Under the Radar: What should we know about ASUS Cloud’s emphasis on Sovereign AI right now? Its CEO spills the beans.

Some of the world’s most successful technology companies didn’t begin in gleaming corporate campuses. They began with bold ideas exchanged at the simplest of places. Sometimes, that place was a diner offering bottomless coffee and huge slabs of pancakes. For ASUS, that place was a humble coffee shop in Taipei. Back in 1989, a group of ambitious engineers came together with a vision of creating a “small and beautiful company”, one that could develop world-class technology from Taiwan for the rest of the world.  More than 30 years on, ASUS is a global tech leader best known for its world-class motherboards, high-quality personal computers, monitors, graphics cards, routers and other technology solutions.  But the company is now evolving beyond hardware and doubling down on artificial intelligence infrastructure and cloud services – an area it sees potential as the adoption of AI increases rapidly.  For one thing, ASUS teamed up with the Taiwanese government to found the Taiwan AI Cloud Corporation in 2021 to build secure, scalable and sovereign AI infrastructure.   The company helps governments and enterprises roll out and operate Sovereign AI systems, where their AI models and data are secured and operated within their own borders, laws and culture.  It says it is seeing a global trend of countries investing in local capabilities to drive innovation specific to their language, culture and the economy. But where is demand coming from and how big of an opportunity is this for the firm? Beyond specific nations, who should build the collective AI infrastructure for Asia, and how should they monetise them? What will this mean for ASUS and Taiwan AI Cloud? On Under the Radar, finance presenter Chua Tian Tian posed these questions to Peter Wu, CEO of ASUS Cloud and Taiwan AI Cloud.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.