Advanced Micro Devices plans to co-invest more than $10 billion with Taiwan-based supply chain partners to lock in manufacturing capacity ahead of what the company expects will be years of relentless AI demand, Chair and Chief Executive Lisa Su said Thursday.
Speaking at the CommonWealth Magazine 45th Anniversary Forum in Taipei, Su identified advanced packaging, high-end substrates, test infrastructure, and rack-scale system integration as the four areas where AMD and its Taiwanese partners will concentrate spending between now and 2029.
"Now is the time we must invest, because we need sufficient capacity for the next one, two, and three years," Su told the audience at the Marriott Hotel. The commitment, she added, amounted to a "very significant vote of confidence" in Taiwan's technological capabilities.
A Supply Chain No Other Geography Can Match
Su was unambiguous about why Taiwan sits at the center of AMD's buildout. From raw materials and advanced process nodes through back-end packaging, contract manufacturing, and now rack-level system assembly, every tier of the semiconductor supply chain operates within a tightly coordinated geography — a structural advantage she said no other location in the world can replicate.
"The only place that brings all of this together is Taiwan," she said, describing the island as the global hub for advanced technology deployment.
The remarks placed fresh emphasis on a shift that has quietly reshaped the semiconductor industry: the AI race is no longer decided purely by chip performance but increasingly by who can build and sustain production capacity at scale. For AMD, that means moving well upstream of the GPU itself — into the packaging, interconnects, and rack-level infrastructure that determine how quickly AI systems can actually be deployed.
Venice Enters Volume Production on TSMC's 2nm Node
Alongside the investment announcement, Su confirmed two technical milestones reached this week. AMD's latest CPU, codenamed Venice, has entered volume production using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.'s 2-nanometer process — among the most advanced nodes commercially available. Su described the ramp as a meaningful step forward for high-performance computing.
She also said AMD has been among the earliest volume adopters of successive packaging generations, including 2.5D, CoWoS, embedded face bonding, and 3D stacking. Because AMD pushes these technologies into mass production before most of its peers, she argued, it is reasonable to ask supply chain partners to share upfront capacity investment when AMD accelerates its own expansion plans.
Bottlenecks 'Almost Everywhere,' but Industry Has Tools to Fix Them
Su acknowledged that demand is outrunning supply across multiple dimensions. Constraints on memory, CPU capacity, and data center power availability are all visible, she said — bottlenecks that span the entire stack from silicon to the grid.
She was nonetheless sanguine about the industry's ability to work through them. The semiconductor supply chain, Su said, has a consistent track record of identifying constraints and engineering around them once they come into focus.
On the broader question of geographic diversification, Su said it is both natural and necessary for Taiwan's supply chain players to expand globally. A decade ago semiconductors were a niche industry, she noted; today they are foundational infrastructure for governments and corporations alike, which means Taiwanese companies with specialized capabilities have every reason to participate in the global ecosystem.
Arizona Fab Producing 'Very Good Results'
Su also addressed TSMC's fabrication facility in Arizona, where skeptics had questioned whether a U.S.-based plant could match the precision and yield rates achieved in Taiwan. "Frankly, it was not easy," she acknowledged — then said AMD is already producing chips there with strong results.
She attributed the progress to the transferability of Taiwan's accumulated processes and institutional knowledge, describing it as a natural extension of how the industry teaches itself to replicate quality across borders.
Taiwan as Fulcrum, Not Just Factory
The broader message Su delivered to Taiwan's supply chain was pointed: AMD's next phase of AI infrastructure expansion will depend on Taiwan not as a passive manufacturer but as an active technology partner sharing both the risk and the upside of the buildout.
From 2-nanometer silicon and leading-edge packaging to rack-scale integration, Taiwan's role in AMD's strategy has grown from indispensable to something closer to structural — a critical fulcrum, Su suggested, in the global expansion of AI infrastructure itself. （Related： Happy City Index 2026: Copenhagen Leads Global Rankings as Taipei and New Taipei Enter Top 50 ｜ Latest ）
