Inside Taiwan

Why Is the AI Race Creating New Chip Frenemies and Where Does Taiwan Fit in the Power Shift? Q1. Why are cloud providers building custom silicon now? Because the scale of AI demand has outgrown any single architecture. AWS says Trainium3 offers over four times the performance and 40 percent better energy efficiency, while still expanding orders for general purpose GPUs. The future is a mix of both...

Why Is AI Rewriting the Global Chip Supply Chain Faster Than the Industry Can Adapt? Q1. What is causing the sudden memory shortage? AI models require high bandwidth memory, and manufacturers have shifted production from standard DRAM to HBM. DRAM inventories have fallen from 13 to 17 weeks to as low as two to four weeks, and prices for some memory types have more than doubled since February. Q2....

Why Is the AI Hardware Race Splitting Into Two Tracks and Why Taiwan Matters? Q1. What is driving the shift from a GPU-only boom to a dual GPU and ASIC race? Demand for custom AI chips has accelerated as hyperscalers push for efficiency and scale. Hon Hai is producing over 1,000 AI racks per week for TPU deployments and plans to double output by 2026. Analysts expect high-end ASIC shipments to gro...

What Are Taiwan’s Latest AI Signals Telling Us About the Next Tech Cycle? From Taipei, we track the signals shaping the world’s most valuable supply chain. Taiwan just raised its 2025 GDP forecast to 7.37 percent on the strength of AI server demand, yet manufacturing indicators slipped into a caution zone and markets pulled back as investors took profits. The question is how these mixed signals sh...

Can the World Build AI Fast Enough When Taiwan’s Supply Chain Is Already at Full Stretch? Q1: Why is global AI demand hitting physical limits so quickly? Because the build out is happening faster than infrastructure can keep up. Tech giants may spend up to 320 billion dollars on AI data centers in 2025, but Bloomberg reports the U.S. grid could face a power shortfall by 2028. The AI boom is outpac...

Why Is the Future of the World’s AI Chips Being Decided in Taiwan? In this episode of Inside Taiwan, we examine why Taiwan has become indispensable to the global AI and semiconductor race. Why does the U.S. need Taiwan’s semiconductor expertise now more than ever? Because Washington cannot fix its talent gap alone. Reuters reports the U.S. is negotiating a deal that lowers Taiwan’s 20 percent expo...

Meta x Google: The Next AI Chip Shift and Taiwan’s Upside Q1. What is the larger strategic signal behind Meta exploring Google’s TPUs Meta is in advanced discussions to use Google’s TPUs, according to The Information and Reuters. The plan includes renting TPUs through Google Cloud next year and evaluating Google’s custom chips for Meta’s data centers around 2027. Meta’s AI budget could reach 72 bi...

Why Taiwan Is Becoming the Strategic Center of the Global Chip Fight Q1. What new signals suggest a shift in US semiconductor policy toward China? A potential rule change reported by Reuters shows the US Commerce Department is considering allowing Nvidia to sell its H200 AI chips to China. The H200 carries more high-bandwidth memory and roughly twice the performance of the restricted H20 model. Th...

Below is today’s snapshot of the Foxconn and Nvidia story redefining the boundaries of the AI economy. Q1. Why is Foxconn moving from assembly to architecture in the AI era Foxconn is positioning itself as a full stack AI infrastructure builder. At its latest Tech Day, the company announced a Taiwan based AI data center that will deploy Nvidia’s GB300 NVL72 platform, described by Focus Taiwan as o...

The Rise of Agentic AI and the New Silicon Power Map Anchored in Taiwan Q: Why did one earnings report move markets from Wall Street to Taipei? Nvidia reported 51.2 billion dollars in Q3 data center revenue, beating expectations and guiding for mid-sixties next quarter. Jensen Huang said early Blackwell demand is “off the charts”. Taiwan felt the impact immediately. The Taiex surged 846 points, a...

Today’s episode examines three questions shaping the next phase of Taiwan’s tech future, from advanced process IP to energy security to the trillion-dollar AI investment curve. Q1: Why is Taiwan treating the TSMC investigation as a national security moment A former senior VP for corporate strategy at TSMC, Lo Wei jen, is under investigation after allegedly removing restricted documents tied to the...

From Taipei, the center of the world’s semiconductor engine, we track the key shifts shaping the global AI supply chain. Inside Taiwan is a daily AI-powered podcast delivering fast, reliable analysis from the island’s unique vantage point. Q: Is the AI market cooling, or is demand still accelerating beneath the volatility? Institutional selling from major investors contrasts with record-high deman...

