The Taiwan Tech Arena aims to nurture more chip-focused start-ups and recruit international talent to Taiwan, Premier Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) said yesterday at a ceremony celebrating the tech incubator’s fifth anniversary.
“Innovation and entrepreneurship are part of an important economic policy in Taiwan,” Chen said at a ceremony in Taipei.
The Cabinet in 2018 launched the Taiwan Tech Arena to optimize the investment environment for start-ups, along with other programs to encourage youth entrepreneurship and regional vitalization, he said.
Photo: CNA
The efforts have attracted more than NT$60 billion (US$1.88 billion) in investment, he said, adding that the Cabinet has approved more than 90,000 applications for youth entrepreneurship loans and assisted young start-ups in obtaining more than NT$73.5 billion in financing.
In the past five years, the nation’s first international innovation incubator has worked with international accelerators and enterprises to cultivate more than 700 start-ups, he said.
It has assisted domestic start-ups in fields such as artificial intelligence (AI), software and precision health, and expanded internationally, helping new firms raise more than NT$24 billion in funding, he said.
Chen said he hopes the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) will continue to bridge academia and the private sector to facilitate the industrialization of research and development.
The council is leading Taiwan to become “the most important innovative island in the world,” he said.
The government is next year to launch the Chip-Driven Taiwanese Industrial Innovation Plan to expand the nation’s innovation capacity, he said.
The plan aims to make start-ups the “next wave driving Taiwan’s economic growth and prosperity” by bolstering connections with other countries, and promoting industrial innovation and talent cultivation, while integrating Taiwan’s industrial supply chains, he said.
NSTC Minister Wu Tsung-tsong (吳政忠) said that the arena significantly enhanced the international visibility and influence of Taiwan’s technological innovations.
He said he hopes the arena can contribute to efforts to attract world-class chip start-ups to develop in Taiwan, which would help the nation maintain its leading position in the global semiconductor industry.
The 10-year plan seeks to take advantage of Taiwan’s strengths in semiconductors to drive breakthroughs in sectors related to food, medicine, housing, transportation, education and entertainment, he said.
It hopes to attract young people from around the world to Taiwan, where the nation’s advanced technologies and substantial resources can help them realize their ideas and shorten the start-up development process, he said.
Investor excitement this year for ChatGPT foreshadows a “golden decade” for start-ups, Wu said.
If generative AI can be combined with Taiwan’s world-leading semiconductor technologies and its knowledge in various other tech fields, great opportunities can be created, he said.
Taiwan’s small and medium-sized enterprises are great partners for industrial innovation as they have considerable experience and data, he said.
He called for cooperation between the public and private sectors to contribute to industrial innovation around the world.
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