Foxconn wants to manufacture everything. ALL

Vivatech was held last week. It is one of the largest technology fairs in the world and one of the least concrete. There is humanoid robotsrobots that are dedicated only to doing funny things, robo-assistants, artificial intelligence, beauty products, a quantum computer, virtual reality and even a feelings monitor. Yeah.

However, what surprised me most was not the glimpse into the future, but the deployment of the Taiwanese Foxconn. When we talk about Taiwan and technology, TSMC is the name that comes to mind the easiest, but Foxconn is the main component manufacturer worldwide, the engine of Taiwan’s exports and the controversial assembler of products such as the iPhone or the Xbox.

The point is that Foxconn wants to stop being the largest telephone assembler to become one of the main multinationals in the world and the path is clear: robots, cars and artificial intelligence.

And all that plumage is what it showed at the Paris fair.

Vera Rubin, the jewel in the crown

Nvidia is currently a driving force for many companies and Foxconn has been one of the last to enter under the umbrella of the American giant. The company led by Jensen Huang already has everything ready so that those who manufacture its platforms have the machines at maximum production for Vera Rubin.

This is the new AI platform that promises to be at the forefront of trainingbut also of the inference in the models and Foxconn recently joined as one of the leading suppliers of both Groq 3 LPX and cabinets Vera Rubin NVL72.

These cabinets They are one of the grails of data centersa liquid-cooled supercomputer in which 72 Blackwell GPUs and 36 Grace GPUs behave as a single large accelerator to train and infer trillion-parameter models.

It is an impressive platform that could be seen at the Vivatech stand next to one of the modules behind glass and signed by Huang himself.

You can see that Foxconn is proud of this, wow, but apart from the injection of money, also because of the possibilities it opens up for them as a company that wants to start doing everything.

Robotics and digital twins

Because to become multidisciplinary, now youyou have to be an AI company. And something that goes hand in hand are robots and digital twins. At the fair we couldn’t see much about this, although they did show a couple of glimpses.

On the one hand, a humanoid robot (from the hips up) that is in charge of setting up the servers. He places pieces and screws them with the necessary precision and force so that everything is adjusted to the millimeter. They told us that it is not the fastest at work (of course), but in the end there are still many of these working in parallel.

On the other hand, the digital twins. This technology is very interesting because it is a software simulation of elements of the physical world. Thanks to AI and algorithms, engineers develop exact replicas of the physical world, but in the virtual world.

Imagine a car, for example, not only modeled to the millimeter with all its parts in software, but that software simulates the weight of each of the components. The objective of creating these 1:1 replicas that respect the laws of physics, but in the virtual world, is to perform tests on the software that then accelerate developments in the real world.

In a factory to create engines or any sensitive part/component, these digital twins are allowing much of the trial and error testing to be done in a virtual environment without the need to invest construction time in the real object.

Basically, they exist so that sensitive parts of the development are carried out in an environment in which the price of error is lower, to fine-tune the shot for physical prototypes.

And, for that, enormous computing power is required that Foxconn achieves with platforms like Nvidia’s, but also with another of its ambitions: data centers.

Data centers

If you want to have computing power without depending on increasingly expensive GPU rentals, you must have a data center. It is something that opens the door to both meeting your needs and the possibility of offering your equipment to whoever needs it (for a good pinch).

And, within the framework of Vivatech, reported that the French electricity company Schneider had signed an agreement collaboration with Foxconn to set up a data center.

It is a partnership that makes perfect sense, since one provides the energy and the other provides the AI ​​platforms that, as we have just seen, are being developed for Nvidia itself.

The cars. Because they also have cars, of course.

And if each leg of the business makes sense on its own, the unifying point is the most striking product they brought to the fair: the car. The cars, rather.

In 2020, Foxconn introduced Foxtron, a subsidiary focused on manufacturing electric cars under the open platform. MIH. This platform has been named “the Android of electric cars”since it is a platform that combines a modular chassis, power electronics and software so that third parties can build their own models and services.

Foxconn’s goal is reduce entry barriers to the EV segmentlower development costs and shorten market launch times, but of course, they have also taken the opportunity to create their own models. At the French fair they brought both the Bria (an SUV) and the Model D (more of a van) that stand out for their screens inside and an aggressive aerodynamic design in some parts.

The company told me that the Bria, for example, It has about 300 or 350 km of autonomy (depending on how much you push it) and that it is powered by chips from MediaTek and Nvidia for the smartest features. The autonomy is nothing remarkable and it all depends on the price at which they market it.

News regarding this? Not many, really. They confessed to me that the idea is that arrive in Europe in a couple of years because of the whole issue of regulations and so on but, although the intention is to bring it, there is nothing more they can share.

In the end, as I say, the electric car is the culmination of that strategy of betting on more and more sectors. From being an assembler to playing in the Champions League of AI platform manufacturers, wanting data centers, having robotics, digital twins and uniting everything to give life to a product as complex as a car.

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