This episode examines the forces reshaping memory, manufacturing, and investment flows across Asia, and why Taiwan is becoming the blueprint for the next decade of AI growth. Q: How is Asia redefining the infrastructure map for AI? Taiwan’s GMI Cloud and Nvidia are building a 500 million dollar AI factory with 7,000 Blackwell Ultra GPUs and a 16 megawatt footprint. Leadership from Nvidia calls it...

From Taipei, where the world’s chips are born, we decode the week’s biggest semiconductor shifts. This episode examines a new frontier in the global AI supply chain. It is no longer about GPUs alone. It is about the electricity, cooling, and infrastructure required to run them. Taiwan sits at the center of this transition, shaping both the hardware and the systems that will define the next decade...

This week, one number stunned economists: Taiwan’s exports surged nearly 50% year-on-year to a record US$61.8 billion, driven by the global AI buildout. Behind that headline lies both the momentum and the pressure of an industry racing against time. Q: Why are Taiwan’s exports rising so fast? AI hardware and semiconductor shipments surged—up 140% and 28% respectively—accounting for almost 80% of t...

AI’s Power-Hungry Reality: When Vision Outruns Infrastructure Q: What happens when vision meets reality in the AI supply chain? 
The AI boom is redrawing budgets and borders. TSMC has approved a US $15 billion capital budget to expand its most advanced 3-nanometer and 2-nanometer fabs, along with new CoWoS packaging plants that link CPUs, GPUs, and memory at lightning speed. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huan...

The Reality Check: Why Advanced Chipmaking Still Belongs to Asia As Double 11 shatters e-commerce records across Asia, the real winners are the chipmakers powering the AI engines behind every recommendation, transaction, and the rise of a new industrial economy built on silicon and data. Q: Why is the AI manufacturing boom still centered in Asia? Even with record subsidies, the world’s most advanc...

Q: What happens when the six architects of modern AI gather in one room? They don’t talk hype, they talk infrastructure. In a rare conversation among the winners of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, Jensen Huang, Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li, Yann LeCun, Yoshua Bengio, and Bill Dally revealed a shared vision: AI is becoming a new kind of industrial base, one powered by computation, not coa...

Q1: Where is the real battle for AI dominance being fought? The center of gravity in AI has shifted from software to silicon. SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son reportedly explored a $100 billion takeover of Marvell, the U.S. chip designer behind key AI networking chips for Amazon Web Services. The move would have given SoftBank control not only of Arm’s CPU architecture but also of the data-center hardware...

Every tech revolution starts with a dream — and ends with a reckoning. Today’s AI boom looks unstoppable. Trillions in capital are chasing the same promise: whoever builds true Artificial General Intelligence first will own the next century of technology. But beneath the excitement lies an uncomfortable truth — bubbles don’t feel like bubbles until they burst. This week’s episode of Inside Taiwan...

For months, the world has obsessed over the “chip war” — who can build the fastest, smallest, and smartest silicon. But the next great AI battle won’t be fought in clean rooms. It’ll be fought in power plants. A leaked OpenAI letter to the White House revealed an uncomfortable truth: America will need to double its annual electricity generation just to keep pace with AI growth — 100 gigawatts a ye...

Five trillion dollars. That’s how high Nvidia’s valuation briefly soared this week—more than the GDP of Japan. But behind that headline number lies something much bigger: the quiet formation of a new global order for technology itself. We are entering an AI industrial revolution, and the real story isn’t just about who builds the smartest chips. It’s about where they’re built, who controls the ing...

AI isn’t just code anymore — it’s in earnings, factories, and national strategies. In the latest episode of Inside Taiwan, we unpack the signals behind Apple and Amazon’s strong results, Korea’s 260 K-GPU “AI factory” plan, and NVIDIA’s five-trillion-dollar surge — and why every one of them points to Taiwan’s expanding role at the heart of the global AI supply chain. We connect the dots from capex...

Five trillion. One trillion. Those aren’t sci-fi numbers — they’re the new market caps defining the AI era. In the latest episode of Inside Taiwan, we explore whether today’s trillion-dollar valuations mark the start of a bubble or the birth of a new industrial revolution. From OpenAI’s IPO ambitions to NVIDIA’s meteoric rise, this isn’t just a tech story — it’s a geopolitical chess game where sup...

There are two sides to every revolution. On one side: NVIDIA setting up a new base in Taipei, crossing a $5 trillion valuation, and redefining what global AI leadership looks like. On the other: tens of thousands of white-collar layoffs, as companies cite AI efficiency as the reason for restructuring. This week on Inside Taiwan, we explore how the world’s most valuable chipmaker and its partners a...