Lisa Su's whirlwind Taiwan visit: AMD confirms wider Taiwan supply-chain investment, stretches capacity planning to 3–5 years
The AMD chief executive met Hon Hai, Quanta, Asus, Acer and TSMC in a single day. She confirmed that the US$10 billion investment announced in May is on track and said AMD is “raising that number,” but gave no new figure. Taiwan stocks set another record close the same day, yet foreign investors turned net sellers.
AMD (超微) chief executive Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) arrived in Taiwan early on Oct. 6 for a one-day trip. According to CNA, PTS, United Daily News and Focus Taiwan, she met partners including Hon Hai, Quanta, Asus and Acer in the morning, then went to Hsinchu in the afternoon to see TSMC and others in the semiconductor supply chain. She told reporters that the US$10 billion Taiwan investment AMD announced in May is progressing as expected and that “we are raising that number,” but she did not disclose a new amount. The “US$10 billion” is therefore the original pledge, not a newly announced top-up. Su said AMD and its Taiwan partners have stretched their capacity planning from one to two years to three to five, and that both wafer fabrication and back-end packaging must be secured ahead of time. The reason is rising demand for AI computing products such as CPUs and GPUs.
Asked about Taiwan Strait geopolitical risk, she said geographic diversification is good for every company, but that Taiwan is “critical” to the global semiconductor supply chain, and especially to AMD. She also credited the support of TSMC's Arizona fab. Reports say her next stop is South Korea on the 8th, but that remains a media account, and AMD has not confirmed it. On the 5th, some outlets had reported that she would meet TSMC to compete for capacity. By publicly confirming the visit, she turned the capacity race from rumor into an open topic. Industry sources caution that the squeeze in advanced packaging and leading-edge process capacity is no longer limited to TSMC and has begun to spread to testing, packaging and substrates. Some outlets call this her second visit to Taiwan this year, while Focus Taiwan calls it the third. Accounts differ, so this edition does not use a count.
In the market, the TAIEX gained 110.51 points on the 6th to close at 49,822.55, another record close. It touched about 49,968 intraday, roughly 30 points short of 50,000, but still closed below that mark. Trading value was about NT$975.9 billion, less than 90% of the previous day's NT$1.15 trillion. Flows turned: foreign and mainland Chinese investors were net sellers of NT$6.657 billion, ending four straight days of net buying. Investment trusts sold a net NT$15.85 billion, mainly cutting UMC, and proprietary dealers bought a net NT$1.721 billion. The three major institutional investors together were net sellers of about NT$20.786 billion (Storm Media counts NT$18.896 billion; the two use different bases). Foreign selling was heaviest in AUO. The NT dollar closed at 31.781, up 0.7 fen for a fifth straight gain, though the foreign selling slowed the rise. On Wall Street overnight, stocks closed higher, with the Nasdaq and Nvidia at records, while TSMC's ADR slipped 0.72%.