Chip billionaires gain influence as AI reshapes semiconductors

Semiconductors have become a strategic resource powering smartphones, electric vehicles, cloud computing, defense systems, AI and advanced manufacturing. Governments in the US, Europe, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China are directing major public investment into chip production as companies including NVIDIA, TSMC, Arm, Intel, AMD, Samsung, ASML, Foxconn and Cambricon anchor the global chipmaking ecosystem.

Jensen Huang leads the group with an estimated US$170–190 billion fortune after turning NVIDIA from a graphics chip company into the dominant supplier of GPUs for AI systems, autonomous vehicles, robotics and data centers. Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank controls Arm, whose processor designs are licensed across smartphones, tablets, IoT devices and AI systems, while Broadcom co-founders Henry Samueli and Henry Nicholas III remain closely tied to high-speed communications and networking chips.

In Asia, Morris Chang’s TSMC model made Taiwan indispensable to advanced manufacturing, supplying companies such as Apple, NVIDIA, AMD and Qualcomm. Terry Gou’s Foxconn is expanding into semiconductors for electric vehicles and advanced electronics, while Chen Tianshi’s Cambricon has benefited from China’s push for domestic AI chips. Cambricon shares surged over 765% in just 24 months as US export controls helped create a protected Chinese market.