Founded in 1986, PANJIT Group is approaching a major milestone: its 40th anniversary. In an exclusive interview, founder and Group President Jason Fang reflected on the company's entrepreneurial journey, which began shortly after completing his military service, when he launched a red-brick manufacturing business specializing in tunnel kiln technology that later became the largest brick factory in southern Taiwan.Looking back on those early years, Jason Fang believes entrepreneurship is built on respecting professional expertise, building the right values within an organization, and fulfilling corporate social responsibility. These principles laid the foundation for PANJIT's evolution into a leading Integrated Device Manufacturer (IDM) in the power semiconductor industry, with capabilities spanning wafer fabrication, packaging, and testing.Like any enduring enterprise, PANJIT's journey came with its share of challenges. Along the way, a key source of the company's strength has been the close partnership between Jason Fang and his brother, Chairman & CEO Jeff Fang. With complementary leadership styles and strong execution capabilities, the two brothers have worked side by side for four decades, guiding PANJIT through every stage of its growth.Turning the Vision of "Power Semiconductors as the Backbone of Industry" into RealityPANJIT was founded during Taiwan's rapid industrial transformation in the 1980s, when the economy was shifting from traditional manufacturing toward a rapidly growing technology sector. Recognizing the long-term potential of foundational electronic components, Jason Fang chose to enter the power semiconductor industry despite having little prior experience in the field.He believed that every electronic device ultimately depends on efficient power components, viewing power semiconductors as the backbone of modern electronics. The vision, that power semiconductors would become the backbone of the modern electronics industry, became the driving philosophy behind PANJIT's development. Through the collective efforts of Jeff Fang and the entire PANJIT team, has steadily become reality over the past forty years.In its early days, PANJIT entered the market through packaging technologies for fundamental components such as power diodes. Technical support initially came through a Korean supply chain connected to Fairchild Semiconductor, allowing the company to begin as an OEM supplier serving the European home appliance market.Through close collaboration with customers, PANJIT gradually established its quality systems, manufacturing foundation, and domestic supply chain ecosystem, strengthening its operational capabilities and building a solid foothold in the market.Three Key Milestones Behind PANJIT's Rise in Automotive and Data Center Power SemiconductorsThe first came during the Y2K era around 2000, when rapid growth in ICT products and compact consumer electronics accelerated the industry's shift from through-hole components to surface-mount devices (SMD). Recognizing this trend early, PANJIT imported advanced equipment from Switzerland and quickly expanded into the SMD segment, capturing its first major growth opportunity.The second milestone came during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Surging demand for notebooks and electronic devices placed heavy pressure on semiconductor supply chains, making capacity expansion a top industry priority. PANJIT accelerated expansion at its Xuzhou manufacturing base while restructuring its solar panel business to refocus resources on core semiconductor operations. As Jason Fang described it, the company chose to "rise again from where it once faced setbacks."The third turning point emerged from tightening global automotive semiconductor supply chains beginning in 2024, often referred to by the media as the "Nexperia supply disruption." During this period, PANJIT successfully transitioned from a secondary supplier to a primary sourcing partner for many customers. By providing stable supply, competitive pricing, and strong manufacturing support, the company rapidly expanded its automotive power semiconductor business, with automotive applications accounting for approximately 40% of revenue, while further advancing into AI data center and medium- to high-voltage DC power solutions.Expanding the PANJIT Brand in the Global MarketPANJIT's expanding presence in the global automotive supply chain began taking shape as early as 2018, when increasing numbers of Tier 1 automotive customers approached the company in search of additional sourcing partners. This opportunity also highlighted the need to further strengthen product quality and manufacturing systems.While PANJIT's earlier business focused primarily on consumer electronics, automotive applications required a much higher level of reliability and quality assurance. To meet these standards, PANJIT worked with a German team in Europe to establish automotive-grade quality and manufacturing systems, rebuilding its quality management framework over two years.Beginning in 2020, PANJIT significantly increased investment in automotive and high-performance power semiconductor technologies. Through its R&D teams, the company expanded product lines compatible with leading European solutions while investing approximately USD 300 million between 2020 and 2023 to strengthen its competitiveness in the automotive market.By 2024, PANJIT had further expanded its third-generation semiconductor portfolio to include silicon carbide (SiC) products, addressing growing demand from AI data centers and next-generation infrastructure applications. With a strong focus on automotive and AI-related medium- and high-voltage DC power solutions, the PANJIT brand has steadily gained recognition in the global market.At the same time, PANJIT continued expanding its global manufacturing footprint while strengthening Taiwan as its core R&D and advanced packaging hub through manufacturing sites in Kaohsiung. To enhance supply chain flexibility amid evolving geopolitical