Taiwan Aims to Become an "Artificial Intelligence Island"

Taiwan's authorities are intensifying efforts to develop a "sovereign AI" program, which aims to increase the combined computational power of state and private sectors to 1,200 petaflops by 2029. According to the Taipei Times, the goal of this initiative is to transform Taiwan into an "artificial intelligence island."

Currently, the computational power of Taiwan’s government supercomputers is approximately 19 petaflops, while including the private sector, the total reaches 103 petaflops. As of the end of last year, Taiwan ranked 11th in the world in terms of computational power. The top positions are held by the United States, Japan, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Finland, China, France, Spain, and South Korea.

At the beginning of 2025, Taiwan’s National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) announced plans to increase the computational power of government supercomputers to 480 petaflops by 2029. With the participation of the private sector, this figure is expected to exceed 1,200 petaflops by that time.

Taiwan's new artificial intelligence-powered supercomputer is scheduled to begin operation in May. Additionally, the island's leaders plan to build a large data center for storing and processing big data, including AI servers. By the end of this year, a cloud-based data processing center will open in Taiwan, and by 2029, a dedicated AI data processing center will be established in Tainan.

These steps are aimed at making Taiwan a key player in the global AI field in the coming years.