Semiconductors
Taiwanese semiconductor giant TSMC had somewhat of a tumultuous month in November. Taiwan prosecutors initiated a probe into former TSMC executive Lo Wei-jen (羅唯仁), who is suspected of stealing restricted information on TSMC’s 2 nanometer, A16 and A14 processes. The Liberty Times reported that Lo took 80 boxes of data and books when he retired from TSMC in July. He then joined Intel, TSMC’s U.S. competitor in semiconductor manufacturing, in late-October. Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) dismissed the reports. “There’s nothing to it. We respect IP,” he said. A few days later, TSMC said it had filed a lawsuit against Lo at the Intellectual Property and Commercial Court.
Earlier in the month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) flew to Taiwan to take part in TSMC’s annual sports day, which was held in Hsinchu on November 8. TSMC took the opportunity to give each of its employees a 25,000 New Taiwan dollar (roughly $800) bonus, but the day wasn’t all light fare. C.C. Wei (魏哲家), the CEO of TSMC, said Huang “asked for wafers.” TSMC’s capacity is tight and Nvidia is competing with rivals like Qualcomm for TSMC’s limited chip supply, according to Bloomberg. Additionally, both CEOs took the opportunity to assuage fears about an AI bubble, following recent news of Nvidia’s stock tumble and TSMC’s slower sales growth.
Huang wasn’t the only semiconductor bigwig to visit Taiwan in November. Former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger also visited Taiwan in his new role as a partner at the deep tech venture capital firm Playground Global. Like Huang and Wei, Gelsinger downplayed concerns about an AI bubble, saying that a bubble would require stronger global energy growth than we are currently seeing. In that same vein, he warned that “the greatest issue in Taiwan isn’t even software or architecture, it’s energy.” Taiwan’s energy insecurity continues to be a hot topic of discussion, as high-tech growth and cross-strait tensions put pressure on Taiwan’s tenuous energy supply, which is almost entirely reliant on imports. In October, the electricity consumption of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry hit a three-year high.
In other semiconductor news, data released by the Taiwanese government in November showed that TSMC’s expansion in the U.S. drove the number of Taiwanese working in the U.S. to a record high of 137,000 in 2024.
Artificial Intelligence
Google opened a new AI infrastructure research and development center in Taipei in November, its largest engineering center outside the U.S. “This is not just an investment in an office, it’s an investment in an ecosystem, a testament to Taiwan’s place as an important center for global AI innovation,” said Aamer Mahmood, Google Cloud’s vice president of platforms infrastructure engineering. Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te (賴清德), who also spoke at the opening, emphasized Taiwan’s democratic system and semiconductor engineering cluster as key reasons for its successful partnership with Google. The company’s continued investment in Taiwan “allows the world to see that Taiwan is not only a vital part of the global technological supply chain, but also a key hub for building secure and trustworthy AI,” Lai said.
Taiwanese tech giant Foxconn — best known for making iPhones for Apple and AI servers for Nvidia — is expanding its AI-related investments overseas and at home. Last week, OpenAI announced a partnership with Foxconn, known formally as Hon Hai, to co-design and develop equipment for AI data centers in the U.S. In Taiwan, Foxconn said it planned to open a 27-megawatt data center sometime in the first half of 2026. Deploying Nvidia’s GB300 chips, it would be the largest GPU compute infrastructure of its kind in Taiwan.
The Taiwanese government is also investing in the country’s AI development. DigiTimes reported that Taiwan’s National Development Council held a meeting on November 20 to review progress on the Southern Taiwan Silicon Valley plan (大南方新矽谷推動辦公室) which aims to build southern Taiwan’s AI industry ecosystem. President Lai seeks to turn Taiwan into an “AI Island” and has launched 10 AI infrastructure initiatives toward that end. The goal is to create 500,000 AI jobs and generate 15 trillion New Taiwan dollars ($480 billion) in value by 2040. Overall, the plan will entail about 100 billion New Taiwan dollars in investments.
The global demand for artificial intelligence technologies continues to drive Taiwan’s export growth. Exports reached a record monthly high of $61.8 billion in October, according to Taiwan’s Ministry of Finance. This represents a 49.7% increase year on year. The U.S. was the largest export destination, accounting for 34.2% of total exports.
Space and Defense Tech
Taiwan plans to tighten its control on the export of potential dual-use technology to include advanced 3-D printing equipment, quantum computers and advanced semiconductor equipment, the Ministry of Economic Affairs announced on November 17. The final rules will be implemented after a 60-day review period. At that point, companies will require a license to export this technology. The ministry said the advanced semiconductor equipment category includes complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor chips, low-temperature cooling systems, scanning electron microscope equipment and low-temperature wafer-probing equipment.
Taiwan will certainly be leveraging high tech for its own military use, however. Taiwan’s defense ministry announced in November that it has established an office to explore potential military applications of AI. The office is currently focused on integrating AI into image and video detection, computer security and anti-hacking.
In not-exactly-new news, President Lai penned an op-ed for The Washington Post where he underscored his commitment to raising defense spending to 5% of GDP by 2030. Lai also said Taiwan is accelerating its deployment of the T-Dome. Announced during his National Day speech in October, the T-Dome is a multi-layered defense network that will “weave a safety net for Taiwan to protect the lives and property of citizens.” It was inspired by Israel’s Iron Dome and will protect Taiwan from Chinese missiles, rockets, drones and combat aircraft, said Lai.
Rounding out the month, the maiden satellite in the Formosat-8 series, Taiwan’s first domestically developed optical remote sensing satellite constellation, launched from California on Saturday. 84% of its components were designed and manufactured in Taiwan. Joining Formosat-8A was the Bellbird-1 (鐘雀1號), a satellite built by Taiwanese company Tron Future. Domino Theory reported last week that Tron Future hopes a constellation of Bellbird-1s could one day enable resilient communications for drone swarms in a war with China.
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