NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) took the stage at GTC Taiwan and Computex Taipei on June 1, delivering the event's opening keynote at the Taipei Music Center — and immediately electrified the crowd.
Huang appeared alongside his parents, invited the audience to applaud them, and said he was "happy to be home." He then thanked Taiwan's industry partners and noted that NVIDIA had simultaneously organized 70 watch parties across Taiwan so that everyone could experience the keynote together. "NVIDIA has so many things to share, and so many partners to thank," he said.
He then displayed what drew the most attention: a single backdrop that mapped NVIDIA's Taiwan supply chain alongside his favorite local eateries — placing Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (台積電, TSMC), Hon Hai Precision (鴻海, Foxconn), Quanta Computer (廣達), Wistron (緯創), and Wiwynn (緯穎) side by side with night-market staples such as Fruit LADY, Brick Kiln (磚窯), Wangji Fucheng Zongzi (王記府城肉粽), Fu Pa Wang Pork Restaurant (富霸王豬腳), Flower Restaurant (花娘小館), and the trillion-dollar banquet venue — all on one slide.
From Night-Market Stalls to Semiconductor Giants: Huang's Vision of Taiwan's Ecosystem
The backdrop was more than a visual flourish. By placing semiconductor fabs, server manufacturers, system assemblers, medical institutions, schools, and research centers alongside street-food landmarks, Huang reframed Taiwan not merely as a manufacturing hub but as an integrated ecosystem — one where industrial capability and the warmth of everyday life are inseparable.
Huang argued that when observers discuss the NVIDIA ecosystem, they typically focus on software stacks, developer communities, and applications built atop NVIDIA computing systems. The real ecosystem, he said, extends upstream through Taiwan's supply chain and downstream to data centers and end users.
"This is where it all begins," Huang said. Taiwan holds the world's most comprehensive and capable supply chain ecosystem, he added, and NVIDIA's joint growth with Taiwan partners this year has been, in his words, remarkable.
Agentic AI Arrives — and Taiwan's Supply Chain Enters Its Next Phase
Huang noted that when he last appeared in Taiwan two years ago, the conversation centered on generative AI and the wave of AI development it would unleash. That wave, he said, has now materialized: agentic AI has arrived — AI systems capable of autonomous, multi-step reasoning and action — and with it, genuinely useful AI.
Using software development as a case study, Huang pointed to rapidly rising code-commit volumes on GitHub as evidence that AI is already amplifying engineer productivity. He pushed back against predictions that AI will eliminate engineering jobs, arguing instead that when AI multiplies individual output, companies are incentivized to hire more engineers — not fewer — because higher productivity generates greater economic value.
For NVIDIA and its Taiwan supply chain partners, the structural implication is sustained demand growth. Tokens have become units that generate revenue and profit, Huang said. AI companies therefore need to produce more tokens, which requires building more AI factories, which in turn drives accelerating demand across Taiwan's supply chain.
Vera Rubin Enters Mass Production — Supply Chain Scale Doubles
Huang announced that NVIDIA's next-generation platform, Vera Rubin, has entered full-scale mass production. The supply chain infrastructure built for Vera Rubin is twice the size of that assembled for the Grace Blackwell platform, he said. Assembly time has also improved significantly: configuring a Grace Blackwell rack once required approximately two hours; a Vera Rubin rack can now be assembled in five minutes.
Taken together, Huang's keynote positioned Taiwan at the center of the AI era — not as a passive contract manufacturer, but as the foundational layer of a global technology stack that stretches from fruit carts and sticky-rice dumpling stalls to wafer fabs, server halls, and AI factories.
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