Foxconn, Nvidia Team Up to Establish “AI Factories”

The world's most valuable chip company Nvidia and iPhone maker Foxconn have formed a partnership aimed at establishing "AI factories” that will train autonomous cars, robots, and chatbots. 

The announcement was made by Jensen Huang, Co-Founder and Chief Executive, Nvidia, at Foxconn's annual tech event in Taipei. Huang emphasized the transformation of the manufacturing landscape with intelligence production taking center stage. 

Nvidia's advanced chips, widely employed in AI applications, have propelled the company's market value to over US$1 trillion. This milestone makes Nvidia the fifth publicly traded US company to join the "Trillion-dollar club," alongside tech giants such as Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon.

These AI factories represent a new category of data centers, powered by Nvidia's chips, with a focus on serving a wide array of applications. These include training autonomous vehicles, powering robotics platforms, and facilitating the functioning of large language models.

This development unfolds in the context of recent US export regulations targeting AI chip sales to China. These regulatory adjustments are anticipated to impact companies like Nvidia, known for their high-performance semiconductors.

As previously reported by MBN, these new rules, issued by the US Commerce Department, intend to close loopholes in export controls introduced a year ago. They extend the scope to include chips that are slightly less powerful than the initially covered ones but still possess advanced capabilities. 

The latest export restrictions are designed to limit the sale of two leading AI chips, A800 and H800, specifically tailored for the Chinese market.

Foxconn, widely recognized for manufacturing over half of the world's Apple products, is transitioning from being primarily a manufacturing service provider to becoming a platform solutions company. It is diversifying its business portfolio, with a focus on smart cities, smart manufacturing, and autonomous technology, particularly in the electric vehicle (EVs) sector. Foxconn said it is gearing up for electric cargo van production and is on the verge of launching a low Earth orbit satellite.