A trade show that started as a small tech sourcing fair now plays a vital role in developing artificial intelligence. CNN’s Will Ripley heads to Computex in Taipei, Taiwan, to learn more about the lesser-seen hardware components that form the backbone of AI innovation.

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Rise of AI

Computex, held in Taipei, has grown into one of the world's most influential technology trade shows, drawing thousands of companies and attendees from around the globe. Originally focused on computer parts, the event now serves as a global stage for advancements in artificial intelligence, robotics, and next-generation technology.

Taiwan's expertise in semiconductor manufacturing and AI server production positions it as a critical hub in the AI supply chain. Companies such as Asus and NVIDIA highlight the rapid evolution of hardware, with AI-focused processing units now offering unprecedented performance and efficiency. Despite the industry's high energy demands, innovations from Taiwanese firms are helping to drive more sustainable AI development. Efforts to shift some semiconductor production to other countries continue, but Taiwan remains a key player in the assembly and innovation of AI hardware.

Taiwan’s massive role in the AI supply chain

152 countries, 1,400 companies, 4,800 booths, 86,000 attendees. I'm here on the floor at Computex, fighting the crowds at one of the biggest and busiest most influential trade shows in the world, held right here in Taipei. Forty years ago, a place to buy computer parts, today, a global stage for AI, robotics. This is a robot built entirely out of PC parts. And next generation tech. So it's like kind of I'm seeing a big screen hovering over the room. I'm trying out the latest smart glasses from Asus, a Taiwanese tech giant known for everything from gaming technology to laptops to high performance servers like this. Why is this the latest and greatest? Is there anything that sets this apart? In the past, maybe like five years or even 10 years ago, this machine equivalent to entire the building that you will be seeing, you know, to accommodate the performance. So this one machine here would have taken up this entire. Entire or 10 years, maybe five years ago, it took up entire room of the floor of a real estate that needed. So you would have, you have now condensed an entire room's worth of computing power into this. Into this. Asus says AI focused processing units like this one will improve performance and efficiency for AI development. If there's a rock star at Computex, it's Jensen Huang, co-founder and CEO of AI chip giant NVIDIA. The U.S. company is expanding in Taiwan, looking at robotics and AI as a huge growth area. I caught up with Spencer Huang, NVIDIA's product line manager for robotics. And yes, Jensen's son. He knows a thing or two about AI development. These are all things that they require an immense amount of data. And data, as we know, it is extremely hard to capture, but it's mostly hard to generate. It's computationally expensive. It takes a lot of manpower. It also takes a lot of real data to generate this good synthetic data. And all of this AI development is powered by energy hungry data centers. How much energy do these data centers use? So at the scale we're really building them at, we're going for gigawatt scale AI factories. It's about the same energy consumption as San Francisco. The whole city of San Francisco. Millions of people. Millions of people. All that computing power also generates huge amounts of heat. What happens when I ask ChatTBT or another chatbot a question? So you're going to see wild strings across the entire data center. So power spikes, heat spikes. Although the AI industry is notoriously energy intensive, NVIDIA says their chips increase energy efficiency, empowering AI to help develop more sustainable technologies. You and your family spend a lot of time here in Taiwan. Why is this such an important tech hub? They have the expertise not only to build up huge data centers, but they also have the expertise to really put together all the ecosystem partners and create a consolidated set of solutions that allow you to create both the AI models as well as the data models that we're calling AI factories and data factories. Taiwan is the epicenter of global semiconductor manufacturing, and chips are crucial hardware for AI technology. But there have been recent efforts by the Trump administration to shift semiconductor production to the U.S. That's one piece of the supply chain and what you absolutely need is AI servers. Because AI servers go together to become data centers, and then that's how you get ChatGDP to work, is to have all that hardware put together. Taiwan makes most of the AI servers. And so within the AI server, there's also components that are largely made in Taiwan as well. What do you like the most about coming here to Computex? When it first started, it made a lot of sense for manufacturing fabrication. And now when you look at it, it's actually AI, robotics. So I think Computex has always been very good about being a center for attracting all these different companies together. Which is why Computex is not just growing, it's also shaping the future of AI.

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Taiwan’s massive role in the AI supply chain

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