TSMC's ex-chair appointed Micron board director for AI development

Taipei, March 7 (CNA) Mark Liu (劉德音), former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) chairman, has been appointed to the board of directors of U.S.-based dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chip supplier Micron Technology Inc.

Liu's role will focus on boosting the American firm's artificial intelligence development, according to the American company.

In a statement released Wednesday U.S. time, Micron Chairman, President and CEO Sanjay Mehrotra described Liu as a visionary leader with technical expertise and business acumen from his 30 years at TSMC.

"He (Liu) has decades of experience leading one of the world's most advanced and sophisticated semiconductor companies, with fab operations at the largest scale," Mehrotra said. "His experience will help guide Micron as we scale our business to address the growing opportunities unleashed by AI -- from the data center to the edge."

Currently, Liu is the founder and chairman of multi-strategy investment fund J&M Copper Beech Ventures.

He also founded the Technology Competitiveness and Industrial Policy Center (TCIP) at the University of California, Berkeley to advise policymakers and lawmakers on enhancing U.S. tech competitiveness.

The former TSMC chair began his career at Intel Corp. before moving to AT&T Bell Laboratories, where he conducted fundamental research on high-speed electronics.

Liu then joined TSMC in 1993 and was responsible for building the company's first eight-inch and 12-inch fabs.

He held increasingly key leadership positions, including senior vice president (2004-2012), co-chief operations officer (2012-2013), president and co-CEO (2013-2018) and executive chairman (2018-2024).

In June 2024, Liu retired from TSMC and was succeeded by C.C. Wei (魏哲家).

According to Micron, Liu's other board commitments include serving on the University of California, Berkeley Engineering Advisory Board.

Speaking with CNA, Liu Pei-chen (劉佩真), a Taiwan Industry Economics Database researcher, said Micron recruited Liu to boost cooperation with TSMC to speed up its High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) technologies and catch up with South Korean rival SK Hynix Inc.