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Apple CEO Says it is Considering a Manufacturing Facility in Indonesia

Apple CEO Tim Cook (C) speaks alongside Indonesian Minister of Communication and Information Budi Arie Setiadi (R) and Indonesian Minister of Industry Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita (L) during a press conference after meeting with Indonesia's President Joko Widodo at the Merdeka Palace in Jakarta on April 17, 2024. (Photo by BAY ISMOYO / AFP)
Apple CEO Tim Cook (C) speaks alongside Indonesian Minister of Communication and Information Budi Arie Setiadi (R) and Indonesian Minister of Industry Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita (L) during a press conference after meeting with Indonesia's President Joko Widodo at the Merdeka Palace in Jakarta on April 17, 2024. (Photo by BAY ISMOYO / AFP)
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Apple CEO Says it is Considering a Manufacturing Facility in Indonesia

Apple CEO Tim Cook (C) speaks alongside Indonesian Minister of Communication and Information Budi Arie Setiadi (R) and Indonesian Minister of Industry Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita (L) during a press conference after meeting with Indonesia's President Joko Widodo at the Merdeka Palace in Jakarta on April 17, 2024. (Photo by BAY ISMOYO / AFP)
Apple CEO Tim Cook (C) speaks alongside Indonesian Minister of Communication and Information Budi Arie Setiadi (R) and Indonesian Minister of Industry Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita (L) during a press conference after meeting with Indonesia's President Joko Widodo at the Merdeka Palace in Jakarta on April 17, 2024. (Photo by BAY ISMOYO / AFP)

Apple Inc will look into building a manufacturing facility in Indonesia, its CEO said on Wednesday after meeting President Joko Widodo, who hoped the tech giant would increase its local content by partnering with domestic firms.
Apple chief executive Tim Cook arrived in Jakarta on Tuesday after visiting Vietnam, Reuters reported. He met with Jokowi, as the president is popularly known, and will inaugurate its fourth developer academy on the island of Bali.
"We talked about the president's desire to see manufacturing in the country, and it is something that we will look at," Cook told reporters after the meeting.
Apple has no manufacturing facilities in Indonesia, but since 2018 it has been setting up app developer academies, which including the new academy have a total cost of 1.6 trillion rupiah ($99 million).
Indonesia's industry minister, Agus Gumiwang Kartasasmita, who also attended the meeting, told reporters that if Apple decided to build manufacturing facility in Indonesia, it would have the capacity to produce for export.
"We will discuss how Apple's facility in Indonesia could become a global supply chain," he said, adding that the government said that even if Apple didn't built a factory, it could partner with Indonesian companies to obtain components.
Apple has met Indonesia's 35% local content requirement to sell its products by investing in developer academies, Agus said, but the government hoped that number could be pushed higher with a manufacturing facility.
Apple has based much of its key manufacturing of iPads, AirPods and Apple Watches in Vietnam; suppliers for MacBooks are also investing in the country.
Indonesia has a huge, tech-savvy population, making the Southeast Asian nation a key target market for tech-related investment.

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Nations Building Their Own AI Models Add to Nvidia's Growing Chip Demand

FILE PHOTO: AI (Artificial Intelligence) letters and robot hand miniature in this illustration, taken June 23, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: AI (Artificial Intelligence) letters and robot hand miniature in this illustration, taken June 23, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
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Nations Building Their Own AI Models Add to Nvidia's Growing Chip Demand

FILE PHOTO: AI (Artificial Intelligence) letters and robot hand miniature in this illustration, taken June 23, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: AI (Artificial Intelligence) letters and robot hand miniature in this illustration, taken June 23, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

Nations building artificial intelligence models in their own languages are turning to Nvidia's chips, adding to already booming demand as generative AI takes center stage for businesses and governments, a senior executive said on Wednesday.
Nvidia's third-quarter forecast for rising sales of its chips that power AI technology such as OpenAI's ChatGPT failed to meet investors' towering expectations. But the company described new customers coming from around the world, including governments that are now seeking their own AI models and the hardware to support them, Reuters said.
Countries adopting their own AI applications and models will contribute about low double-digit billions to Nvidia's revenue in the financial year ending in January 2025, Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress said on a call with analysts after Nvidia's earnings report.
That's up from an earlier forecast of such sales contributing high single-digit billions to total revenue. Nvidia forecast about $32.5 billion in total revenue in the third quarter ending in October.
"Countries around the world (desire) to have their own generative AI that would be able to incorporate their own language, incorporate their own culture, incorporate their own data in that country," Kress said, describing AI expertise and infrastructure as "national imperatives."
She offered the example of Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, which is building an AI supercomputer featuring thousands of Nvidia H200 graphics processors.
Governments are also turning to AI as a measure to strengthen national security.
"AI models are trained on data and for political entities -particularly nations - their data are secret and their models need to be customized to their unique political, economic, cultural, and scientific needs," said IDC computing semiconductors analyst Shane Rau.
"Therefore, they need to have their own AI models and a custom underlying arrangement of hardware and software."
Washington tightened its controls on exports of cutting-edge chips to China in 2023 as it sought to prevent breakthroughs in AI that would aid China's military, hampering Nvidia's sales in the region.
Businesses have been working to tap into government pushes to build AI platforms in regional languages.
IBM said in May that Saudi Arabia's Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority would train its "ALLaM" Arabic language model using the company's AI platform Watsonx.
Nations that want to create their own AI models can drive growth opportunities for Nvidia's GPUs, on top of the significant investments in the company's hardware from large cloud providers like Microsoft, said Bob O'Donnell, chief analyst at TECHnalysis Research.