<div id="readability-page-1"><div>  <h2> <span>M&amp;A DEALS:</span>                          Zeiss said it is seeking potential M&amp;A opportunities after last year acquiring local contact lens supplier Brighten Optix Corp for NT$5.4 billion                    </h2>  <p>Carl Zeiss AG plans to increase investment and workforce in Taiwan this year to meet growing demand for advanced chip manufacturing and packaging inspections, the German company said yesterday.</p><p>It attributed robust demand for sophisticated packaging, such as 2.5D or 3D packaging, to an artificial intelligence boom and explosive demand for high-performance computing applications.</p><p>“We are accelerating our investment in Taiwan as it is a market with huge potential... We are looking mostly at the semiconductor area. Advanced packaging is the main direction we are working on in Taiwan,” Zeiss Taiwan general manager Henry Cai (蔡慧) told a news conference in Taipei. “We hope to increase the R&amp;D workforce by at least 50 percent in Hsinchu.”</p><p>The company offers nondestructive and high-resolution X-ray inspection to identify defects, which helps customers enhance production efficiency and improve yield rate of advanced packaging technology, such as chip-on-wafer-on-substrate technology, Zeiss said.</p><p>It is also seeking potential merger and acquisition (M&amp;A) opportunities in the semiconductor area after last year acquiring local contact lens supplier Brighten Optix Corp (亨泰光學) for NT$5.4 billion (US$168.27 million). The deal would add about 200 employees to Zeiss Taiwan.</p>   <p>Zeiss in 2024 launched a NT$300 million innovation center at the Hsinchu Science Park (新竹科學園區), which is part of the company’s 10-year, NT$10 billion investment commitment through 2028. As of the end of 2024, it had invested NT$6 billion.</p><p>To enhance its localization strategy and deepen its cooperation with customers, Zeiss moved its advanced inspection equipment to the center, offering early inspection services for customers when their new chips are in the early stage of development.</p><p>The Middle East war is not expected to cause any raw material supply disruptions for the industry as most companies have learned lessons from COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and adjusted, the company said.</p><p>However, spikes in transportation costs due to shipping route changes and higher crude oil prices have prompted the company to boost inventory of some spare parts against supply constraint risks, it said.</p> </div></div>

卡爾蔡司

<p>蔡司計劃在台灣增加投資和員工，以滿足對先進芯片製造和封裝檢測日益增長的需求。該公司表示，強勁的需求主要源於人工智能的興起和高性能計算應用的爆炸性增長。蔡司還在尋求潛在的併購機會，去年以 54 億新台幣收購了當地隱形眼鏡供應商 Brighten Optix Corp。</p>

Zeiss planning to raise investment, staff in Taiwan