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‘T-AI-WAN’: Nvidia’s Jensen Huang Talks Up Taiwan’s Artificial Intelligence Potential

CEO of U.S. tech giant calls Taiwan an "unsung hero" and "steadfast pillar of the world."
Leo Timm
Leo Timm covers China-related news, culture, and history. Follow him on Twitter at @kunlunpeaks
Published: June 11, 2024
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang speaks at an event in Las Vegas in late 2023. (Image: Getty Images)

Recent remarks made by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang during his trip to Taiwan have boosted the island’s investor confidence, with the local stock market rising by over 300 points earlier in June after Huang declared that “Taiwan is the unsung hero, a steadfast pillar of the world” in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) development.

Speaking on June 2, Huang also praised Nvidia’s supply chain partners as being the “bedrock for the AI industrial revolution.”

According to Taiwan’s Central News Agency (CNA), Jensen Huang’s remarks caused the Taiwanese stock market to jump by 362 points by Monday, June 3. His comments about his suppliers boosted their stock prices as well.

Taiwan, lying 100 miles off the mainland Chinese coast, is the global leader in cutting-edge development of computer chips, as represented by the tech giant TSMC.

On Saturday, June 8, Huang made further comments at a banquet in the Zhongshan District of Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, shortly before leaving the island.

“Taiwan, T-AI-WAN, is, of course, going to help the world build AI infrastructure, so it starts here,” he told a crowd of reporters and fans.

Huang’s public comments about Taiwan’s place in the growing AI industry are significant, given Nvidia’s global profile as well as its presence in mainland China.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sees Taiwan as a renegade province to be “reunified” under its rule, and routinely puts pressure on foreign companies, governments, and individuals to have them avoid “supporting” what Beijing sees as “Taiwan independence.”