Taiwan president thanks Micron CEO for his trust in Taiwan

TAIPEI (Reuters) – Taiwan President Lai Ching-te thanked memory chipmaker Micron (NASDAQ:)’s Chief Executive Sanjay Mehrotra on Friday for his trust and continued investment in the island, in a rare public meeting with a senior foreign tech executive.

It is very unusual for Taiwan’s president to have publicised meetings with senior foreign tech executives despite the island being home to the world’s largest contract chipmaker TSMC, whose chips help to power the surge in artificial intelligence (AI) applications.

Lai thanked Mehrotra for “showing trust and support for Taiwan” in video released by the president’s office.

“I want to thank Micron for its long-term investment in Taiwan and continuing to promote the upgrading of DRAM process technology in Taiwan,” he added, referring to dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips.

Micron is one of the few providers of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips used in advanced AI systems.

Taiwan hopes Micron will continue to expand its research and development capabilities, and the government will create a “friendly living environment” for foreign talents to meet the needs of companies, Lai said.

“It’s an honour to meet with you today,” Mehrotra told Lai.

Micron did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Lai’s meeting with Mehrotra was not previously announced in the president’s official schedule which is sent to reporters.

Lai, who took office in May, has faced sustained pressure from China, which views democratically-governed Taiwan as its own territory and calls him a “separatist”. He rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims and has repeatedly offered talks that China has rebuffed.

(This story has been refiled to change company identifiers in paragraphs 1 and 2)