TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Chunghwa Telecom said Wednesday that it has teamed up with Japan’s Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. and international partners to establish the IOWN AI Fund, which aims to invest in advanced technologies for the artificial intelligence era and expand the Innovative Optical and Wireless Network ecosystem, per CNA.
Speaking at the fund’s launch in Tokyo, Chunghwa Telecom President Lin Rong-shy (林榮賜) said the company will act as a core operating partner. Lin said the company will contribute capital, telecom expertise, and its global footprint to identify startups and accelerate AI infrastructure and applications.
Chunghwa Telecom said industry expectations point to a shift from centralized, large-scale public data centers to distributed architectures that integrate mid-sized edge data centers. These would be connected through optical communications networks to form flexible, high-efficiency AI systems, per Chunghwa Telecom.
The fund will focus on technologies tied to IOWN, including photonics-electronics convergence, semiconductors, advanced packaging, power optimization, distributed computing platforms, and AI software and applications, per the Commercial Times. The goal is to accelerate next-generation AI infrastructure development.
Chunghwa Telecom said the fund will establish operating bases in Silicon Valley and Tokyo to source startups across North America, Asia, and Europe. It has already drawn interest from companies in Japan, the US, Taiwan, and other regions, including members of the IOWN Global Forum and Japanese financial institutions, per the Commercial Times.
Chunghwa Telecom Chair Alex Chien (簡志誠) said the IOWN All-Photonics Network offers ultra-high speed and low latency that can overcome distance limitations and accelerate real-world applications. He cited a cross-border demonstration last year that brought Taiwan’s traditional “Guan Jiang Shou” performance to Japan alongside “Cho-Kabuki,” and an April trial showing cross-border AI compute collaboration for smart cities and healthcare using the network, per Chunghwa Telecom.
NTT President and CEO Shimada Akira said that as AI expands into enterprise operations, agentic AI, and physical AI, inference-driven infrastructure is becoming critical. He said combining NTT’s optical and network technologies with global partners’ innovations is essential, and that the fund is intended to deepen collaboration with promising startups, per Chunghwa Telecom.
