21SEP

Taipei keeps paying for the AI build

1 min read

16:45UTC

Taiwan's Executive Yuan confirmed on 17 September that funding continues for the AI New Ten Major Infrastructure Projects, budgeted above NT$190bn since March, while its training pipeline runs at 140,000 professionals a year against a 400,000 target.

← Back to AI closes the hiring door, not the exit Jump to analysis ↓

EconomicDeveloping

Key takeaway

Taiwan funds AI skills to protect its chip exports, not to cushion redundancies.

Taiwan's Executive Yuan, the island's cabinet, confirmed on 17 September 2026 that it will keep funding the AI New Ten Major Infrastructure Projects, budgeted above NT$190bn since March, citing the need to hold Taiwan's position in the AI and semiconductor supply chain ¹. Its National Development Council trained 140,000 AI professionals during 2025, against a cumulative target of 400,000 by 2028 ².

Taipei's reasoning runs opposite to every other state in this briefing. The others reach for skills money because they fear what AI does to employment. Taiwan reaches for it because the island manufactures the hardware the boom runs on, and a shortage of engineers threatens the export position long before it threatens anybody's job security. Samsung and SoftBank Corp. reported the demand side of that same supply chain growing through August .

That target needs roughly 130,000 people a year for the remaining three years to land on time, against 140,000 delivered in the most recent full year. A pipeline running at pace is an unusual thing to report in this field, where most workforce targets are announced and never audited again. Whether those 140,000 end up in AI work, or merely hold a certificate, the council has not published.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Taiwan's cabinet, the Executive Yuan, confirmed on 17 September that it will keep funding a group of AI infrastructure projects that has already had more than NT$190 billion budgeted since March. At the same time, Taiwan's National Development Council reported it has trained 140,000 AI professionals during 2025, working toward a target of 400,000 by 2028. Taiwan is betting on building both sides of the AI economy at once: the physical and digital infrastructure AI needs to run, and a pipeline of workers trained to build and operate it, rather than treating infrastructure spending and workforce training as separate problems.

Sources:Central News Agency (Taiwan)

Mentions:National Development Council →Taiwan →SoftBank →Samsung Electronics →Executive Yuan →

First Reported In

Update #20 · AI closes the hiring door, not the exit

Central News Agency (Taiwan)· 21 Sept 2026

Read original →

Different Perspectives

Salesforce, Synopsys and TD Bank Group

Salesforce, Synopsys and TD Bank Group each filed quarterly disclosures in late August booking restructuring charges, or none at all, without naming AI as a cause. Their silence matters because Challenger's tracker shows AI as a stated reason fell to fourth place in August even as the year-to-date AI-cut total still leads at 116,175.

Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Indonesia

Singapore launched its Skills and Workforce Development Agency on 16 September, giving citizens six months of free premium AI tools, while South Korea ring-fenced its AI tax windfall in a new Future Response Fund. Taiwan kept funding its AI build past NT$190bn and Indonesia rewired vocational training around AI literacy, betting state-built skills beat a market-led adjustment.

ver.di, CGT Fonction Publique and CCOO

Germany's ver.di banked a 3.3% pay rise on 1 September and opened talks on a Tarifvertrag Transformation covering dismissal bans and reskilling, while France's CGT rejected Paris's AI negotiating timetable the same week. Spain's CCOO went further on 21 September, proposing to tax companies by the jobs they generate rather than wait for the next bargaining round.

BIS General Manager and Federal Reserve governors

The BIS's General Manager said on 10 September that AI displacement remains limited, even as the BIS's own survey found nearly 80% of firms plan to automate roles. Two Federal Reserve governors made the same point in July, arguing the labour-market data does not yet show a mass-firing event.

Bank of Canada, ONS and ECB

The Bank of Canada found the job-finding gap between AI-exposed and unexposed occupations widened from 2.2 to 13.9 percentage points since 2015-19, while separations barely moved. That framing, a hiring freeze rather than a firing wave, is echoed by the ECB's finding that euro-area AI use hit 52% of workers in 2026, concentrated among the university-educated.

Office for National Statistics

Deferred its Transformed Labour Force Survey beyond November 2027 and disclosed a May 2026 telephone-collection failure. The ONS carries no AI-attribution layer at all, so Britain sits outside this month's cohort of measuring states by its own admission.