Netherlands-based ASML Holding NV, a leading global supplier of chipmaking machinery, on Wednesday announced plans for a factory in New Taipei City to support international customers and the development of the semiconductor industry.
ASML’s announcement came after President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) praised the company’s commitment to continuously investing in Taiwan at a meeting on Tuesday with its chief operations officer, Frederic Schneider-Maunoury.
ASML continues to invest globally and in Taiwan to prepare for the company’s continued growth, and to support global customers and the development of the semiconductor industry, the company said in an e-mail reply to Taiwanese media.
Photo courtesy of the Presidential Office via CNA
Vice Premier Shen Jong-chin (沈榮津), who was at Tuesday’s meeting, said that ASML should begin construction on the New Taipei City project in July next year.
ASML is the world’s sole supplier of extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) photolithography machines used by semiconductor manufacturers to produce cutting-edge chips.
It has become one of the foremost wafer-foundry equipment suppliers to Taiwanese manufacturers, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker.
Photographer: Peter Boer/Bloomberg
At Tuesday’s meeting, Tsai told Schneider-Maunoury that investing in Taiwan was “a very correct direction” and that the government would continue to provide support, a press release issued by the Presidential Office said.
ASML has five factories in Taiwan employing more than 4,500 people and plans to increase its investments in the country, the release said.
The company in 2020 launched a global EUV training center for engineers at the Southern Taiwan Science Park (南部科學園區) in Tainan.
ASML’s new project next year would be its biggest investment in Taiwan yet, and the continued cooperation between the company and Taiwan will enhance each other’s semiconductor capabilities, Tsai said in a social media post later on Tuesday.
Tsai said she was grateful that ASML had taken concrete actions to invest at a time when the world is focusing on Taiwan.
“I believe this would dispel the over-hyped risk of investing in Taiwan,” she said.
The company’s teams are based in Hsinchu City, New Taipei City’s Linkou District (林口), Taichung and Tainan, with its first office dating to 2003, ASML’s Web site says.
ASML is aggressively expanding its presence in Asia to enhance collaborations with its largest customers, aiming for significant growth opportunities.
On Wednesday, the company held a groundbreaking ceremony of its new semiconductor cluster in South Korea, home to the world’s two biggest memorychip makers: Samsung Electronics Co and SK Hynix Inc, Yonhap news agency reported.
ASML is building a US$181 million chip cluster in Hwaseong, about 40km south of Seoul, which would include a local repair center, training center, research and development center for parts, and education and experience center, the report said.
The construction is expected to be completed by the end of 2024, it said.
South Korea accounted for 33.4 percent of ASML’s total sales last year, up from 29.7 percent the previous year, company data showed.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
RSS