On June 18 local time, Slovakia's National Council voted confidence in the Fico government. Following a Constitutional Court order requiring the government to promptly fulfil related statutory obligations, the ruling coalition secured parliamentary confidence with 78 votes.

China's National Energy Administration: total electricity consumption rose 6.9% YoY in May 2026.

Cambricon shares rose more than 16% intraday to a record high, lifting market value to 965.6 billion yuan, approaching 1 trillion. The move followed reports of Chinese internet firms buying domestic AI compute: industry sources say ByteDance is in talks with Tianshu Zhixin (09903.HK) to buy at least 50,000 AI chips for inference, and that Huawei and Cambricon are also ByteDance suppliers. An online-circulated internal memo claimed Cambricon supplies models 580 and 690 to ByteDance, would complete 120,000–160,000 deliveries of the 580 model in Q2, with 690 deliveries expected in H2. Cambricon's securities affairs representative said the memo is unverified, urged investors to rely on official disclosures, and said the company has not held recent internal exchange events.