Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) would be the final torchbearer at the opening ceremony of the 2025 World Masters Games in Taipei and New Taipei City today, the Games’ executive committee said yesterday.
Huang agreeing to be the torchbearer for the Games highlighted the new role of technology in the sports industry, it said.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is playing a critical role in bringing sports and technology together, the committee quoted Huang as saying.
Photo: CNA
Huang, 62, known for his passion for table tennis, joins four other Taiwanese figures “representing various fields and generations” at the opening ceremony at the Taipei Dome, the committee said.
The other torchbearers are: baseball legend Peng Cheng-min (彭政閔), Olympic boxing gold medalist Lin Yu-ting (林郁婷), centenarian badminton player Lin Yu- mao (林友茂) and award-winning actress-director Sylvia Chang (張艾嘉).
This is the first time the World Masters Games, a quadrennial event held since 1985, is to take place in Asia.
Photo courtesy of the World Masters Games’ executive committee
The organizers have announced that more than 25,000 athletes from 107 countries would be participating, including more than 2,000 people who are aged 65 or older. Notably, eight of the 15 participants aged 90 or older are from Taiwan.
Huang has emphasized the importance of finding a sport one is passionate about and continuing to pursue it.
“The best sport is the one you are willing to keep doing,” Huang was cited by the committee as saying.
Photo: AFP
A source said that Huang agreeing to be the final torchbearer for the Games was the result of extensive negotiations between the Taipei City Government and Nvidia.
The city government first started talks with Nvidia when the company began looking to host a separate pavilion at the Taipei Music Center for Computex 2025 to highlight the company’s corporate image and spirit of technological innovation, the source said.
The Taipei City Government’s efforts to accommodate Nvidia’s requests underscored its sincerity, building trust and paving the way for future collaborations with the company, they said.
Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) has praised the success of the city government’s collaboration with Nvidia, saying that Huang’s involvement in the Games highlighted Taiwan’s technological accomplishments and Taipei’s ambitions to be a global city in the Asian region.
Taipei is honored to have Huang as the World Masters Games’ final torchbearer, he said.
As the CEO of one of the leading technological companies, Huang is the figurative and actual torchbearer of technological advancement in the industry, Chiang added.
Huang arrived in Taiwan yesterday ahead of his keynote speech at Computex. He is also expected to announce the location of the company’s new Taiwan office.
Speaking to reporters upon his arrival, Huang said he “might say a few words” about Nvidia’s Taiwan office after his keynote speech.
“Nvidia’s Taiwan office is getting too small. Nvidia is growing very quickly, and we have so many great engineers here. I have to find them a new home with bigger space,” he said.
Huang declined to provide further details.
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