Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang leverages Taipei visit to reinforce AI supply chain alliances amid chip shortages

During a strategic 55-hour trip to Taipei, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang met with Taiwanese tech giants to strengthen partnerships crucial to satisfying surging AI hardware demand amidst ongoing supply bottlenecks and capacity expansions.

Nvidia’s chief executive Jensen Huang used a recent visit to Taipei to reinforce the ties that underpin the company’s dominance in artificial intelligence hardware, hosting high‑profile meals and meetings with senior execut...

Huang convened dinners and a large lunch that brought together leaders from foundries, contract manufacturers and system makers including TSMC, Foxconn, Wistron, Quanta and other firms central to AI infrastructure production. According to reporting by the South China Morning Post, his 55‑hour trip included a lunch with 36 top executives and site visits that highlighted how Taiwanese partners are running factories around the clock to produce systems powered by Nvidia’s Grace and Blackwell chips.

The gatherings served both ceremonial and practical purposes. Industry observers say the encounters give Nvidia privileged visibility into production schedules and capacity planning at multiple stages of the supply chain. That matters because advanced packaging and specialised memory have emerged as bottlenecks as demand for AI accelerators surges: Nvidia has publicly linked some product shortages to limited access to TSMC’s CoWoS advanced packaging, and TSMC is reported to be expanding that capacity in response.

Huang himself signalled concern about memory availability. Speaking to local media during the trip, he warned, “We need a lot of memory this year.” Taiwanese outlets also quoted him saying, “There’s magic in this island. The companies here have extraordinary technology, they’ve incredible culture,” remarks that underline both the commercial and cultural framing of the partnership.

The outreach reflects a deliberate strategy of close co‑ordination rather than arms‑length contracting. Company statements and coverage of the engagements portray Huang as treating Taiwan’s ecosystem as foundational to Nvidia’s roadmap; in a keynote at the GPU Technology Conference he reiterated a strong partnership with TSMC and strong demand for CoWoS, while TSMC has said it is accelerating capacity to meet customer needs.

For Taiwanese suppliers, the spotlight brings reciprocal pressure to scale. Executives attending the events , including Foxconn chairman Young Liu, according to local reports , discussed ways to increase output for servers and other systems that use Nvidia accelerators. That dynamic has helped secure priority access for Nvidia in some production queues, analysts say, but it also concentrates risk in a region that is geopolitically sensitive.

The meetings therefore serve as both supply‑chain management and strategic signalling: they reassure customers and partners that production constraints are being addressed while binding key vendors more tightly into Nvidia’s production cadence. As demand for AI compute keeps climbing, the effectiveness of that approach will be tested by how quickly partner firms can expand advanced packaging and memory supply without creating new chokepoints.

Source: Noah Wire Services