In a rare public meeting with a senior foreign tech leader, Taiwan President Lai Ching-te hailed Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra for his faith and sustained investment in the island on Friday
Despite the fact that Taiwan is home to the world’s largest contract chipmaker, TSMC, whose chips are instrumental in the acceleration of artificial intelligence (AI) applications, it is exceedingly uncommon for Taiwan’s president to have publicly announced encounters with senior foreign technology executives.
In a video released by the president’s office, Lai expressed gratitude to Mehrotra for “demonstrating trust and support for Taiwan.”
“I would like to express my gratitude to Micron for its ongoing support of the advancement of DRAM process technology in Taiwan and for its long-term investment in Taiwan,” he continued, referring to dynamic random access memory (DRAM) processors.
Micron is one of the few providers of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) processors that are utilized in advanced AI systems.
According to Lai, Taiwan anticipates that Micron will continue to enhance its research and development capabilities, and the government will establish a “friendly living environment” for foreign talents to accommodate the requirements of businesses.
Mehrotra expressed his gratitude to Lai for the opportunity to meet with him today.
The president’s official schedule, which is distributed to correspondents, did not include Lai’s meeting with Mehrotra.
Lai, who assumed office in May, has been subjected to persistent pressure from China, which regards democratically-governed Taiwan as its own territory and refers to him as a “separatist.”
He has repeatedly rejected Beijing’s sovereignty claims and has proposed to engage in negotiations that have been rejected by China.