Nvidia Corp’s spending in Taiwan has ballooned to about US$150 billion a year, 10 times the US$10 billion to US$15 billion the company spent five years ago, Nvidia chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, suggesting Taiwan’s strategic importance in the global artificial intelligence (AI) supply chain.
“Taiwan is the epicenter of the AI revolution. This is where the chips come, packaging comes. This is where the systems are made. This is where AI supercomputers were created,” Huang said at a meeting for the company’s employees in Beitou-Shilin Technology Park (北投士林科技園區) in Taipei, the planned site of Nvidia’s Taipei headquarters.
“Taiwan is booming” and Nvidia’s investment will “fuel an incredible ecosystem here,” he said.
Photo: Cheng I-hwa, AFP
“The number of partners we work with here in Taiwan is incredible. You can just see from their stock prices. They’re doing so well, they’re so happy. I have not met one CEO who’s not happy, and it’s not easy making a Taiwanese CEO happy,” he added.
Nvidia also plans to boost the number of its employees to about 4,000 over the next several years, Huang told the 1,000 employees at the meeting.
The company expects construction to start at the new site by the end of this year and operations to begin in 2030, he said.
“We will be here to support, to partner with our ecosystem, to do coengineering with our ecosystem partners and support their growth, and so this is going to be a very important site for us,” Huang said.
Nvidia has more than 2,000 employees in Taiwan.
Asked by an employee about the vision of the new Taipei headquarters, called Nvidia Constellation, Huang said: “That is because our ecosystem partners are here. This is going to be the manufacturing, the technology, electronics manufacturing hub for the world for a long time to come.”
Huang highlighted the importance of electricity supply in fueling the AI ecosystem and growing Taiwan’s economy.
“Mayor, we could use more energy in Taiwan,” Huang said, addressing Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安), who attended the meeting.
“Human labor needs rice, but AI labor needs electricity. And so in the future, Taiwan will unify human labor, robotics labor and AI labor. In order to do that, we need a lot more electricity,” Huang added. “If you want to grow with that industrial revolution, you need energy. Energy growth is fundamental to the GDP of Taiwan.”
Responding to another employee’s concern about whether AI would lead to job replacements and layoffs, Huang that said the company has “to automate and to make the company run faster.”
“We have to have greater ambitions. We have to have all of that at the same time. So, AI is not the reason we are going to have layoffs. AI is the way we avoid it, so that we could be more successful.”
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