By Wen-Yee Lee
TAIPEI, May 27 (Reuters) - Nvidia's CEO said on Wednesday the chip company plans to invest around $150 billion a year in Taiwan, terming it the "epicentre" of the AI revolution and predicting it will be the world's tech manufacturing hub for a long time.
"Four years ago, five years ago, Nvidia was spending about $10, $15 billion dollars a year in Taiwan. Now we're spending $100, going to $150 billion dollars in Taiwan each year,"
Jensen Huang, chief of the $5 trillion chipmaker, said.
Huang was speaking at a launch celebration in Taipei for the chip company's planned Taiwan headquarters, which he said will break ground this year and aims to become operational in 2030. He did not provide a timeframe for the number of years the company plans to invest $150 billion.
The Taiwan headquarters will bring Nvidia closer to TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker which makes many of the advanced semiconductors powering the trend towards AI and is a major supplier to the U.S. tech company.
"Taiwan is booming," Huang said on stage at the celebration which was attended by his parents, wife, daughter and son in addition to around 1,000 employees.
"Taiwan is the epicentre of the AI revolution. This is where the chips come, packaging comes, this is where the systems are made, this is where AI supercomputers were created. The number of partners we work with here in Taiwan, incredible."
(Reporting by Wen-Yee Lee in Taipei; Editing by Anne Marie Roantree and Muralikumar Anantharaman)
