Taiwan AI equities pull Thai funds into Asia tech

Asset Plus Fund Management in Bangkok is launching the Asset Plus Taiwan Equity Fund, branded ASP-Taiwan, with a mandate focused on Taiwan’s technology sector and AI supply chain. The fund is structured as a feeder fund that will invest about 80–100% via the iShares Core MSCI Taiwan ETF, which tracks the MSCI Taiwan 20/35 Index, while keeping up to 20% for direct positions in Taiwanese stocks. Asset Plus data show the fund’s initial public offering window ran from 25 August to 1 September 2026, signalling that Thai retail and institutional investors are being offered timely exposure as Taiwan’s AI trade gathers pace.

Thai Capital Follows AI Money into Taiwan

The fund’s manager highlights Taiwan’s integrated technology value chain as the core attraction. Taiwan’s listed companies span chip design, semiconductor foundries, advanced packaging, materials and equipment, as well as AI servers and related infrastructure, with key clusters around Hsinchu Science Park and in central and southern Taiwan. As a result, Thai investors can use ASP-Taiwan to tap earnings growth not only at headline names but across secondary and mid-cap suppliers gaining from AI infrastructure build-outs.

Taiwan’s stock market has already priced in part of this boom, yet it still offers growth-linked value. Bloomberg-cited analysis from Taiwan media indicates that analysts have sharply raised profit forecasts, with Taiwan corporate earnings now expected to grow about 50% in 2026, nearly three times late-2025 expectations. Meanwhile, the main Taiwan index has jumped between 58% and 85% over the past year, driven by chip and AI hardware stocks, according to data reported by financial media in August. Even so, local strategists point to attractive price-to-earnings-to-growth ratios, suggesting valuations remain reasonable against the earnings outlook.

The single sentence investors are repeating is simple: Taiwan AI equities are becoming a proxy for global AI capital expenditure rather than just a domestic technology trade.

TSMC Anchors Taiwan’s AI Edge — and Policy Backs It

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company sits at the centre of the story. Market research firm Counterpoint and recent equity analysis show TSMC controls more than 70% of global pure-play foundry revenue and roughly three-quarters of the semiconductor foundry market overall. Separate scenario analysis on semiconductor supply chains estimates that Taiwan, through TSMC, accounts for more than 90% of leading-edge chip manufacturing at 7-nanometre and below. These are the nodes used in state-of-the-art AI accelerators.

As a result, any global increase in AI training and inference capacity tends to feed directly into TSMC’s order book and that of its local ecosystem. Research cited by Taiwan and regional media reports that hyperscalers’ capital expenditure on AI infrastructure is increasingly concentrated in orders for advanced nodes and packaging in Taiwan, with TSMC positioned as the primary beneficiary. Down the chain, Taiwanese firms in advanced packaging, substrates, testing and AI server manufacturing are reporting rising AI-related revenue shares and accelerating order visibility into 2027. Thai fund managers see this breadth as a way to diversify away from single-name risk while still staying close to the AI hardware cycle.

What Does Taiwan’s Industrial Policy Mean for Investors?

Government policy strengthens the case. Taiwan has introduced a domestic ‘chips act’ through amendments to its Industrial Innovation Act, often described as the Taiwan Chips Act, which grants tax credits of up to 25% for qualifying advanced R&D spending and 5% for investment in leading-edge process equipment, subject to caps against annual corporate income tax liabilities. According to economic media reports, these incentives apply to companies with high R&D intensity and large outlays on advanced manufacturing tools, directly supporting semiconductor and AI hardware investment.

In parallel, the Executive Yuan has proposed a record technology development budget of NT$229.2 billion (about US$7.1 billion) for the coming year, with NT$40.6 billion ring-fenced for ‘AI Ten Major Infrastructure Projects’ covering research, computing capacity, talent and key technologies. Additional measures aim to expand financing and investment tax credits over the next eight years. Separate initiatives focus on building sovereign AI compute and new AI and semiconductor hubs in southern Taiwan. Radio Taiwan International reports that the AI infrastructure budget will rise further to NT$40.8 billion in 2027, a 25% increase, underlining policy continuity.

Taken together, these programmes amount to a multi-year industrial innovation push rather than a one-off stimulus. They support earnings growth at listed technology firms and provide visibility on domestic capex linked to AI infrastructure. For Thai investors using ASP-Taiwan, this means policy risk is skewed towards continued support for AI-related sectors, not abrupt withdrawal.

For investors, the signal is clear: as long as global AI hardware spending continues to expand and Taiwan’s policy machine stays aligned, Taiwan AI equities are likely to remain a core regional route into the AI build-out, and Thai allocations via specialist funds such as ASP-Taiwan will be one of the faster ways to capture that trend.

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