Wiwynn Corp (緯穎), a supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers and components, on Thursday said that it plans to invest US$300 million to build its first manufacturing facility in Texas to cope with the realignment of global supply chains amid escalating macroeconomic uncertainty.
Wiwynn operates manufacturing facilities in Taiwan, Mexico and Malaysia. The Texas factory plan came as US President Donald Trump said that sweeping tariffs of 25 percent on Mexican and Canadian imports would take effect on March 4.
Domestically, Wiwynn is also increasing its capacity. The company on Thursday raised capital expenditures by about 29 percent for its new manufacturing facility and office building at the Southern Science Park to NT$8 billion (US$243.8 million), higher than an earlier estimate of NT$6.2 billion.
Photo: CNA
The new investment would further strengthen the company’s global production footprint and expand its scope of delivery, the company said.
Wiwynn counts US cloud services providers Meta Platforms Inc and Microsoft Corp among its major clients.
“The company is optimistic about data center long-term market demand and growth, and is committed to continuous investments to deepen AI, computing, thermal, and technologies and product development,” Wiwynn said. “The company will also flexibly adjust the global capacity allocation to respond to political and economic dynamics, and customer demand.”
Wiwynn on Thursday posted the strongest quarterly net profit in the company’s history last quarter, amounting NT$7.05 billion, benefiting from strong demand for regular and AI-enabled servers.
That means last quarter’s net profits had doubled from NT$3.51 billion in the fourth quarter of 2023. Earnings per share soared from NT$20.1 a year ago to NT$37.9 last quarter.
The company previously told investors that AI servers accounted for about half of its total revenue in the final quarter of last year, compared with about 20 percent in the first quarter. Revenue last quarter surged 97.5 percent year-on-year to NT$115.61 billion.
Last year as a whole, Wiwynn’s net profits surged 89 percent year-on-year to NT$22.78 billion compared with NT$12.04 billion in 2023. EPS climbed from NT$68.88 to NT$126.57.
Gross margin improved from 9.37 percent in 2023 to 10.37 percent last year, while revenue hit a record high after rising 49 percent from NT$241.90 billion to NT$360.54 billion last year.
The company’s board of directors on Thursday approved a cash dividend distribution of NT$74 per common share, setting an all-time high. That represented a payout ratio of 58.47 percent.
OpenAI has warned US lawmakers that its Chinese rival DeepSeek (深度求索) is using unfair and increasingly sophisticated methods to extract results from leading US artificial intelligence (AI) models to train the next generation of its breakthrough R1 chatbot, a memo reviewed by Bloomberg News showed. In the memo, sent on Thursday to the US House of Representatives Select Committee on China, OpenAI said that DeepSeek had used so-called distillation techniques as part of “ongoing efforts to free-ride on the capabilities developed by OpenAI and other US frontier labs.” The company said it had detected “new, obfuscated methods” designed to evade OpenAI’s defenses
NEW IMPORTS: Car dealer PG Union Corp said it would consider introducing US-made models such as the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Stellantis’ RAM 1500 to Taiwan Tesla Taiwan yesterday said that it does not plan to cut its car prices in the wake of Washington and Taipei signing the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade on Thursday to eliminate tariffs on US-made cars. On the other hand, Mercedes-Benz Taiwan said it is planning to lower the price of its five models imported from the US after the zero tariff comes into effect. Tesla in a statement said it has no plan to adjust the prices of the US-made Model 3, Model S and Model X as tariffs are not the only factor the automaker uses to determine pricing policies. Tesla said
China’s top chipmaker has warned that breakaway spending on artificial intelligence (AI) chips is bringing forward years of future demand, raising the risk that some data centers could sit idle. “Companies would love to build 10 years’ worth of data center capacity within one or two years,” Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) cochief executive officer Zhao Haijun (趙海軍) said yesterday on a call with analysts. “As for what exactly these data centers will do, that hasn’t been fully thought through.” Moody’s Ratings projects that AI-related infrastructure investment would exceed US$3 trillion over the next five years, as developers pour eye-watering sums
Australian singer Kylie Minogue says “nothing compares” to performing live, but becoming an international wine magnate in under six years has been quite a thrill for the Spinning Around star. Minogue launched her first own-label wine in 2020 in partnership with celebrity drinks expert Paul Schaafsma, starting with a basic rose but quickly expanding to include sparkling, no-alcohol and premium rose offerings. The actress and singer has since wracked up sales of around 25 million bottles, with her carefully branded products pitched at low-to mid-range prices in dozens of countries. Britain, Australia and the United States are the biggest markets. “Nothing compares to performing
RSS