Nvidia Corp is set to unveil investment plans for Thailand, joining Alphabet Inc and Microsoft Corp, as Southeast Asia becomes a hot spot for building artificial intelligence (AI) data centers and manufacturing the components that power them.
The US chip designing firm would announce investments during chief executive officer Jensen Huang’s (黃仁勳) trip to Bangkok in December, Thai Minister of Commerce Pichai Naripthaphan said on Monday.
He declined to give details on the investment or how much the company would bring into Thailand.
Photo: AP
The investment by Nvidia could lead to more funding “with related clusters following suit,” Pichai said.
Clinching Nvidia as an investor in Thailand would be a shot in the arm for Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy that has been vying with its neighbors to attract investments from tech giants. Thailand has bagged multibillion dollar investments over the past few years from Amazon.com Inc, Google and Microsoft to build data centers and other cloud infrastructure.
A spokesperson for Nvidia did not reply to an e-mailed request for comment.
The Santa Clara, California-based company has pledged investments in building AI infrastructure in Indonesia and Malaysia, and is exploring opportunities in Vietnam.
Nvidia’s chips are manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) and its AI servers are built mostly by Taiwanese assemblers.
A longtime manufacturing powerhouse for vehicles and electronics, Thailand is playing catch-up with Malaysia and Singapore. It wants to bolster growth from an average of less than 2 percent under a decade of military-backed rule.
Interest from Nvidia, other tech companies, and those in the supply chain should boost investment applications back to levels before a 2014 coup and help Thailand regain “lost opportunities” in that decade, Pichai said.
“The outlook for the Thai economy is bright and this is only the beginning,” said the veteran politician, who was appointed to the job last month in the administration of the Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra.
There is already a surge in foreign investment pledges in Thailand this year, especially into the data centers and printed circuit board manufacturing. Official data showed investment pledges jumped 42 percent to 722.5 billion baht (US$21.6 billion) in the first nine months of this year from a year ago.
Pichai said new investment proposals, including from domestic companies, might reach as much as 1 trillion baht this year.
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
The government yesterday approved applications by Alphabet Inc’s Google to invest NT$27.08 billion (US$859.98 million) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. The Department of Investment Review approved two investments proposed by Google, with much of the funds to be used for data processing and electronic information supply services, as well as inventory procurement businesses in the semiconductor field, the ministry said. It marks the second consecutive year that Google has applied to increase its investment in Taiwan. Google plans to infuse NT$25.34 billion into Charter Investments Ltd (特許投資顧問) through its Singapore-based subsidiary Fructan Holdings Singapore Pte Ltd, and
JET JUICE: The war on Iran’s secondary effects have seen fuel prices skyrocket, knocking flight schedules down to earth in return as airlines struggle with costs Airline passengers should brace for more irritation in the next few months as carriers worldwide cancel flights and ground planes to cope with stratospheric increases in jet-fuel prices. Dutch flag carrier KLM is the latest company to cut its schedule, saying on Thursday that it would scrap 80 return flights at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the coming month. That puts it in the same league as United Airlines Holdings Inc, Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, which have all pruned itineraries to mitigate costs. Global capacity for next month has been reduced by about 3 percentage points, with all
RSS