Taiwan's annual Computex trade show opens June 2 with a new identity. The island is no longer just the world's chip foundry. It's becoming the assembly line for the entire AI industry.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang landed in Taipei more than a week before the show and immediately made the point concrete. His company will spend as much as $150 billion a year in Taiwan, which he called the epicentre of the AI revolution.
Huang has since held non-stop meetings with TSMC CEO C.C. Wei, Foxconn Chairman Young Liu, and Quanta Chairman Barry Lam, according to Reuters. "Many years ago. We had 10 partners. Five years ago, maybe 50 partners. Now we have 150 partners," Huang said.
AMD CEO Lisa Su matched the tone last week, announcing more than $10 billion in AI sector investment in Taiwan, co-investing with local partners to lock in capacity for 2026 and beyond. The numbers explain why. Taiwan's server exports hit $60 billion last year, up from just $571 million in 2017. The growth curve tracks the AI boom almost perfectly.
"Taiwan's AI role is moving from a semiconductor story to an infrastructure story," said Ryan Fletcher, a partner at McKinsey & Company. "The question is no longer only who makes the chip, but who can turn it into a powered, cooled, networked and serviceable AI system."
Computex runs June 2-5 with 1,500 exhibitors, the largest in its history. Huang kicks things off with a Monday keynote, and the star hardware is Nvidia's Vera Rubin NVL72 supercomputer, which has already collected multiple Best Choice Awards for what Nvidia calls "AI factories", data centers designed to produce AI models at industrial scale. The executive roster reads like a who's who of global semiconductors. Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan delivers a keynote of his own, and IDC's Bryan Ma said Tan's speech will signal where he's taking the company after stabilizing Intel.
Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon, Arm boss Rene Haas, Marvell CEO Matt Murphy, and NXP Semiconductors CEO Rafael Sotomayor are all attending.
IDC's Ma also flagged potential reveals for a long-rumored Nvidia PC platform and Intel's Arc G-series processors for handheld gaming devices, alongside concern over sky-high memory prices in gaming.
Nvidia is also unveiling a new Taiwan headquarters called "Constellation" and deepening partnerships with TSMC, Foxconn, and the Taiwanese government for expanded AI infrastructure and new supercomputer projects. The geopolitical backdrop is impossible to ignore. China's Xi Jinping told President Donald Trump during their summit this month that mishandling Taiwan could trigger conflict, and China has ramped up military activity around the island. But the business momentum hasn't slowed. Computex's agenda has zero cryptocurrency content, Taiwan's tech ecosystem has fully pivoted to AI as its growth engine.
