Nvidia, the world’s most valuable chip company, and Foxconn, the manufacturer of iPhones, have forged a collaboration to construct cutting-edge “AI factories.”

These facilities represent a novel breed of data centers, harnessing the computational prowess of Nvidia chips to fuel a diverse array of applications. These applications span training autonomous vehicles, supporting robotics platforms, and empowering large-scale language models.

This partnership emerges in the backdrop of the United States unveiling plans to curtail the export of advanced chips to China, a development that adversely affects Nvidia.

Specifically, these export restrictions will halt the sale of two high-end artificial intelligence chips, namely the A800 and H800, designed by Nvidia for the Chinese market.

Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, a native of Taiwan, and Young Liu, the Chairman of Foxconn, jointly took the stage at Foxconn’s annual technology showcase in Taipei.

Huang emphasized the emergence of a new manufacturing paradigm, where intelligence production is central, and the facilities generating it are dubbed “AI factories.” He remarked that Foxconn possesses the expertise and global reach to construct these facilities.

Liu articulated Foxconn’s transformation from a manufacturing service company into a platform solution provider, highlighting smart cities and smart manufacturing as additional applications for AI factories.

Nvidia’s foray into AI applications, powered by their advanced chips, has propelled the company’s stock market valuation past the $1 trillion mark, with shares surging more than threefold in the current year.

This achievement places Nvidia among the select “Trillion dollar club” of publicly traded U.S. companies, alongside Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon.

Concurrently, Foxconn, renowned for manufacturing a substantial portion of Apple products, is diversifying its business interests. Their ambition is to replicate the success they’ve had with personal computers and smartphones.

In an exclusive interview in June, Liu conveyed that electric vehicles (EVs) would be the driving force behind Foxconn’s growth in the forthcoming decades.

Furthermore, Foxconn and Nvidia had previously disclosed a partnership in January, focusing on the development of autonomous vehicle platforms, with Foxconn manufacturing electronic control units for cars built on Nvidia’s chips.

Last Updated: 19 October 2023