Pat Gelsinger, a partner at Silicon Valley venture capital firm Playground Global and former CEO of Intel (Intel), visited Taiwan today. When asked about the Trump administration's push to return chip manufacturing to the United States, he said that giving the supply chain more resilience is the best policy. He strongly supports the Trump administration's increase in semiconductor production capacity in the United States. Now TSMC is also investing in the United States, which is beneficial to the global future.
Jisinger pointed out that the role of semiconductors will not decline. The semiconductor industry continues to grow and is important to all technologies and industries, as well as to all countries and economies.
"I personally think that giving the supply chain more resilience is the best policy," Jisinger said. He very much supports the Trump administration's policy of increasing semiconductor production capacity in the United States. Now TSMC is also investing in the United States to encourage more advanced R&D capabilities and processes in the United States. This will be beneficial to the global future and make the existing supply chain more resilient.
Talking about the possible risks brought by the US Section 232 semiconductor investigation, Jisinger bluntly said, "Tariffs are not our biggest concern." Although it will be more or less affected by policy, the policy will not necessarily be the same 10 years from now. What Playground needs to deal with now is the core technology aspect. Most of its portfolio companies are headquartered in Silicon Valley and actively maintain contacts and interactions with governments of various countries, including the US government.
Playground was founded in 2015, with more than US$1.2 billion in funds under management (approximately NT$37.4 billion), focusing on basic innovation challenges in key areas such as next-generation computing, automation, energy transition and bioengineering.
Playground held a press conference in Taipei today to announce cooperation with seven companies, spanning the fields of power management, optical communications, interconnection and lithography technology, including PowerLattice Technologies, Picojool, Vertical Semiconductor, Ayar Labs, d-Matrix, NextSilicon, and xLight.
Ji Singer pointed out that this is his 50th time coming to Taiwan. He has many old friends here and will meet many people today to continue to deepen mutual relations and friendship. He said that today we are talking about next-generation computing. Playground cooperates with the best and most advanced companies. Playground needs to solve the most difficult problems, so it needs to create a good environment. This is also the origin of the company's name "Playground".
Jisinger said that in his more than 40 years in the industry, he used to focus on traditional computing, but now he can solve almost any problem by combining central processing unit (CPU), artificial intelligence (AI) computing and quantum computing. For example, in the field of materials, more structured simulation methods can be used to find answers through mathematical operations. This is the key to truly realizing next-generation computing.
Jisinger bluntly said that we are now in the best stage of technological innovation. There will be many new breakthrough technologies in the future, which is an exciting time.
Talking about the reason for coming to Taiwan again, Jisinger said that Taiwan has a unique status. There is no place like Taiwan. An idea may come up during breakfast time. A prototype can be made at noon and manufactured in Taiwan at night. This can only be done in Taiwan. Taiwan has a very good ecosystem, supply chain and manufacturing capabilities. Every company that wants to innovate can achieve success by cooperating with Taiwan.
One of the companies Playground invested in is Ayar Labs, which today announced a strategic partnership with Creative Electronics, a Taiwanese application-specific chip (ASIC) manufacturer, to integrate co-packaged optics (CPO) into Creative Electronics’ advanced ASIC design services.
D-Matrix, another company invested by Playground, announced today that it is cooperating with Taiwan's major ASIC manufacturer Sechi Electronics, semiconductor packaging and testing factory ASE, and wafer foundry TSMC to jointly develop 3D memory stacking solutions to accelerate the development of AI.
Further reading: Ayar Labs brings creativity to build optical XPU, challenging the limits of copper interconnect and targeting ultra-large-scale enterprises The former CEO of Intel is starting again and appears in Tokyo. Pat Gelsinger moves to venture capital to assist rising semiconductor stars.