Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Saturday praised and lightly cajoled his major Taiwanese suppliers to produce more to help power strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI), capping a visit to the country of his birth, where he has been mobbed by adoring fans at every step.
Speaking at an impromptu press conference in the rain outside a Taipei restaurant, where he had hosted suppliers for a “trillion-dollar dinner,” named after the market capitalization of those firms attending, Huang said this would be another good year for business.
“TSMC needs to work very hard this year because I need a lot of wafers,” he said, laughing, referring to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), the world’s largest producer of advanced chips used in artificial-intelligence applications.
Photo: Lam Yik Fei, Bloomberg
“TSMC is doing an incredible job and they’re working very, very hard. We have a lot of demand this year,” he added after taking pictures with a beaming TSMC CEO C.C. Wei (魏哲家).
“Over the next 10 years, TSMC will likely increase their capacity by much more than 100 percent, and so this is a very substantial scale-up in the next decade,” he said.
Wei did not answer questions from reporters.
Last month, TSMC said capital spending could jump as much as 37 percent this year to US$56 billion, and would increase “significantly” in 2028 and 2029 given AI demand.
Huang, who emigrated to the US as a child, is met by a throng of adoring fans whenever he returns to Taiwan.
Huang cofounded California-based Nvidia in 1993. Last year, it became the first company to breach US$5 trillion in market value, continuing a meteoric rise that has firmly positioned it at the heart of the global AI revolution.
In Taipei, he expressed concern about supplies of memory chips, which support AI workloads, amid a production crunch.
“We need a lot of memory this year,” he said. “I think that the entire supply chain is challenging this year because demand is so much more.”
Huang periodically stepped out of the dinner, attended by two dozen executives, including Young Liu (劉揚偉), chairman of contract-electronics maker Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海), Nvidia’s biggest server maker, to greet his fans and sign autographs.
“We have so many partners here in Taiwan. Nvidia won’t be possible without Taiwan. There’s magic in this island. The companies here have extraordinary technology, they’ve incredible culture,” he said when asked about how he felt about his movie star-like fame whenever he visits. “I’m really proud of Taiwan.”
Other Taiwanese tech executives attending the dinner included Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) chairman Barry Lam (林百里), Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) chairman Jonney Shih (施崇棠), Pegatron Corp (和碩) chairman Tung Tzu-hsien (童子賢), Wistron Corp (緯創) chairman Simon Lin (林憲銘), MediaTek Inc (聯發科) CEO Rick Tsai (蔡力行), Acer Inc (宏碁) CEO Jason Chen (陳俊聖) and Inventec Corp (英業達) chairman Sam Yeh (葉力誠).
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