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.
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
DEADLOCK: As the commission is unable to forum a quorum to review license renewal applications, the channel operators are not at fault and can air past their license date The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said that the Public Television Service (PTS) and 36 other television and radio broadcasters could continue airing, despite the commission’s inability to meet a quorum to review their license renewal applications. The licenses of PTS and the other channels are set to expire between this month and June. The National Communications Commission Organization Act (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法) stipulates that the commission must meet the mandated quorum of four to hold a valid meeting. The seven-member commission currently has only three commissioners. “We have informed the channel operators of the progress we have made in reviewing their license renewal applications, and