Taiwan’s Wistron forecasts profit growth on AI demand

台灣緯創預測，人工智慧需求將推動獲利成長。

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Wistron Corp. expects revenue and profit to grow throughout the year as strong demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure drives orders for its contract manufacturing services, company president Jeff Lin (林建勳) said Saturday.

Speaking at the company’s year-end banquet, Lin said AI demand remains robust and is expected to fuel growth momentum through 2027. “AI is not a bubble, but the arrival of a new era,” Lin said, adding that continued expansion of AI infrastructure underpins the company’s optimistic outlook, per CNA.

Lin also praised the Taiwan government’s efforts to reduce US tariffs, saying the lengthy negotiations deserve recognition and should not undermine Taiwan’s long-term competitiveness. He said Wistron’s new plant in Texas is progressing smoothly and is expected to begin mass production in the first quarter of this year, with capacity gradually expanding in the first half.

Lin said Taiwan’s limited land and energy resources mean companies of Wistron’s scale must expand overseas, but emphasized that maintaining core competencies “rooted in Taiwan” remains critical to staying competitive amid global changes. He said Wistron’s strategy of expanding operations in North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia is “key to sustainable operation.”

On overseas capacity deployment, Lin said Wistron announced NT$31.66 billion (US$1 billion) in US investments last year. However, more than half of the company’s actual capital expenditure this year will be allocated to Taiwan, primarily in Hukou and Zhubei in northern Taiwan, with power supply cited as the main challenge.

Lin said power infrastructure in Texas is developing “faster and on a larger scale than we imagined,” making it suitable for later-stage production that requires high electricity consumption during testing and final assembly. He added that resolving tariff issues also makes US-based production advantageous for local delivery.

Lin said Wistron previously pledged to provide 1 million hours of free computing power to Taiwanese startups and academic institutions by 2026. The program received 130 applications by the end of last year, with about 30 selected, nearly 60% of them from the biotechnology sector.

He said 1.2 million computing hours had already been used in the first half of this year, exceeding the original plan. As a result, Wistron will add another 1 million hours of cloud computing capacity in the second half, bringing the total to at least 2.2 million hours provided by 2026.