Taiwan says that the meetings in Silicon Valley have brought in $900 million in new business.
Taiwan: The ministry said on Saturday that Taiwan’s economy minister met with top executives at four major tech companies in California’s Silicon Valley and brought in new business worth T$30 billion ($940 million).
Wang Mei-hua has been in the U.S. all week to deal with “concerns” about supply chains and geopolitical issues, according to her office.
Taiwan is a major producer of semiconductors. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., the world’s largest contract chip maker, is based there, and it supplies most of the world’s biggest tech companies.
The fact that the island is a producer has made the US worry that it is too dependent on Taiwan, especially as China steps up military drills to prove its claims to sovereignty.
Related: Elon Musk proposes China-Taiwan tensions after Russia-Ukraine plan
In a statement, the ministry said that Wang met with executives from NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA), Cisco Systems Inc (NASDAQ:CSCO), Applied Materials Inc (NASDAQ:AMAT), and Synopsys (NASDAQ:SNPS) Inc on Friday. They were “very interested” in what she had to say, the statement said.
“U.S. research and development investments and orders in Taiwan worth more than T$30 billion are expected as a result of the visits,” it said, without going into more detail.
The ministry said that Wang met with Jensen Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA, Gary Dickerson, the CEO of Applied Materials, Guy Diedrich, the senior vice president and global innovation officer of Cisco, and Aart de Geus, the chairman and CEO of Synopsys.
NVIDIA didn’t say anything about the meeting. The other three companies did not respond right away when asked for their thoughts.
Related: Taiwan says it will protect the interests of its companies in the U.S.-led Chip 4 Group.
Wang said on Tuesday that if Taiwan stays safe, so will the global supply chains for important semiconductors.
(1 dollar = 31.9720 Taiwan dollars)