The US agency tasked with driving scientific research has launched a program to connect US start-ups with their Taiwanese peers, backing Taiwan’s ambitions to foster key players in strategic sectors such as semiconductors, artificial intelligence (AI) and beyond.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) — one of the US federal government’s biggest outfits for funding research — is for the first time sponsoring a series of workshops abroad to help US start-ups work with their overseas counterparts. It chose to begin in Taiwan, which plays an increasingly pivotal role in chips and the technology supply chain.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs is backing the effort, which aims to discover and finance firms exploring “deep tech,” or cutting-edge arenas, including biotechnology and quantum computing.
Photo: Reuters
The US agency intends to expand the program to other nations over time, NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan told Bloomberg News.
While many of history’s most successful start-ups — including the likes of Nvidia Corp — began in the US, the bulk of hardware innovation now centers on Asia.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) alone makes about 90 percent of the most advanced logic chips.
The US Department of Commerce has awarded TSMC US$11.6 billion of grants and loans to build three plants in Arizona, underscoring its pivotal industry role.
“You just can’t do everything on your own or within the United States. You have supply chains and other things that are global,” said Michelle Kiang (江夢熊), the cofounder of Impact Science Ventures who helped the US agency conceive the program.
She devised the program with David Horsley, a Northeastern University professor and chip researcher.
“So you want to invest in those relationships early and also in different ways, so that these start-ups out of the United States are able to build a very strong global supply chain as well as a global business to continue to fuel the growth of the US economy,” Kiang said.
Taiwan’s technology start-ups have struggled to raise funds the way their counterparts in Silicon Valley do. The government is looking to change that, National Science and Technology Council Minister Wu Tsung-Tsong (吳政忠) said.
One of his missions is to help bridge the gap between academia and industry, not unlike the US foundation. The council is also keen on attracting more overseas talent, such as through a contest for global technology start-ups to be announced next month that would offer the winners a chance to turn their ideas into reality with Taiwanese companies, including TSMC.
Last year, the government launched the Taiwan Chip-based Industrial Innovation Program with a US$10 billion budget over 10 years.
“For Taiwan, manufacturing plays a very important role, but for innovations in different areas, we are still on the starting step,” Wu told Bloomberg News. “We think that if a lot of talent comes to Taiwan, then capital will come.”
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