Taiwan’s Foxconn reports 35 percent rise in profit on AI demand

Taiwanese tech giant Foxconn reported a record net profit in the second quarter due to soaring demand for AI servers utilized in data centers, the company announced on Wednesday. Hon Hai Precision Industry, as Foxconn is officially known, expanded beyond merely assembling low-margin iPhones to now producing AI servers for major US tech company Nvidia, electric vehicles, and robots.

The company disclosed that its net profit for April-June 2023 reached T$59.97 billion (US$1.86 billion), a 35% increase compared to the same period in the previous year. This figure surpassed analyst expectations of T$58.38 billion. Revenue for the three months also surged by 41% year-over-year, totaling T$2.53 trillion.

Foxconn attributed its impressive growth to the burgeoning demand for AI infrastructure, which has been propelled by governments and prominent tech firms investing heavily in data centers capable of training and executing AI tools like chatbots, image generators, and task-executing agents. The company forecasted continued strong year-over-year growth and a positive outlook for the full year, driven by the growing reliance on AI servers in the rapidly expanding data center sector.