Taiwan exports hit $103bn - much of it on AI demand
Taiwan's export orders soared 71.4% year on year to a record $102.96bn in August, driven by global demand for artificial intelligence hardware, Focus Taiwan reported on September 22.
The figure beat the previous peak of $97.94bn set in July and overshot the Ministry of Economic Affairs' own forecast range of $97.0bn to $99.0bn. August was the 19th straight month of annual growth for the island's order book, a leading indicator for global technology supply chains given Taiwan's dominance in advanced chipmaking and server assembly.
Orders in the first eight months of 2026 reached $704.99bn, up 55.0% from a year earlier.
Huang Wei-jie, head of the ministry's Department of Statistics, said the better-than-expected August reading came from rising demand for AI servers. Work by large US cloud service providers on application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) lifted demand for chips designed in Taiwan, he added.
The electronics industry took $45.75bn in orders, an increase of 83.9% on the year, as demand for AI applications and high-performance computing pushed up business for IC manufacturing, IC design and memory chips. Orders for the information and communication technology sector doubled, rising 100.5% to $34.21bn. The two industries together made up roughly 78% of the August total.
Optoelectronics was the outlier, with orders down 5.0% to $1.97bn on persistently soft demand for flat panels.
Older industries fared better than in recent months. Machinery orders climbed 28.3% to $2.21bn as semiconductor manufacturers installed equipment to expand capacity. Base metals orders rose 26.8% to $2.34bn on demand for copper foils and copper-clad laminates used in AI products. Plastics and rubber grew 6.7% and chemical products 15.4%.
The United States was the largest source of orders at $42.13bn, up 88.9% year on year, with US orders for ICT products jumping 195.3%.
Huang said monthly orders could stay near the $100bn mark from September through December, which would put the 2026 full-year total within reach of $1.1 trillion, against $743.73bn in 2025. For September he forecast orders of $106.0bn to $109.1bn, growth of between 50.7% and 55.1%.
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