Taiwan's chip sector gets a major vote of confidence from Nvidia, while the island also pours money into missile defense — good for tech investors, and a sign of rising military tension.

• Nvidia is putting more than NT$100 billion into MediaTek, tying the world's biggest AI chip designer to Taiwan's top mobile chipmaker.
• Taiwan plans to spend NT$36 billion on a new missile system called Strong Bow, with the first deliveries due in 2028.
• The defense ministry is pushing its budget as high as it can go, a response to pressure from China.
• Taiwan's own AI ambitions are running into limits: not enough computing power and not enough electricity to feed it.
• Local stocks opened higher and the US dollar slipped against the Taiwan dollar.

Outlook: Expect more chip-sector tie-ups and bigger defense budgets, with power supply the main bottleneck on Taiwan's AI plans.