The Taiwan Memory Co (TMC, 台灣記憶體公司), which was launched by the Ministry of Economic Affairs last week to help reorganize the computer memory chip industry, will seek as much as NT$30 billion (US$867 million) from the government, company chief John Hsuan (宣明智) said yesterday.
TMC plans to ask the National Development Fund for about NT$30 billion in next two months, Hsuan told local cable channel USTV during a press conference in Hsinchu. The investment proposal will need approval from lawmakers, he said.
Hsuan, honorary vice chairman of United Microelectronics Corp (聯電), said the government hoped to spend as little as possible on restructuring the dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chip industry.
Some overseas private funds and a local memory module maker have already expressed interest in investing in TMC, Hsuan said, adding that the company would seek capital from local institutional investors, banks and component makers. He declined to name names, but said he would meet potential investors this week.
To defuse public concern over the creation of the company — and fears that it would be a waste of taxpayer’s money — Hsuan said he would limit the company’s cumulative losses to NT$15 billion.
He plans to visit Japan’s Elpida Memory Inc and Micron Technology Inc of the US in two weeks to discuss patents and intellectual property rights.
He said that TMC was not a short-term rescue program. Its goal was to help Taiwanese DRAM companies stay alive and turn a profit in three years by helping enhance their technological competitiveness, he said.
TMC was a revitalization plan for the DRAM industry, not a consolidation plan or a merger plan, which was what most investors and industry analysts had expected, Hsuan said.
Local DRAM companies had to solve their own financial problems, he said, not rely on TMC.
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) chairman Barry Lam (林百里) is expected to share his views about the artificial intelligence (AI) industry’s prospects during his speech at the company’s 37th anniversary ceremony, as AI servers have become a new growth engine for the equipment manufacturing service provider. Lam’s speech is much anticipated, as Quanta has risen as one of the world’s major AI server suppliers. The company reported a 30 percent year-on-year growth in consolidated revenue to NT$1.41 trillion (US$43.35 billion) last year, thanks to fast-growing demand for servers, especially those with AI capabilities. The company told investors in November last year that
United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) forecast that its wafer shipments this quarter would grow up to 7 percent sequentially and the factory utilization rate would rise to 75 percent, indicating that customers did not alter their ordering behavior due to the US President Donald Trump’s capricious US tariff policies. However, the uncertainty about US tariffs has weighed on the chipmaker’s business visibility for the second half of this year, UMC chief financial officer Liu Chi-tung (劉啟東) said at an online earnings conference yesterday. “Although the escalating trade tensions and global tariff policies have increased uncertainty in the semiconductor industry, we have not
Intel Corp has named Tasha Chuang (莊蓓瑜) to lead Intel Taiwan in a bid to reinforce relations between the company and its Taiwanese partners. The appointment of Chuang as general manager for Intel Taiwan takes effect on Thursday, the firm said in a statement yesterday. Chuang is to lead her team in Taiwan to pursue product development and sales growth in an effort to reinforce the company’s ties with its partners and clients, Intel said. Chuang was previously in charge of managing Intel’s ties with leading Taiwanese PC brand Asustek Computer Inc (華碩), which included helping Asustek strengthen its global businesses, the company
Power supply and electronic components maker Delta Electronics Inc (台達電) yesterday said it plans to ship its new 1 megawatt charging systems for electric trucks and buses in the first half of next year at the earliest. The new charging piles, which deliver up to 1 megawatt of charging power, are designed for heavy-duty electric vehicles, and support a maximum current of 1,500 amperes and output of 1,250 volts, Delta said in a news release. “If everything goes smoothly, we could begin shipping those new charging systems as early as in the first half of next year,” a company official said. The new
RSS