From heated rivalry to frenemies: Inside the cutthroat business of ruling tech in Asia
South Korea and Taiwan are shifting from a competitive rivalry to a strategic partnership to meet the global demand for AI accelerator chips. This collaboration is essential for the production of high-end hardware used by tech giants like Nvidia and AMD.
Why it matters
The interdependence of these two nations is critical to the global AI infrastructure supply chain, highlighting the geopolitical and economic stakes of the AI boom.
Doomscrolling on an iPhone, firing endless questions at ChatGPT, or streaming a 4K film on Netflix on your laptop – behind these modern life conveniences lies a high-stakes contest between two Asian technology powers. For decades, South Korea and Taiwan have been locked in a cut-throat battle for supremacy in the technologies that underpin the digital age, from televisions and smartphones to memory chips. Now, that heated rivalry is turning into a once unthinkable partnership, as they race together to deliver the world’s most sought-after commodity: AI accelerators – the specialized hardware chips that process up to trillions of calculations at once to train generative models. “We don’t have time to get into this old-fashioned conflict,” said Sung Soo Eric Kim, distinguished guest professor at Keio University in Tokyo.
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