Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang opened Computex Taipei with the reveal of “Nvidia Constellation,” a new office in Taipei’s Beitou-Shilin area. The company also announced plans to work with TSMC, Foxconn and the Taiwan government to expand AI infrastructure, including a supercomputer project in Kaohsiung.
00:00One of the world's biggest tech shows, Computex, has kicked off with a big announcement from NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang,
00:06giving long-awaited details of the company's new Taiwan headquarters.
00:10Chris Gorin was there for the announcement, and he now joins us live from Taipei.
00:14Chris, what do we know about this Taipei office?
00:20Well, Eric, we know the name of the office. They're calling it Constellation.
00:24And we know its approximate location in Taiwan's capital city, Taipei.
00:31They actually had at the keynote an animation of the office building as a spaceship flying in from outer space
00:37and landing in Taipei's Beito-Shirlin area.
00:41Here's Huang making the announcement.
00:44As you know, we have been growing.
00:47And all of our partnerships with you have been growing.
00:51And so I'm going to build them a brand-new NVIDIA Taiwan office, and it's called NVIDIA Constellation.
01:02Now, there had been a lot of speculation that it might be in another part of the city or even another city altogether,
01:08but it looks like Taipei won out in the end.
01:11Now, as for what this new office means for Taiwan,
01:14I spoke to a local semiconductor expert here at the keynote, and here's what they had to say.
01:21Now, of course, this is really exciting because currently we see NVIDIA make a lot of investment worldwide,
01:27and apparently Taiwan is the most important one for him to build a new site, especially in Taipei.
01:32And also he had, like, the AI Infra, a new partner with TSMC and Foscom.
01:38It's actually demonstrated how aggressive NVIDIA want to invest in Taiwan.
01:42So that's a very good news for us.
01:45Now, Huang did also mention that the Taipei City mayor told him that the building would still need the approval of the people before it could be built,
01:54and jokingly told the audience that they should call the mayor and express their support for the project.
02:00Now, it's not clear if there is an actual real extra level of approval that's needed or if he was just joking.
02:06But, you know, with this new office in Taipei, it's clear that NVIDIA is betting big on Taiwan for its future business.
02:16And, Chris, aside from this new office, were there any other big announcements at the keynote?
02:24Well, Huang did announce that NVIDIA would be working with the Taiwanese government and local companies TSMC and Foxconn to build Taiwan's AI infrastructure.
02:34He didn't elaborate more on what that meant, but there had been a separately announced new project for a 10,000 CPU,
02:41or excuse me, 10,000 GPU supercomputer in the southern city of Kaohsiung with those same companies.
02:47So it seemed to be referring to that.
02:50But just in general, in this keynote, Huang really emphasized the point that AI should no longer be thought of as a technology,
02:57but actually as a kind of infrastructure.
02:59And NVIDIA is an infrastructure company and that, you know, data centers should be thought of as AI factories.
03:07And a lot of the products that were also debuted in this keynote were really more for that data center and enterprise level use of AI
03:15rather than, you know, everyday consumer products.
03:18And at the same time, NVIDIA and Jensen Huang has been going all around the world making new deals to build massive data centers,
03:26the most recent being in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
03:31And since NVIDIA depends so heavily on Taiwanese companies to produce their products,
03:37it's perhaps no surprise that they're expanding their operations here in Taiwan.
