Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma argues that Japan, China and other nations need to develop their own semiconductor technology to get around America's grip on the global chip market.
The billionaire executive chairman of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., explaining the e-commerce titan's growing interest in chips, including this month's acquisition of local design-house Hangzhou C-Sky Microsystems Co., said he's motivated in part by a desire to make chips "inclusive:" cheap, efficient and available to all. He said his company has invested in five semiconductor firms in the past four years.
"America was the early mover and China, we need a lot of things. One hundred percent of the market for chips is controlled by Americans," he told students and entrepreneurs at Tokyo's Waseda University. "And suddenly if they stop selling — what that means, you understand. And that's why China, Japan, and any country, you need core technologies."