Taipei Computer Association chairman Tung Tzu-hsien (童子賢) yesterday called for a better investment environment and a more open-minded attitude in response to the government’s plan to build an “Asian Silicon Valley” for start-ups and firms producing innovative products.
“It might not work if the government simply wants to copy the success of Silicon Valley,” Tung told a forum focusing on start-ups at Computex Taipei.
Tung’s remarks came after President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) told the opening ceremony of Computex that the government is to carry out an “Asian Silicon Valley” initiative in Taoyuan, connecting domestic and international resources in manufacturing and research and development in a bid to develop Internet of Things (IOT) supply chains.
Photo: Chiang Ying-ying, AP
Silicon Valley represents not only a location, but an adventurous spirit of innovation and creation, despite the failures of numerous start-ups over the decades, Tung said at the forum.
He said the government is thinking from a perspective of manufacturing hardware, but it is also important to think about deregulating to improve the investment environment, such as easing the regulations that allow foreigners to take white-collar jobs in Taiwan.
It is equally important that society has an open-minded attitude to encouraging start-ups, regardless of nationality or gender, he said.
Photo: Chiang Ying-ying, AP
“Many of the important international enterprises in Silicon Valley were not founded by Americans,” Tung said.
He said that Taiwan has adequate funds and talent for new start-ups, but he is not certain if society is tolerant enough to support foreign start-ups.
If the government’s start-ups initiative is only for Taiwanese firms, then such a mind-set would not help Taiwan to achieve its goal of becoming an Asian innovation hub, he said.
Tung said he has also noticed that society has overly emphasized the difficulties that start-ups might face in the early stages of their development.
“Our education system needs to change. We should encourage the younger generation to think outside of the box, be adventurous and not afraid of failure,” Tung said.
Crowdfunding company Backer-Founder (貝殼放大) chief executive Tahan Lin (林大涵) said he thinks it is not necessary to build an “Asian Silicon Valley” in Taiwan, as it is more important to help investors cooperate with start-ups.
What start-up companies need is investors who understand their vision and their added-value, rather than having a location like an industrial park in northern Taiwan, Lin said.
InnoVEX, an exhibition featuring 217 start-ups from 22 nations, is taking place at Taipei World Trade Center Exhibition Hall 3, along with Computex Taipei.
Organizers the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) and the Taipei Computer Association said five main fields — hardware and the Internet of Things; B2B software; cloud applications; consumer technology; and health technology — are being displayed by both local and foreign start-ups at the venue from yesterday until tomorrow.
GROWING OWINGS: While Luxembourg and China swapped the top three spots, the US continued to be the largest exposure for Taiwan for the 41st consecutive quarter The US remained the largest debtor nation to Taiwan’s banking sector for the 41st consecutive quarter at the end of September, after local banks’ exposure to the US market rose more than 2 percent from three months earlier, the central bank said. Exposure to the US increased to US$198.896 billion, up US$4.026 billion, or 2.07 percent, from US$194.87 billion in the previous quarter, data released by the central bank showed on Friday. Of the increase, about US$1.4 billion came from banks’ investments in securitized products and interbank loans in the US, while another US$2.6 billion stemmed from trust assets, including mutual funds,
Micron Memory Taiwan Co (台灣美光), a subsidiary of US memorychip maker Micron Technology Inc, has been granted a NT$4.7 billion (US$149.5 million) subsidy under the Ministry of Economic Affairs A+ Corporate Innovation and R&D Enhancement program, the ministry said yesterday. The US memorychip maker’s program aims to back the development of high-performance and high-bandwidth memory chips with a total budget of NT$11.75 billion, the ministry said. Aside from the government funding, Micron is to inject the remaining investment of NT$7.06 billion as the company applied to participate the government’s Global Innovation Partnership Program to deepen technology cooperation, a ministry official told the
AI TALENT: No financial details were released about the deal, in which top Groq executives, including its CEO, would join Nvidia to help advance the technology Nvidia Corp has agreed to a licensing deal with artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Groq, furthering its investments in companies connected to the AI boom and gaining the right to add a new type of technology to its products. The world’s largest publicly traded company has paid for the right to use Groq’s technology and is to integrate its chip design into future products. Some of the start-up’s executives are leaving to join Nvidia to help with that effort, the companies said. Groq would continue as an independent company with a new chief executive, it said on Wednesday in a post on its Web
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s leading advanced chipmaker, officially began volume production of its 2-nanometer chips in the fourth quarter of this year, according to a recent update on the company’s Web site. The low-key announcement confirms that TSMC, the go-to chipmaker for artificial intelligence (AI) hardware providers Nvidia Corp and iPhone maker Apple Inc, met its original roadmap for the next-generation technology. Production is currently centered at Fab 22 in Kaohsiung, utilizing the company’s first-generation nanosheet transistor technology. The new architecture achieves “full-node strides in performance and power consumption,” TSMC said. The company described the 2nm process as
RSS