conditions, the company launched a new packaging production line in the Philippines in 2023. In 2025, PANJIT further expanded its global operations by acquiring a 95% stake in TOREX Vietnam Semiconductor Co., Ltd., including its manufacturing facility. These expansions further strengthened production flexibility, regional capacity allocation, and diversified sourcing options for customers worldwide.PANJIT Advancing into New Frontiers to Power the FutureBuilt upon four decades of steady development, PANJIT is now preparing for its next phase by expanding its international product portfolio, advancing technology capabilities, and cultivating global talent resources to further elevate the PANJIT brand worldwide.Looking ahead, Jason Fang identified three key strategic markets for the company's future development: continued expansion across Europe and the United States, deeper operations within China's increasingly self-sufficient semiconductor ecosystem, and broader opportunities in Japan through collaboration with customers, suppliers, and industry partners.Beyond business expansion, Jason and Jeff Fang also hope to build long-term partnerships with organizations that share similar values while supporting the revitalization and future growth of Japanese industry through collaboration and mutual success.Guided by its vision to "Power the Future," PANJIT continues to expand its global brand presence across the Americas, China, and Japan as the company moves confidently toward its next forty years of growth and innovation.PANJIT Group executives and guests from around the world celebrated its 40th anniversary. Credit: PANJIT

As Large Language Model (LLM) reasoning capabilities continue to evolve, AI Agents have officially surpassed passive "Copilots" to become the core of global digital transformation. These agents are now capable of autonomous planning, multi-step execution, and real-time strategic adjustments, marking a shift in how organisations approach digital transformation. According to MarketsandMarkets' "AI Agents Market Report (2025–2030)," the global AI Agent market is projected to experience explosive growth over the next five years, reflecting widespread enterprise adoption.At AI Expo Taiwan 2026, this shift was a central theme across the event, with multiple organisations highlighting agent-based architectures. HCLTech was among those presenting its perspective under the theme "Are You Agent-Native Yet?". The company showcased a suite of solutions tailored for semiconductor manufacturing and financial services aimed at helping enterprises operationalise AI agents and integrate them into core business processes.Commenting on the evolving AI landscape, Terry Tai, Country Leader of HCLTech Taiwan, noted that "under the traditional Copilot model, humans act as coordinators, giving specific instructions via chat interfaces for AI to execute. In the AI Agent era, however, these agents take a high-level objective, autonomously plan, orchestrate tools, and iteratively complete tasks. Humans have transitioned from coordinators to supervisors and are no longer bogged down by tedious intermediate steps.""The real shift comes down to reasoning capability," said Alan Flower, Executive Vice President and Global Head of Cloud and AI Labs at HCLTech. "It's what allows the latest Frontier models to work through complex intermediate steps, with agentic frameworks enabling shared knowledge across the new multi-model, multi-agent solution domain.As organisations move to AI-Native approaches, it's becoming clear that this isn't just a technology change, it's a cultural transformation as organizations re-engineer their core value streams to be augmented and delivered by agentic AI. You need to think about the responsibilities you are prepared to delegate to AI, retain human-in-the-loop, or allow fully autonomous human-on-the-loop approaches. You need to reskill and train your workforce; teach them to assemble teams of AI agents to whom they will delegate work. For example, software engineers now need to describe software, and delegate the coding to agents, not write all of it themselves."Solving Smart Manufacturing Pain Points: HCLTech Kinetic AI.InspectTaiwan's semiconductor and high-tech industries lead the world, yet traditional facility inspections still struggle with high labor costs and significant safety risks. For instance, in a semiconductor wafer fab, engineers can spend considerable time merely complying with gowning and entry protocols before addressing a single device malfunction. These logistical delays represent a significant, yet often overlooked, hidden cost for high-tech manufacturers.HCLTech featured Kinetic AI.Inspect at the expo, a solution specifically designed to address these pain points. HCLTech builds "Hybrid Inspection Fleets" using quadrupeds (robot dogs) and drones, integrated with 3D reality capture and real-time AI analysis. This solution, already deployed by a leading global aircraft manufacturer, has delivered significant results: reducing unplanned downtime by 30%, increasing inspection frequency by 30x, and boosting post-processing productivity by up to 95%.Flower pointed out that with Kinetic AI.Inspect, if a robot dog detects an anomaly, it doesn't just sound an alarm; it can autonomously trigger an ERP system check for spare parts. If no stock is found, it automatically generates a Purchase Order (PO) to initiate the repair process. This Agent-Native flexibility is something traditional, stationary IoT sensors cannot achieve.Tai added that these applications extend across all manufacturing sectors, including steel, petrochemicals, and offshore wind power, where reducing on-site human risk is critical. Many Taiwanese firms expressed strong interest at the event and are currently planning Proof of Concepts (PoC).Implementing Agentic SDLC with HCLTech AI ForceBeyond manufacturing, HCLTech introduced the AI Force platform for the software-heavy tech sector. This platform supports the full Agentic SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle), covering