Twelve foreign enterprises signed investment letters of intent (LOI) worth an estimated NT$46 billion (US$1.43 billion) at an event held by the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) at Semicon Taiwan exhibition yesterday.
Of the 12 firms, four are Japanese, three are American, three are European and two are from other regions, the ministry said.
The businesses are engaged in various fields including IC design, IC manufacturing, semiconductor equipment and materials, biotech, real estate and logistics, the ministry said.
Photo courtesy of Ministry of Economic Affairs
The Taiwan Business Alliance Conference, an annual event held by the ministry to attract foreign investors, was held alongside the Semicon Taiwan trade show for the first time this year in the expectation that more foreign enterprises could see the advantage of investing in Taiwan in the boom of artificial intelligence (AI) applications, the ministry said.
Semiconductor-related companies include the US-based Applied Materials Inc and Micron Technology Inc; NXP Semiconductors NV of the Netherlands; Germany's Carl Zeiss Co; as well as Taiwan Fujibo Precision Materials Co (台灣富士紡精密材料), Taiwan Tanaka Kikinzoku Kogyo Co (台灣田中貴金屬) and Central Glass Co from Japan.
Addressing the event, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said that despite being about the size of the Netherlands and Maryland in the US, Taiwan has "the world's most comprehensive industrial cluster in the semiconductor sector."
Photo: Liao Chia-ning, Taipei Times
This showed Taiwan's "critical position in the supply chain," Kuo added.
Quoting Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), Kuo said Taiwan is at the center of the AI revolution.
He added that Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices Inc's decision to set up research centers in Taiwan represented "a win-win strategy."
A ministry official told the media on the sidelines of the event that the ministry expects investment from the 12 companies to total around NT$46 billion over the next three years.
Asked whether the companies signing LOIs have always invested the pledged amount, the official said this is the case 80 to 90 percent of the time.
Other companies signing the LOI included JRE Business Development Taiwan Inc (台灣捷爾東事業開發) and Switzerland's SHL Medical.
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
India’s ban of online money-based games could drive addicts to unregulated apps and offshore platforms that pose new financial and social risks, fantasy-sports gaming experts say. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government banned real-money online games late last month, citing financial losses and addiction, leading to a shutdown of many apps offering paid fantasy cricket, rummy and poker games. “Many will move to offshore platforms, because of the addictive nature — they will find alternate means to get that dopamine hit,” said Viren Hemrajani, a Mumbai-based fantasy cricket analyst. “It [also] leads to fraud and scams, because everything is now
RSS