MediaTek, Taiwan's leading fabless chip designer, is expanding headcount to accelerate AI chip development.
Chip designer MediaTek Inc announced plans to expand hiring to support new artificial intelligence activities, with company senior vice president Vince Hu expressing confidence in growth prospects during an interview with Bloomberg Television. MediaTek is helping to power Nvidia Corp's new Spark chip for PCs and expects AI chip revenue of approximately US$2 billion this year, while also pursuing data center opportunities. "I feel very good about the fundamentals of the business we are pursuing and I think we are pretty set at least through the 2030 horizon," Hu said on the sidelines of the Computex trade show in Taipei on Monday. The company is targeting as much as 15 percent of an US$80 billion data center opportunity next year and has secured business from at least two design customers, with analysts identifying Alphabet Inc's Google as one of MediaTek's AI chip customers. Hu noted the company has "a healthy pipeline" of additional opportunities with other hyperscalers and that AI is bringing changes that will cause MediaTek to see a "dramatically different makeup" of its business in the future.
In a significant shift in the competitive AI landscape, Google DeepMind vice president John Jumper, who won the 2024 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on artificial intelligence, is leaving the company to join Anthropic PBC. Jumper had been a key member of Google's AI coding development team, and his departure reflects strains in the tech giant's efforts to compete with Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX in the race to build the most powerful AI models. The departure comes as Google has struggled to sell AI coding tools to businesses, according to former employees.
US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick raised concerns with Dutch chip-equipment giant ASML Holding NV's senior leaders regarding the company's extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines, expressing worry that one of its top-of-the-line systems might have made its way into China in violation of US-led export restrictions. EUV systems are used by firms such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co to manufacture processors for companies including Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc. ASML has never been allowed to ship these systems to China because of existing curbs. ASML denied "unfounded rumors regarding non-compliance with export controls concerning China," stating that it enforces controls strictly.
Taiwan's competitiveness advanced significantly as the island climbed to a record fourth place in the IMD World Competitiveness Rankings, rising from sixth place the previous year among 70 economies assessed. Singapore ranked first, followed by Hong Kong and Switzerland. Taiwan's advance reflects a surge in AI-linked investment, advanced manufacturing, strong economic growth and the return of capital and talent from overseas, which have reinforced the economy's performance in an increasingly fragmented global environment. The ranking marked Taiwan's highest position since joining the study, bolstered by a decade of institutional stability.