US firm Nvidia wants to set up chip hub in Vietnam

U.S. chip giant Nvidia, the world's largest chip company by market cap, wants to set up a base in Vietnam to attract talents from around the world, helping the Southeast Asian country develop a semiconductor and artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem.

The ecosystem will prompt tech companies and startups to design and develop supercomputers and produce new software, contributing to Vietnam’s digitalization.

Nvidia president and CEO Jensen Huang made the statement during a meeting with Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh in Hanoi on Sunday. The meeting came three months after a meeting between Chinh and Huang at Nvidia’s headquarters.

Nvidia has already invested around $250 million in Vietnam and considers the country a significant market, Huang said.

The CEO highlighted the good relations between Vietnam and the U.S. as a favorable foundation for bilateral collaboration in the semiconductor and AI sectors.

He highly regarded Vietnam's potential and clear strategy to develop semiconductors and AI, as well as the country’s workforce.

At the meeting, PM Chinh suggested Nvidia support Vietnam in building and carrying out its national semiconductor strategy and developing all three phases of this industry – design, fab, and packaging and testing.

The PM asked the U.S. chipmaker to focus on infrastructure development; setting up training centers, research and development centers, design centers and big data hubs; and opening semiconductor engineer training courses in the Southeast Asian country.

He boasted that Vietnam has around 6,000 engineers working at domestic and foreign companies, and aims to train 50,000 highly skilled engineers by 2030, with priority given to those specializing in chip design.

The Vietnamese government will establish a working group, headed by PM Chinh, to implement agreements between the two sides, the PM said.

Huang is scheduled to hold a meeting with Vietnam's Minister of Planning and Investment and representatives from government agencies and leading Vietnamese tech companies at the National Innovation Center on Monday morning.

During his stay in Malaysia on Friday, Huang said that Southeast Asia has strong potential as a market for AI and chips. Nvidia and Malaysian conglomerate YTL's utilities unit will jointly develop AI infrastructure in Malaysia with a $4.3 billion investment deal.