The Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with US-based real-estate service provider CB Richard Ellis Inc (CBRE) for future investments in Taiwan, the country’s top economic planner said on Friday.
CEPD Minister Christina Liu (劉憶如), who is leading a delegation to the US to meet potential foreign investors, said CBRE was planning to enter Taiwan’s commercial real-estate sector with projects worth more than US$100 million.
The agency also signed an agreement with CBRE’s subsidiary CB Investors for future investments.
CBRE sees great potential for growth in the Greater China area and is aiming to tap into the rapidly growing business opportunities in Taiwan, Liu said.
CBRE, which is also experienced in mutual fund management, is expected to offer training for government officials on how to manage labor pensions, labor insurance, civil service retirement and postal funds to boost the return on such funds, she said.
Meanwhile, CBRE is planning to set up a specialty store in Los Angeles that will feature delicacies from Taiwan and promote -Taiwanese culture in the US city.
The specialty food court, scheduled to get off the ground later this year, is expected to accommodate 20 to 30 Taiwanese restaurants, such as the Din Tai Fung (鼎泰豐) dumpling house and the Shin Yeh (欣葉) Taiwanese cuisine restaurant.
Other specialties in the store are likely to include pork gravy rice, stinky tofu and bubble milk tea, which are popular among foreign visitors to Taiwan.
Liu said if the food court project works out well, CBRE will use that model to open similar stores in other US cities such as New York, Chicago and San Francisco. In addition to the two MOUs, the CEPD signed another with Orbcomm Inc, a communications service provider, in New York earlier this week.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to