AMD to Invest More Than $10 Billion in Taiwan Chip Industry — Update

By Sherry Qin

Advanced Micro Devices is gearing up to invest more than $10 billion across Taiwan's semiconductor sector to meet growing demand for artificial-intelligence infrastructure.

Under the investment plan, the Nasdaq-listed company will tap the Taiwanese industry's expertise in high-performance computing--from foundries to chip assembly and test providers, to scale its production.

For decades, computing progress came from shrinking transistors to make chips faster and cheaper, but that approach is hitting physical limits and becoming more expensive.

To power generative AI, the industry has shifted from building single, massive processors to combining multiple specialized microchips into a single package.

By embedding microscopic silicon "bridges" directly onto a chip's base, microchips can exchange data at ultra-high speeds, delivering massive AI performance efficiently and cost-effectively.

AMD announced the move Thursday alongside plans to ramp up production of a next-generation chip with TSMC.

It has already started manufacturing its cutting-edge CPU, known as Venice, in Taiwan using TSMC's most advanced technology and has plans to produce the chip at the Taiwanese company's factory in Arizona in the future.

Like other chip makers, AMD is pushing to cash in on the surge in demand for central processing units sparked by the explosion of so-called agentic AI, or systems that can complete tasks independently.

"As AI and agentic workloads scale rapidly, customers need platforms that can move from innovation to production faster," said Lisa Su, chair and chief executive at AMD.

The partnership with TSMC is helping AMD bring compute technologies to market with the speed and scale necessary to meet demand, she added.

It is also working with local companies including ASE to pioneer so-called bridging technology in advanced packaging.

The U.S. company is also aiming to extend TSMC's 2-nanometer process technology across its data center CPU roadmap.

While graphic processing units produced by the likes of Nvidia have dominated the AI story so far, CPUs are increasingly stealing the spotlight.

As one of the top producers of CPUs, AMD's stock has more than doubled in the year to date despite geopolitically-driven market volatility.

As agentic AI takes off, building the next layer of the AI boom, value is going to spread across more of the compute stack, not just GPUs, said Josh Gilbert, lead analyst for APAC at eToro.

"Nvidia is still in pole position in this AI trade, but Intel and AMD lead the way on CPUs for now," Gilbert added.

Write to Sherry Qin at sherry.qin@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 21, 2026 04:45 ET (08:45 GMT)