Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan Taiwan-bound for closed-door meetings ahead of Computex

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan’s visit to Taiwan, China is far from ceremonial—it’s a strategic move to secure CoWoS advanced packaging capacity amid an AI-driven supply crunch. With Nvidia and AMD CEOs also present, the trio is collectively pressuring TSMC to lock in 2026–2027 allocations for high-end heterogeneous integration. This intensifies pressure on Samsung and Intel’s IFS to fast-track their own 2.5D/3D stacking solutions or risk irrelevance in AI accelerators. Geopolitically, tighter U.S. export controls mean deeper entanglement with Taiwan, China carries escalating compliance overhead; any cross-strait volatility could disrupt North American datacenter rollouts. Nvidia may push localized Grace Hopper validation, while AMD likely accelerates MI300X–Zen 5 co-packaging. Over the next 18 months, packaging—not transistor scaling—will define AI chip leadership, cementing TSMC’s unprecedented pricing power.