Taiwan, a semiconductor manufacturing powerhouse that hosts much of the world's artificial intelligence hardware supply chain, is falling short in building out its own AI infrastructure, according to voices of self-criticism emerging on the island. Concern centers on the pace and scale of investment compared with nearby South Korea and Japan.
At the 2026 Tech Sovereign Summit Forum hosted by the Taiwan Communications Society, participants said Taiwan has repeatedly championed sovereign AI while lagging in computing power and its electricity base, the Taiwanese newspaper United Daily News reported on the 1st. The forum was held the previous day.
Audrey Tang, Taiwan's former minister of digital affairs, cited this year's Global AI Index compiled in Britain, which ranked Taiwan 16th — far behind the United States and China at first and second, Singapore at third, South Korea at fifth and Japan at 11th. Tang attributed Taiwan's weak AI competitiveness to shortages of computing power and electricity.
"South Korea declared its push for sovereign AI earlier and has already purchased 260,000 graphics processing units from Nvidia, and Japan now holds more than 40,000 GPUs, while Taiwan has just 30,000," Tang said, adding that Taiwan is failing to keep up with its Asian neighbors even in raw computing capacity. Taiwan's manufacturing strength is not translating into computing capacity because hyperscalers — operators of massive data centers — are absorbing the supply of AI chips. Nvidia is reported to have already locked up more than half of TSMC's output from its advanced Chip on Wafer on Substrate, or CoWoS, packaging process through 2027.
Power shortages are also cited as a chronic weakness of Taiwanese industry. "Running 30,000 GPUs alone requires more than one gigawatt of electricity, the output of a single nuclear power plant," Tang said. Taiwan, which is prone to earthquakes, pursued a nuclear phase-out after the 2011 Fukushima accident and completed the exit last May. Liquefied natural gas now accounts for as much as half of total power generation, but supply has been unstable amid the war involving Iran and other disruptions. Taiwan imports all of its LNG.
Those obstacles have left Taiwan's AI development sluggish. Taiwan's per-capita AI usage intensity slipped to 2.08 this year from 2.29 last year. Over the same period, Singapore rose to 5.81 from 4.57, South Korea to 3.78 from 3.73 and Japan to 1.91 from 1.86. James Huang, chairman of the Taiwan External Trade Development Council, has criticized the situation as making Taiwan "a giant in hardware and a dwarf in applications."
The Taiwanese government said it shares those concerns and is focusing on expanding computing capacity. Lin Yi-jing, Taiwan's minister of digital affairs, told the event that the government is building a corpus, or integrated database, to train Taiwan's sovereign AI. The government also plans to secure more than 10,000 GPUs in Taiwan within a year by attracting private investment.
