Amid the rising demand for chip technology engineers following the explosion of Artificial Intelligence (AI), many companies are looking to Vietnam for its talented human resources and more competitive labor costs, turning the Southeast Asian country into a "magnet" attracting the attention of "big guys" in the chip technology industry.

According to an August 14 article in Nikkei Asia, Alchip Technologies, Taiwan’s leading AI chip design service provider, is stepping up its hunt for Vietnamese talent to join its research and development (R&D) team and is planning to set up the group’s first office in Vietnam this year.

Alchip Technologies is likely to increase the number of engineers at this office to 100 people within 2-3 years, according to CFO Daniel Wang.

Chairman and CEO Johnny Shen admits that attracting talented engineers in established technology markets like Japan is not easy for Alchip Technologies.

“Meanwhile, Vietnam’s promising pool of talented engineers with high professional ethics has become a very attractive option for us,” said Mr. Johnny Shen, expressing his impression of the dedication and commitment of Vietnamese engineers.

According to the article, the above search also includes GUC and Faraday Technology - chip design service providers for chip manufacturing group TSMC and United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC), both of Taiwan (China).

Similarly, Korean companies are also shifting their attention to Vietnam's source of technology engineers, partly compensating for the "brain drain" in the country, especially many young Koreans who have stayed to "join" American technology companies after graduating from university in the "land of the stars and stripes."

At a recent discussion between tech executives and Korea’s Minister of Small, Medium and Startups Oh Youngju, CEOs discussed R&D subsidies, called for an education system to train foreign workers, and eased visa regulations to attract foreign talent. The country most frequently mentioned in the discussion was Vietnam.

South Korean semiconductor company BOS Semiconductors invested in Ho Chi Minh City in 2022 and initially set up a support team. However, after working with two groups of Vietnamese and Korean employees for a while, the company's leaders decided to develop the support team into a more powerful workforce, thanks to the quality of the Vietnamese engineers they initially recruited.

According to Lim Hyung Jun, Country Director of BOS Semiconductors, the company's leadership realized the potential of Ho Chi Minh City to become an important R&D center, something they did not expect.

BOS specializes in designing AI semiconductor chips, providing products to famous corporations such as Hyundai in the field of self-driving car manufacturing.

According to Mr. Lim, achieving the goal of establishing a system on a chip (SoC) in Vietnam will demonstrate the potential of the Southeast Asian country's labor market. He emphasized that if successful, "this could shape the current trend of the semiconductor labor market."

According to Nikkei Asia, meeting the abundant supply of technology human resources in the context of the global semiconductor industry's labor shortage can help Vietnam improve its position in the global technology value chain. American technology company Marvell has described Vietnam as having a "strategic position to develop technical talent."

Marvell now aims to increase the number of technology engineers in Vietnam to about 500 people by 2026, not only for offices in Ho Chi Minh City but also for the new office in Da Nang.

Synopsys - the world's leading supplier of chip design tools, is also one of the active investors in Vietnam. Currently, Synopsys has more than 500 employees in many design centers located in several cities in Vietnam.

Mr. Robert Li - Vice President of Synopsys in charge of business in Taiwan and South Asia markets, assessed that Vietnam is in the process of becoming a talent center in the semiconductor field, thanks to the great interest of students and the workforce in this industry along with the government's funding and support programs./.