Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), the world’s largest server and notebook computer manufacturer, plans to expand its server operations in the US in the face of rising demand and US president-elect Donald Trump’s campaign vow to boost US manufacturing, a company executive said.
Quanta Cloud Technology (QCT, 雲達科技), its server subsidiary, plans to expand the production capacity of its two US plants in the next three years, Mike Yang (楊晴華), president of QCT and a senior vice president and general manager at Quanta Computer, said in a report by Nikkei Asian Review.
Yang said that QCT has the “upper hand” should Trump’s campaign promise become policy, as the company already has server assembly facilities in Fremont, California, and Nashville, Tennessee.
The demand for more domestic data centers is expected to grow if Trump adopts a protectionist approach in manufacturing, which would help support Quanta’s revenue growth, Yang said in the report.
The company plans to double its server assembly facilities, output and headcount in the US in the next three years, Yang said.
Quanta said in a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange on Friday last week that it plans to give QCT a cash injection of US$10 million to fund its operations’ expansion.
Quanta’s cloud-computing segment — which includes server, storage, switch and Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices — has been an important revenue growth driver amid a declining notebook industry.
The segment accounted for between 30 and 35 percent of the firm’s total revenue of NT$628.73 billion (US$19.72 billion) in the first three quarters of the year, with sales growing by a double-digit percentage from the same time last year, Quanta said.
Its cloud-computing clients include Google, Amazon.com Inc, Microsoft Corp and Facebook Inc.
“We expect revenue from this segment to continue increasing by a double-digit percentage next year, supported by the rising demand from telecom operators, enterprises and technology ‘unicorns,’” a Quanta investor relations official said by telephone yesterday.
Company chairman Barry Lam (林百里) on Nov. 10 told a news conference that the cloud-computing segment would remain Quanta’s main growth driver next year.
Inventec Corp (英業達), a smaller rival of Quanta in the server business, is mulling the possibility of reopening its server assembly line at its branch in Houston, Texas, in view of a potential change in US manufacturing policy.
Inventec mainly assembles servers for its US clients at its plant in Mexico, which employs 1,200 and has a monthly production capacity of 35,000 units, its investor relations official said.
“If Trump’s vow becomes policy, Inventec would likely reopen its assembly line in Houston to meet clients’ needs, despite a possible increase in labor costs,” the official said by telephone.
Inventec’s server business accounted for 35 percent of its total revenue of NT$111.65 billion last quarter.
Revenue from this segment surged 20 percent in the first three quarters of the year compared with a year earlier, the company said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) last week recorded an increase in the number of shareholders to the highest in almost eight months, despite its share price falling 3.38 percent from the previous week, Taiwan Stock Exchange data released on Saturday showed. As of Friday, TSMC had 1.88 million shareholders, the most since the week of April 25 and an increase of 31,870 from the previous week, the data showed. The number of shareholders jumped despite a drop of NT$50 (US$1.59), or 3.38 percent, in TSMC’s share price from a week earlier to NT$1,430, as investors took profits from their earlier gains
In a high-security Shenzhen laboratory, Chinese scientists have built what Washington has spent years trying to prevent: a prototype of a machine capable of producing the cutting-edge semiconductor chips that power artificial intelligence (AI), smartphones and weapons central to Western military dominance, Reuters has learned. Completed early this year and undergoing testing, the prototype fills nearly an entire factory floor. It was built by a team of former engineers from Dutch semiconductor giant ASML who reverse-engineered the company’s extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines, according to two people with knowledge of the project. EUV machines sit at the heart of a technological Cold
CHINA RIVAL: The chips are positioned to compete with Nvidia’s Hopper and Blackwell products and would enable clusters connecting more than 100,000 chips Moore Threads Technology Co (摩爾線程) introduced a new generation of chips aimed at reducing artificial intelligence (AI) developers’ dependence on Nvidia Corp’s hardware, just weeks after pulling off one of the most successful Chinese initial public offerings (IPOs) in years. “These products will significantly enhance world-class computing speed and capabilities that all developers aspire to,” Moore Threads CEO Zhang Jianzhong (張建中), a former Nvidia executive, said on Saturday at a company event in Beijing. “We hope they can meet the needs of more developers in China so that you no longer need to wait for advanced foreign products.” Chinese chipmakers are in
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
RSS