Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who is visiting Taiwan, held a dinner meeting with top executives of TSMC. Analysts view the gathering as a signal of strengthened cooperation between the two companies in key areas including artificial intelligence (AI) chip manufacturing and advanced packaging expansion.
According to Taiwanese media including United Daily News on Wednesday, Huang hosted a dinner the previous day, inviting TSMC Chairman C.C. Wei, Co-Chief Operating Officer Y.P. Chyn, and eight senior vice presidents. TSMC handles the foundry production of most of Nvidia's AI chips, including the new "Grace Blackwell" and the next-generation "Vera Rubin."
With the combined market capitalization of Nvidia, the world's most valuable company at $5.204 trillion (approximately 7,828 trillion won), and TSMC, ranked sixth at $2.138 trillion (approximately 3,216 trillion won), reaching 11,000 trillion won, market attention was focused on the meeting. "The next six months will be very busy," Huang said. "We are working closely together to secure all the production capacity we need."
The industry sees the meeting not as a simple social gathering but as a venue for strategic consultation. Observers expect that discussions covered not only future AI chip production cooperation but also plans to expand advanced packaging, the biggest bottleneck in the AI chip supply chain. TSMC leads in advanced packaging technologies such as Chip on Wafer on Substrate (CoWoS), which combines graphics processing units (GPUs) with high-bandwidth memory (HBM); System on Integrated Chips (SoIC), a 3D stacking technology; and Co-Packaged Optics (CPO), which boosts speed by converting electrical signals into light. However, it has been unable to meet surging AI chip demand. In response, TSMC plans to allocate 10-20% of this year's capital expenditure (CAPEX) to packaging technology.
Meanwhile, Wei canceled a previously scheduled business trip and personally communicated with employees Wednesday morning after rumors spread that performance bonuses could be cut. Wei said in an internal email the previous day that the company plans to pay performance bonuses on the 29th of this month. "First-quarter performance bonuses this year will increase 30% from a year earlier," Wei stressed. "Overall, the growth rate of performance bonuses this year will be higher than last year."
