipmaker’s valuation soars on global demand for artificial intelligence hardware.

The company at the center of the AI infrastructure boom said in a regulatory filing that it was “reviewing various measures to enhance corporate value, including a U.S. stock market listing utilizing treasury shares,” while noting that no final decision has been made.

A U.S. listing would give American investors direct access to SK Hynix shares, which have surged nearly 230% so far this year in trading in Seoul on the back of strong AI demand. 

The Korea Exchange on Tuesday asked SK Hynix to address a Korea Economic Daily report that the company had received proposals to list about 2.4% of its shares as American depositary receipts (ADRs) backed by treasury stock.

ADRs are tradable certificates issued by U.S. banks that represent shares in a foreign company. While they tend to trade with lower liquidity than a full U.S. listing, which can deter some investors, ADRs use existing shares rather than new stock, preserving value for existing shareholders.

SK Hynix holds treasury shares equivalent to about 2.4% of its issued stock, according to the company’s investor relations website.

Shares of SK Hynix rose 4% on Wednesday following its statement, before paring gains on Thursday, trading over 2% lower.

The company has cemented its lead in high-bandwidth memory chips, which are used in Nvidia’s AI processors. 

A U.S. listing could help narrow valuation gaps between the company and U.S.-listed memory rival Micron Technology, as well as Samsung Electronics. 

SK Hynix has also been committing significant capital at home and abroad to expand its supply capacity, as it races to keep up with growing AI demand. 

The firm has committed nearly $4 billion to an advanced packaging fab in Indiana, aligning with Washington’s aim to expand domestic chip production. 

SK Hynix is also set to benefit from the government’s growing support of the local semiconductor industry. 

South Korea is considering building a 4.5 trillion won ($3.06 billion) foundry, funded by state and private capital to nurture local chipmakers amid growing demand for AI chips, according to a Reuters report on Wednesday. 

The report added that South Korean President Lee Jae Myung met with executives from chipmakers, including Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, on the same day to discuss plans to maintain the country’s lead in memory chips and support its local chip manufacturing.

Foxconn, the world’s largest contract electronics maker, said Wednesday that its third-quarter profit jumped 17% from a year earlier, driven by growth in its artificial intelligence server business.

Here’s how Foxconn did in the September quarter compared with LSEG SmartEstimates, which are weighted toward forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate:

• Revenue: $2.06 trillion New Taiwan dollars ($66.29 billion) vs. NT$2.06 trillion expected
• Net profit: NT$57.67 billion vs. NT$50.41 billion

Foxconn, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry, is best known as the world’s largest manufacturer of Apple‘s iPhones, but has been shifting into other business avenues, including AI. The firm manufactures server racks designed for AI workloads and has become a key partner to American AI chip darling Nvidia.

The company said it expects operations in the second half of the year — the traditional peak season — to maintain continuous quarterly growth, citing stronger AI server shipments and rising demand for information and communications technology products.

However, Foxconn cautioned that global political and economic uncertainty, along with exchange rate fluctuations, will require continued close monitoring.

Foxconn reported that its ‘Cloud and Networking’ segment saw strong year-on-year growth, supported by demand for AI server racks.

Foxconn’s server manufacturing business is currently in a strong growth phase, underpinned by robust demand, Ivan Lam, a senior analyst at Counterpoint Research, told CNBC.

The company is leveraging its dominance in contract manufacturing to secure both current and future orders, Lam said, describing it as a clear case of “follow the cash” strategy that involves sacrificing some consumer electronics orders.

He added that Foxconn’s pivot toward high-growth server manufacturing “is clearly paying off,” even as it trades parts of its consumer electronics footprint for longer-term momentum.

While component price volatility, currency swings, and logistics challenges can pressure margins, Lam said he expects Foxconn’s fourth-quarter results to “remain favorable.”

The electronics contract manufacturer also said it is partnering with Nvidia, Stellantis and Uber to build so-called “Level 4” autonomous vehicles, which doesn’t require a safety driver to be present.

Recently, Foxconn signed a memorandum of understanding with Mitsubishi Electric on Nov. 6 to jointly supply energy-efficient AI data center solutions globally. Besides AI data centers, Foxconn and Mitsubishi Electric plan to explore additional new business models and solutions using their combined technological and knowledge capabilities.