automated requirement documentation, API specification architecture, and code refactoring. Internal benchmarks show a 30% increase in development speed, a 45% boost in testing efficiency, and a 60% acceleration in legacy application modernization. As a TSMC Design Center Alliance (DCA) partner, HCLTech also applies AI to semiconductor R&D, automating specification interpretation and test plan generation to maximize engineering throughput."When you look at the B2B Accounts Payable landscape, the scale is enormous - in Taiwan alone it's worth around USD 215 billion annually. Yet much of it still runs on manual processes, with global Straight-Through Processing rates sitting at just 32.6%," said Tai."What we're seeing is a shift. By applying specialised agents to tasks like data extraction and duplicate payment detection, it's possible to move beyond those constraints. In some cases, STP rates are rising above 80%, invoice processing costs are dropping by more than 60%, and duplicate payments are falling to under 1%."With over 200,000 employees globally, HCLTech operates innovation labs in the US, UK, Germany, India, and Singapore. In late 2025, HCLTech partnered with NVIDIA to launch an AI Lab focused on scaling Physical AI and cognitive robotics for industrial use. By assessing technical maturity and data readiness, HCLTech continues to help enterprises explore and incubate new technology use cases as their primary AI transformation partner.To find out more, please visit HCLTech.HCLTech at AI Expo Taiwan 2026. Credit: HCLTech

National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU) successfully hosted the 2026 Global Consortium for Innovation and Engineering in Medicine (GCIEM) Global Summit. This international academic exchange highlighted that the cross-disciplinary integration of medicine and engineering has entered a stage of systematic development. Dr. Albert C. Yang, Chairman of the Department of Medicine and Director of the Center for Digital Medicine and Smart Healthcare at NYCU, pointed out that Taiwan is progressively stepping outside traditional medical education frameworks to cultivate interdisciplinary talent bridging engineering and healthcare. The summit served as a crucial opportunity to showcase the results of these long-term investments to a global audience.ASUS showcased its smart healthcare strategic layoutroadmap at the summit. Joe Hsieh, Chief Operating Officer of ASUS, stated that in addition to its talent pool, Taiwan possesses key foundational advantages such as comprehensive medical data, industry agility, and system integration capabilities. While these factors have accelerated the real-world deployment of related applications, ASUS remains committed to further elevating Taiwan's global visibility through ongoing industry-academia collaborations and continuous international platform connections.GCIEM Strengthens International Ties; ASUS Showcases Smart Healthcare SolutionsThe inception of GCIEM traces back to post-pandemic international exchanges. In 2022, an NYCU delegation visited the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and observed that certain academic and research institutions had already integrated engineering into medical education. This catalyzed the joint efforts to establish GCIEM and its annual summit mechanism. Following the inaugural summit in the U.S., Taiwan was selected to host the second edition. Dr. Yang believes that hosting the summit in Taiwan allowed the international community to witness Taiwan’s departure from traditional medical education, systematically demonstrating its achievements in med-tech integration while strengthening global ties.As a global leader in smart healthcare, ASUS participated in GCIEM 2026. At the summit, the company aimed not only to demonstrate its technical expertise but also to validate Taiwan's integration capabilities in engineering medicine. Joe Hsieh noted that ASUS has long been strategically positioned in medical applications. Its technological focus has evolved from early physiological data collection via the ASUS VivoWatch smart health watch and medical imaging utilizing the ASUS Handheld Ultrasound, to advanced AI applications. Progressing from sensor technology and medical image processing to model-driven AI, ASUS is now advancing toward No-Code AI platforms and Agentic AI, showcasing the evolution of medical technology from assistive tools to intelligent decision-making systems.NYCU and ASUS have collaborated extensively in recent years to integrate smart healthcare systems. A prime example is the clinical application of the ASUS VivoWatch smart health watch, which collects physiological signals to assess risks related to sleep, stress, and sleep apnea. Additionally, the introduction of Ambient AI-powered voice recognition technology has significantly enhanced clinical documentation efficiency and optimized medical workflows. Reflecting on these collaborative experiences, Dr. Yang asserted that Taiwan’s smart healthcare capabilities, in terms of both clinical techniques and medical quality, are on par with those of other advanced nations. He believes that international platforms like GCIEM will continue to expand Taiwan's global visibility, systematically presenting its achievements and advantages in the smart healthcare sector.NYCU Highlights Physician-Engineer Program to Deepen MedTech IntegrationDr. Yang further pointed out that the integration of medicine and engineering has progressed from the application layer to the talent cultivation system. To address this, NYCU has implemented a six-year Physician-Engineer Program within its Department of Medicine. The program equips medical students with a solid foundation in electrical engineering and computer science, fostering the cross-disciplinary expertise needed to drive medical innovation and bolster Taiwan's talent advantage in both fields. Joe Hsieh added that beyond talent, Taiwan possesses critical competitive advantages, including comprehensive medical data, industry speed, and exceptional system integration capabilities. [1] Joe Hsieh stated that in addition to talent, Taiwan possesses key competitive advantages such as data, speed, and system integration capabilities.He noted that Taiwan's highly concentrated industrial supply chain enables rapid technical integration and product deployment, while its long-accumulated data provides ideal conditions for AI model training.