[News] Taiwan Server Supply Chain Wistron, GIGABYTE will be benefit from UK’s AI Chip Purchase

Following Saudi Arabia’s $13 billion investment, the UK government is dedicating £100 million (about $130 million) to acquire thousands of NVIDIA AI chips, aiming to establish a strong global AI foothold. Potential beneficiaries include Wistron, GIGABYTE, Asia Vital Components, and Supermicro.

Projections foresee a $150 billion AI application opportunity within 3-5 years, propelling the semiconductor market to $1 trillion by 2030. Taiwan covers the full industry value chain. Players like TSMC, Alchip, GUC, Auras, Asia Vital Components, SUNON, EMC, Unimicron, Delta, and Lite-On are poised to gain.

Reports suggest the UK is in advanced talks with NVIDIA for up to 5,000 GPU chips, but models remain undisclosed. The UK government recently engaged with chip giants NVIDIA, Supermicro, Intel, and others through the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) to swiftly acquire necessary resources for Prime Minister Sunak’s AI development initiative. Critics question the adequacy of the £100 million investment in NVIDIA chips, urging Chancellor Jeremy Hunt to allocate more funds to support the AI project.

NVIDIA’s high-performance GPU chips have gained widespread use in AI fields. Notably, the AI chatbot ChatGPT relies heavily on NVIDIA chips to meet substantial computational demands. The latest iteration of AI language model, GPT-4, requires a whopping 25,000 NVIDIA chips for training. Consequently, experts contend that the quantity of chips procured by the UK government is notably insufficient.

Of the UK’s £1 billion investment in supercomputing and AI, £900 million is for traditional supercomputers, leaving £50 million for AI chip procurement. The budget recently increased from £70 million to £100 million due to global chip demand.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE also ordered thousands of NVIDIA AI chips, and Saudi Arabia’s order includes at least 3,000 of the latest H100 chips. Prime Minister Sunak’s AI initiative begins next summer, aiming for a UK AI chatbot like ChatGPT and AI tools for healthcare and public services.

As emerging AI applications proliferate, countries are actively competing in the race to bolster AI data centers, turning the acquisition of AI-related chips into an alternative arms race. Compal said, “An anticipate significant growth in the AI server sector in 2024, primarily within hyperscale data centers, with a focus on European expansion in the first half of the year and a shift toward the US market in the latter half.”