Digital Development Department Promotes AI “Computing Power Pool”
“Computing power” is the core engine driving AI development; however, the high costs of acquiring or renting high-performance computing resources often become a barrier for enterprises, especially startups. To address this, the Digital Development Department (hereinafter referred to as the “DDP”) is actively constructing Taiwan’s AI industry ecosystem. Following their appeal for NT$10 billion in funding from the National Development Council by the end of 2024, they have begun to promote initiatives in five key areas: “computing power, data, talent, funding, and marketing.” On April 16, a press conference for the “AI Computing Power Pool” was held, attended by DDP Minister Huang Yen-nan, Deputy Minister Lin Yi-ching, and representatives from various businesses.
Huang Yi-nan emphasized that the establishment of the computing power pool aims to resolve the substantial computing cost issues faced by startups and small to medium-sized enterprises during the initial stages of concept validation (PoC), allowing businesses to quickly validate innovative ideas. “We hope to expand the computing power in the coming years, targeting 70 GPUs to better assist startup development.”
Minister of Digital Development Huang Yen-nan
Image / Digital Development Department
Results of DDP AI Computing Power Pool Project: 88 AI Models Developed
Since its launch, the “AI Computing Power Pool” project has received enthusiastic responses from the industry. The first call for applications in 2024 attracted 97 companies, with 64 ultimately selected, successfully producing 88 AI models covering areas such as customer service, education, and healthcare. Participating businesses received an average of about six weeks of computing power usage time, enabling them to put innovative concepts into practice.
Regarding the role of the computing power pool, Deputy Minister Lin Yi-ching pointed out that compared to the low costs of garage startups in the past, today’s AI entrepreneurship primarily faces the high wall of computing power. “The function of the computing power pool is to allow entrepreneurs to first verify whether their ideas are feasible. If the experiment is successful, the next step should be to seek funding based on the results and enter the commercial market to purchase or rent computing power.” He emphasized that the government’s provision of computing power is intended to serve as a catalyst to help startups through the most challenging startup phase, with the ultimate goal of establishing a healthy ecosystem that thrives between the government and private computing power suppliers.
Chair of the judging panel, Professor Chen Jun-liang from National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, explained that the review process places great emphasis on the project’s “real application needs,” “technical feasibility,” and “industry implementation potential” to ensure that government resources are invested in the most impactful innovations.
Also on the review panel, CEO of the Artificial Intelligence Technology Foundation, Wen Yi-ling, stressed that in the context of geopolitical tensions, it is crucial to grasp proprietary data, models, and talent to establish “resilience.” This round of computing power provision is the “first mile” in encouraging enterprises to adopt AI, and supporting the local AI ecosystem and software developers is the key next step.
Chen Hui-min, Deputy Director of the DDP’s Department of Digital Industry, stated that in the first round of applications in 2025, 91 qualifying companies applied, with 54 selected. Although the number of successful applicants slightly decreased, she explained that this year’s support method is more flexible, allowing teams to apply for up to four GPUs for larger models requiring higher computing power, which helps tackle more complex AI tasks. This year, the selected project areas have also expanded to critical industries such as healthcare, cybersecurity, finance, smart manufacturing, and public affairs.
In the first round of the DDP AI Computing Power Pool project in 2025, 91 qualifying companies applied, with 54 selected.
Image / Digital Development Department
Highlights from Three Companies: Showcasing AI Achievements in Healthcare, Insurance, and Transportation
Three companies, Kunyou Technology, Shilv Technology, and Ruichuan Data, demonstrated the practical achievements of AI technology across various industries. Kunyou Technology utilized AI visual models for railway safety monitoring. Vice President Cao Chang-yu stated that, faced with 100,000 railway surveillance images, the model training that originally took over a day was completed in less than half a day using the computing power platform, significantly accelerating the development and verification of applications such as detecting foreign objects on tracks.
Shilv Technology’s R&D Manager Chen Wei-fan developed a specialized language model for the insurance industry, utilizing the computing power pool to process 5 million entries from the insurance corpus. By combining LLM and RAG technologies, they created an internal AI assistant that does not require internet connectivity, enhancing customer service efficiency and stability.
Ruichuan Data focuses on intelligent healthcare, with General Manager Huang Wei-da sharing that their AI system used the computing power pool to train on 80,000 labeled data corresponding to diseases, assisting in interpreting chest CT and X-ray images, addressing the shortage of radiologists. The system has improved detection sensitivity by nearly 10% and has already obtained second-level medical device certification from TFDA, qualifying it for clinical applications.
To meet the continuously growing industry demand, Chen Hui-min stated that the second and third rounds of applications for the AI computing power pool will commence on May 1 and August 1, respectively. It is expected to provide a total of 163,000 GPU hours of computing power throughout the year, with the goal of assisting at least 150 companies, each receiving computing power support valued at approximately NT$150,000 to NT$1.5 million, depending on project scale.
This article is collaboratively republished from: Startup Gathering