[2] Regarding medical data, Taiwan's long-accumulated data foundation provides optimal conditions for AI applications. Furthermore, the high concentration of Taiwan’s industrial supply chain enables rapid technical integration and product deployment, ensuring extraordinary industrial responsiveness. In terms of system integration, the capability to transform systems into total solutions remains a core advantage of Taiwan's MedTech ecosystem.Addressing collaborations with academic and research institutions, Joe Hsieh pointed out that as AI enters a phase of high specialization, healthcare is a field with significant barriers to entry. This requires deep, tripartite collaboration between enterprises, academia, and medical institutions to effectively bridge technology with clinical needs. He stated that Taiwan's unique geographical and industrial concentration accelerates the verification and deployment of medical research findings. ASUS has currently deployed hundreds of engineers to develop medical AI, utilizing industry-academia-research collaborations to streamline the path to bringing efficient and high-impact results to real-world clinical applications.AI Enters Clinical Decision-Making; Trust Remains the Key to Healthcare SystemsJoe Hsieh further noted that AI's role in the medical field is rapidly transforming. Medical AI has progressed from the early AI 1.0, which focused on image recognition, to AI 2.0, capable of integrating multimodal data. Moving forward, it will transition into Agentic AI featuring task execution and proactive collaboration capabilities, gradually entering the core of medical workflows.Dr. Yang emphasized that AI's clinical positioning is not to replace physicians, but rather to serve as a support system for preliminary screening and alerts. In areas such as image interpretation, endoscopy, and critical care decision-making, AI assists in improving efficiency and reducing the risk of human omission.As AI evolves from assisting in interpretation to participating in workflows, the depth of its application increases. However, the high requirements for accuracy and accountability in healthcare make trust a critical factor for adoption. Joe Hsieh pointed out that due to the inherent uncertainty in AI judgments, reliability must be enhanced through foundational computing power, trustworthy models, and multi-model cross-validation mechanisms.The question of whether Taiwan can transition from a technology adopter to a standard-setter against the backdrop of rapid medical AI development has become a key focus for both the medical and tech industries. Dr. Yang mentioned that standards are not formed through a top-down approach; instead, they emerge from applications recognized by frontline medical staff. These practical experiences are gradually refined and accumulated, eventually transforming into followable guidelines. Joe Hsieh added that the core of standardization lies in verifiability. Establishing consistent workflows through multi-model cross-validation to drive the standardization of decision-making mechanisms will be an essential foundation for developing medical Agentic AI. Throughout this process, Sovereign AI serves as the critical foundation for ensuring data and model autonomy. By leveraging its existing advantages in medical data to build sovereign models and application ecosystems, Taiwan has the opportunity to secure a stronger voice and greater strategic influence in the global development of medical AI.Refocusing on the Patient-Physician Relationship in the Era of AI WorkflowsRegarding the future development of smart healthcare in Taiwan, Dr. Yang suggested starting by enhancing patient-physician interactions. He cited the concept of a "computerless clinic," powered by Ambient Clinical Intelligence (ACI), as a prime example. In this scenario, wearable sensors and Ambient AI systems collect and analyze patient physiological data in real time, while automatically generating electronic health records (EHRs), ordering tests, and entering data into backend systems. This innovation ultimately frees the consultation process from the distractions of manual computer operations.Joe Hsieh concurred, adding from the perspective of real-world deployment that multiple Agentic AI systems featuring voice recognition, image analysis, and sensory capabilities could operate synergistically in the future. This collaborative approach establishes a digital assistant architecture with a clear division of labor. Combined with wearable devices and smart glasses, technology can be integrated seamlessly and invisibly into medical workflows to provide real-time information. This ultimately allows physicians to focus entirely on clinical judgments and patient interactions, thereby elevating overall efficiency and quality of care.Dr. Yang concluded by pointing out that hosting GCIEM 2026 has allowed Taiwan to transition its role in med-tech integration from a mere participant to an active practitioner. As AI advances from a supportive tool to decision-making and execution, the competitive focus within the healthcare industry is shifting from singular technical capabilities to system integration and the establishment of trust mechanisms. The collaboration between ASUS and NYCU demonstrates the pathway from talent cultivation and data accumulation to real-world deployment, gradually forming a replicable and scalable development trajectory. With cross-disciplinary capabilities serving as a solid foundation, Taiwan is poised not only to participate in this smart healthcare transformation but also to define its future direction.