Wearing his signature black leather jacket, Huang spoke Sunday at a packed stadium in the capital Taipei, highlighting the island’s importance in building the infrastructure that underpins artificial intelligence (AI) technology, which has powered Nvidia’s rise to the top.“Taiwan is the unsung hero, a steadfast pillar of the world,” he said onstage, gesturing to a graphic that showed the names of nearly 100 of the company’s suppliers in Taiwan. When Nvidia surpassed Apple this week to become America’s second most valuable company, its CEO Jensen Huang was being feted like a rockstar in his birthplace Taiwan.
Whether it was throwing the first pitch at a baseball game or visiting a night market, Huang’s every move has been tracked by his fans, legions of followers on social media as well as a posse of TV cameras. Taiwan media has dubbed the phenomenon “Jensanity.”He’s not the only celebrity CEO in town. A parade of global tech glitterati — including Lisa Su of AMD (AMD), Pat Gelsinger of Intel (INTC) and Cristiano Amon of Qualcomm (QCOM) — also flocked to the city this week to attend Computex, an annual trade show.
Started some 40 years ago as a showcase for Taiwan’s burgeoning tech manufacturers, Computex isn’t used to the limelight. For decades, it was a low-key sourcing fair for personal computers and other consumer gadgets.Huang has visited his birthplace regularly and raised eyebrows on this trip by his reference to the island.“Taiwan is one of the most important countries in the world. It is at the center of the electronics industry. The computer industry is built because of Taiwan,” he told a local reporter while visiting a night market.
Beijing generally condemns any suggestion of statehood for Taiwan. And even though Huang’s comment became a hotly trending topic on Chinese social media, the country’s state media has stayed unusually quiet on the subject.“That’s because they don’t need us, but we need them,” a Weibo user posted on China’s microblogging service.
The United States has imposed a number of restrictions on the export of AI chips to China. Late last year, Chinese tech giants like Tencent were rushing to stockpile AI chips before those curbs took hold.Nvidia, which is reportedly developing new chips for the Chinese market to comply with US export curbs, has said the rules would result in a “permanent loss of opportunities” for US industry.Shortly before Computex opened, Taiwan was encircled by Chinese warships and fighter jets in the largest military exercises in over a year. The drills took place just days after the island swore in its new president, Lai Ching-te, who is openly loathed by Beijing for championing the island’s sovereignty and distinct identity.
The CEOs at Computex seemed to shrug off the continuing political tensions, which have persisted for several years and put pressure on TSMC to expand outside Taiwan in order to diversify its production base. “We do a lot of our manufacturing here,” AMD’s Su told CNN. “Taiwan in particular is very important to the semiconductor ecosystem.”
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