NVIDIA plans 2nd AI R&D center in Taiwan, in the southern city of Kaohsiung

NVIDIA is planning its second R&D center in Taiwan, with new reports suggesting that Team Green is looking at the southern city of Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

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The new R&D center will be partly financed by the Taiwanese government and the Ministry of Economic Affairs and its "Big+ Project" subsidies. In a new report from Ctee, we're learning that with AI leading the charge, the Ministry of Economic Affairs' "Leading Enterprise R&D Deepening Plan" (aka Big+) will encourage overseas tech companies to set up forward-looking R&D centers in Taiwan.

NVIDIA was first with the Big+ funding, setting up the first AI innovation R&D center in Neihu, Taipei, then completing its supercomputer (HPC) at the NVIDIA building in Kaohsiung Software Park towards the end of 2023, with the company providing part of the computing power for new applications and the development of AI-powered products and services.

The Deputy Director of the Industrial Technology Department of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Zhou Chongbin, said in an interview that NVIDIA applied for the Artificial Intelligence Innovation R&D Center Program back in 2021, coming to Taiwan to establish Asia's first Asian AI R&D center located in Neihu, Taiwan.

As for the second R&D center, nothing is set in stone right now, but NVIDIA does plan an AI supercomputer dubbed "Taipei-1" for Kaohsiung. The NVIDIA AI supercomputer is located at the NVIDIA building in Yawan Kaohsiung Software Industrial Park.

NVIDIA isn't the only one setting up R&D centers in Taiwan, with GPU competitor AMD also building a second R&D center in Taiwan. AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su will be checking out locations in the coming days, leading into Computex 2024 next week.