Ten foreign companies have signed letters with the Ministry of Economic Affairs, confirming their intention to invest nearly NT$90 billion (US$2.86 billion) between them in Taiwan over the next three years.
The agreements were signed at an annual global investment forum in Taipei and were announced on Monday by Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua (王美花).
The companies include French industrial gas firm Air Liquide SA; Lam Research Corp, a US manufacturer of equipment used to make semiconductors; and Nitto Denko Corp, a Japanese manufacturer of insulating materials, Wang said.
Photo: CNA
US industrial gas company Air Products and Chemicals Inc, and Air Liquide Far Eastern Ltd (亞東工業氣體), a joint venture established in 1987 by Air Liquide and Far Eastern Group (遠東集團), plan to expand their operations in Taiwan, Wang said.
Japanese firm Fujifilm Electronic Materials Co plans to build a factory for advanced manufacturing, Lam Research is to build a research and development (R&D) center for high-end technologies, and British semiconductor company IQE PLC plans to expand its R&D facility in Hsinchu, she said.
The others intending to expand their presence in Taiwan are South Korean e-commerce company Coupang Inc, Japanese retailer Muji and Zacros, Japan’s leading manufacturer of single-use bags, the ministry said.
The letters represent concrete action by the 10 companies, showing their confidence in Taiwan’s investment environment, Wang said.
Over the past three years, international companies have invested more than US$3.3 billion in Taiwan, she said.
IN GOOD FAITH: Lai said he appreciates Micron’s commitment to Taiwan and that it would continue expanding its investment in the country, while also working with labor President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday called for US memory maker Micron Technology Inc and its workers to negotiate “sincerely” ahead of a possible strike by the company’s union in Taiwan. Last week, a Taiwanese union representing workers at Micron said it had secured authorization from its members to strike over a dispute concerning the company’s bonus scheme, escalating a labor conflict at the chipmaker’s largest manufacturing hub. Micron employs about 15,000 people in Taiwan and has said it invested more than NT$1.6 trillion (US$49.6 billion) in the country. Speaking in Taichung at the opening of a new Micron advanced assembly and testing facility,
China proposed adding advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to its export-control list, potentially restricting overseas transfers of AI models and chip designs in an effort to keep closer control over homegrown advancements in a strategically important sector. The draft proposal covers 23 AI technologies, including large language models, agents, chip designs and computing clusters. Restricted technologies would include model weights and source code for products exceeding certain performance thresholds. Chinese AI startups have this summer made significant progress in closing the gap on US industry leaders. Models such as Moonshot (月之暗面) AI’s Kimi K3 and DeepSeek’s (深度求索) latest editions offer better pricing,
CoreWeave Inc has become caught in a tug of war between investors who see rising bond yields as a potential rally killer for the artificial intelligence (AI) trade and those who think demand for computing power will make those concerns seem passe before long. The cloud-computing services provider’s shares plunged 20 percent in the first three sessions of last week, including more than 15 percent on Wednesday, as its debt tumbled to levels that typically indicate distress. On Thursday morning, the cost of protecting CoreWeave bonds against default rose to the highest intraday level on record, while swaps priced in a
Taiwan should not rule out any energy source or abandon environmental sustainability in favor of ideology and short-term benefits, President William Lai (賴清德) said in an interview, calling for a “professional assessment” of whether nuclear power should be reintroduced into Taiwan’s energy mix. In an online interview with influencer Yu Ting-hao (游庭皓) that aired yesterday, Lai reiterated his position on nuclear power. SHIFT Lai’s remarks marked a shift from the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP’s) longstanding opposition to nuclear power. As premier from 2017 to 2019, Lai pushed for more gas-fired power capacity while sticking to the DPP’s nuclear free homeland ideology and rejected the