Jensen Huang: "Building a Large-Scale Chip Design Center in Taiwan Within 5 Years"

Employ at least 1,000 engineers and others
Factory site being scouted but location undecided
"AI's invisible value, cooperation with Taiwan"

Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, announced plans to establish a large-scale semiconductor chip design center in Taiwan within the next five years.

According to local media including Taiwan News on the 4th (local time), CEO Jensen Huang stated in an interview with Taiwanese media the previous evening, "We will build a factory that can employ at least 1,000 engineers, including chip designers, system designers, and software engineers, within the next five years." He added, "We are currently looking for a large site to build the center, but the location has not yet been decided," and said, "If there is a good location in Taiwan, please recommend it."

[Image source=Reuters Yonhap News]

When asked if he was concerned about Taiwan's geopolitical risks, CEO Huang replied, "NVIDIA has been doing business in Taiwan for nearly 30 years," and said, "Because Taiwan has excellent engineering, technology, and partners, we will continue to invest in Taiwan." He also explained that "Artificial Intelligence (AI) holds invisible value like electricity did 200 years ago," and that the purpose of this visit to Taiwan is "to unite and cooperate with Taiwan's technology ecosystem to build a world-class next-generation accelerated computing infrastructure." When asked if he had a scheduled meeting with Taiwan President Lai Ching-te, he said, "I don't know," avoiding specific comments.

On the same day, CEO Huang attended the ICT exhibition 'Computex 2024' held in Taipei, Taiwan, where he met with local suppliers such as GIGABYTE, Quanta, and Wistron. He told reporters, "This year is a very special year marking the beginning of a new era of computing," and evaluated, "Taiwan is home to the world's best computer technology companies, including semiconductors. The new beginning of AI will create tremendous opportunities for companies throughout Taiwan."

Previously, NVIDIA participated in the 'A+ Industrial Innovation R&D Program' led by Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs in 2021 and received approval for its investment plan in Taiwan. Accordingly, NVIDIA is investing 24.3 billion New Taiwan dollars (approximately 1 trillion KRW) to build an 'AI Innovation R&D Center.' It is also known that the Taiwanese authorities are subsidizing 6.7 billion New Taiwan dollars (approximately 290 billion KRW). Some local media reported that NVIDIA's second AI R&D center might be located in the Kaohsiung Software Technology Park in southern Taiwan, but this has not been officially confirmed.

Meanwhile, CEO Huang unveiled the next-generation AI graphics processing unit (GPU) called 'Rubin' for the first time at the National Taiwan University gymnasium the day before. He announced that Rubin GPU will adopt the 6th generation High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), 'HBM4,' but refrained from providing additional details about Rubin's specific specifications. Rubin is scheduled for mass production starting in 2026. On the same day, NVIDIA's stock price on the New York Stock Exchange closed at $1,150, up 4.9% from the previous session.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.