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Apple supplier Foxconn to build ‘AI factories’ using Nvidia’s chips and software for a range of applications including self-driving cars

  • Foxconn and Nvidia plan to build ‘AI factories’ globally, creating a new type of manufacturing anchored on artificial intelligence
  • Taiwan’s Foxconn wants to replicate its level of success in assembling Apple’s iPhones, as it expands into making electric vehicles for other firms

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Nvidia Corp chief executive Jensen Huang, left, and Foxconn Technology Group chairman Liu Young-way present the two companies’ latest collaboration at Hon Hai Technology Day in Taipei on October 18, 2023. Photo: Agence France-Presse
Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group, the world’s largest electronics contract manufacturer, will build a new kind of data centre using Nvidia Corp’s chips and software for a range of applications including self-driving cars, the two companies said on Wednesday.
Sharing a stage at the Taiwanese firm’s annual tech showcase in Taipei, Foxconn chairman Liu Young-way and Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang said their companies were building these so-called artificial intelligence (AI) factories together.

“A new type of manufacturing has emerged – the production of intelligence. And the data centres that produce it are AI factories,” Huang said, adding that Foxconn had the expertise and scale to build them globally.

Showing a hand-drawn sketch, Huang explained how these “AI factories” could be applied to a fleet of autonomous vehicles.

A man inspects the Foxtron Model B electric vehicle, part of a range of EVs made by Foxconn Technology Group, on display during Hon Hai Technology Day in Taipei on October 18, 2023. Photo: EPA-EFE
A man inspects the Foxtron Model B electric vehicle, part of a range of EVs made by Foxconn Technology Group, on display during Hon Hai Technology Day in Taipei on October 18, 2023. Photo: EPA-EFE

“This car would of course go through life experience and collect more data. The data would go to the AI factory,” the Taiwan-born Huang said. “The AI factory would improve the software and update the entire AI fleet. In the future, every company, every industry, will have AI factories.”

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