ĐÀ NẴNG — The central city and the economic centre of central Việt Nam, is rapidly becoming an attractive destination with an increasingly leading position on the tech map and a strongly developing technology and start-up ecosystem.

Experts and leaders in the field of AI and semiconductors confirmed its prominence during the continuous Artificial Intelligence and Semiconductors Conference (AISC) 2025 conference, organised following its international success in Hà Nội.

They shared ideas on the building Đà Nẵng City as an ideal bridge between Việt Nam and international organisations in the field of AI, with the participation of city leaders and leading experts and professors from Google, Aitomatic, Soitec, Stanford, VinaCapital and McRock Capital. 

Chairman of Đà Nẵng City’s People's Committee, Lê Trung Chinh, said: “Đà Nẵng City has been actively promoting international cooperation and attracting leading groups to the city such as Synopsys, NVIDIA and Intel.

“The city has been designed as an artificial intelligence (AI) research centre, but also a destination of the design, manufacturing, testing and packaging of integrated circuits, and supporting investors setting up successfully in the supply chain at local levels."  

 

The ‘Leadership in the Age of AI’ event, organised by Aitomatic (USA) and the Đà Nẵng Semiconductor and Artificial Intelligence Centre (DSAC), involved discussion sessions on the economic outlook and opportunities for AI and semiconductor cooperation in Việt Nam.

Azalia Mirhoseini at Stanford University, the US said: ”There are many online resources available for learning about these topics, such as Coursera, DeepLearning.ai and numerous videos on YouTube. People can educate themselves and learn about these topics from the best educators.

“People can now build web applications, games and do many things without even having learned how to code. They can do this by learning how to use the tools built around AI and by being creative, putting their creativity into something tangible and useful.”

Michael Kokalari of VinaCapital helped by providing in-depth insights into the growth drivers and development potential of the industry, within the global economic context.

“I believe that in the future, people will look back and acknowledge that while things were progressing reasonably well for Việt Nam in the AI and semiconductor sector,  the conference in Hà Nội marked a turning point where everything began to accelerate.

“For me, the most impressive aspect was the caliber of foreign experts. The conference attracted top-tier individuals from companies like NVIDIA, Intel, IBM and others. These experts come here because they recognise the potential. This, I believe, is extremely significant. Furthermore, the Prime Minister's extensive and detailed speech on Friday, rather than a brief address, underscores that the government also recognises this as a major opportunity for the country's future.

“I believe that Việt Nam is particularly well-suited for AI, a field I'm somewhat more familiar with. While my knowledge of the semiconductor field is less extensive, my observations in the AI field lead me to believe that this country is uniquely positioned to produce products and services that can be sold to customers in the US, other emerging markets and Europe.

"We are already on a positive trajectory, manufacturing increasingly complex products. This is an opportunity for the country to make a significant leap and produce even more sophisticated products and services for our foreign customers.”

The director of DSAC, Lê Hoàng Phúc, said Đà Nẵng has emerged as a favourable destination for investors in semiconductor and AI in terms of human resources and well-invested infrastructure.

He said the city has been offering preferential policies in tax, business attraction and supportive measures for investors moving their factories and equipment to Đà Nẵng City.

The city will help investors build projects from ideas, research and training, along with commercialising any product, Phúc said.

Đà Nẵng has already developed a 1,128ha High-Tech Park, Software Park No 2 and various creative and innovative centres.

The city needs to train 5,000 engineers including 2,000 chip designers by 2030 to meet the manpower needed for the new industries.

It has an accumulated 1,021 foreign direct investment projects, with a total investment of more than US$4.5 billion.

A report from the city unveiled that 18 businesses have been operating in the semiconductor industry, from a total list of 200 IT enterprises. The city has already said that it wants to see the digital economy accounting for 30 per cent of Gross Regional Domestic Product by 2030.

The city offers special preferential policy for not only strategic semiconductor manufacturers with revenues over $1 billion, but small and medium-sized enterprises.

A series of Memorandums of Understandings have been inked by the city and key partners including Synopsys International, Marvell Việtnam, local investor Sovico, Viettel Group and FPT IS, for semiconductor development.

The first course for trainers of microchip design was completed last year, and a new course for trainees in Assembling, Testing and Packaging (ATP) has been opened in co-operation with Arizona State University. — VNS