TSMC has reportedly opened an internal investigation to find whether Lo Wen-jen has taken trade secrets with him to Intel without its consent. According to a report in Bloomberg, Taiwanese newspapers spent the week reporting on the transition of Lo Wen-jen, 75, from his retirement from TSMC earlier this year to joining Intel in recent weeks. It is unclear whether TSMC has reached a conclusion about any potential damage to the company, the person added, asking not to be identified since the information is private.“The government is concerned with national security implications,” Taiwan’s Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin told reporters, without elaborating on any of the details pertaining to allegations against Lo. Minister Wu Cheng-wen of Taiwan’s National Science and Technology Council reportedly told reporters later in the day that TSMC is still looking into the situation, according to Taiwan’s official Central News Agency.Lo was responsible for corporate strategy before his retirement from TSMC in July. He was at one point in charge of research and technology development at TSMC and played a key role in facilitating the mass production at TSMC of cutting-edge chips, including those used to make AI accelerators. He is also a laureate of Taiwan’s prestigious Industrial Technology Research Institute.Before he joined TSMC in 2004, Lo spent some time at Intel focusing on advanced technology development, including running a chip factory in Santa Clara, California. He has a doctorate degree in solid state physics and surface chemistry from UC Berkeley.Relations between Intel and TSMC have not been very good over the past few years as the US chipmaker tries to play catchup in the technology race. Intel is at once a customer and a competitor to TSMC, which is also the sole maker of the most high-end chips for Apple and Nvidia.
What Intel said on the allegations
Intel Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Lip-Bu Tan dismissed reports about a new hire taking trade secrets from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) to his company, saying the US chipmaker respects other firms’ intellectual property. Taiwanese newspapers spent the week reporting on the transition of Lo Wen-jen, 75, from his retirement from TSMC earlier this year to joining Intel in recent weeks. The executive is alleged to have taken proprietary knowhow from his former employer just before his departure. “It’s rumor and speculation. There’s nothing to it. We respect IP,” Tan told Bloomberg News on the sidelines of the Semiconductor Industry Association Awards in San Jose on Thursday. The event recognized TSMC CEO C.C. Wei and former Chairman Mark Liu with its highest honor, the Robert N. Noyce Award.Incidentally, Intel’s sacked former CEO Pat Gelsinger frequently argued that it was too risky for the US to depend heavily on TSMC for cutting-edge semiconductors due to growing geopolitical volatility in the Taiwan Strait, creating friction between the two companies.
