Nvidia Tie-Up Helps Vietnam Tech Tycoon Bet Big On AI
Meet the Vietnamese tech tycoon who's all in on A.I. Truong Gia Binh spent almost 40 years building the country's leading technology company. FPT, a strategic partner of Jensen Huang's chip powerhouse, Nvidia, he's dubbed his strategy the biggest bet in history. Binh wants Vietnam to be a top source of high skilled tech talent and for the next generation to grow up learning all about artificial intelligence. Seizing this moment with the nascent industry to supercharge Vietnam's future and his own. Good. Oh, look.
In the heart of Hanoi. The sights and sounds of Vietnam's culture and history are all around. The rhythm of daily life marked out by tradition. But this is also a country hungry for progress, with the government's ambitious growth target of 8% and an emphasis on technology to deliver results. It's a journey that Vietnam and Truong Gia Binh have traveled together. Shaped by the past, but now pushing into the future.
Binh co-founded FPT in 1988. Originally The Food Processing Technology Company, it is now known by its three letter acronym. FPT is Vietnam's most valuable publicly traded tech company. Millions of Vietnamese turned to FPT for their mobile and broadband.
But today, more than half its business comes from helping companies integrate new technologies and providing them with services like cloud computing, automation and increasingly artificial intelligence. Your battery is at 20% and not enough to ride you to your destination. Binh, what's the vision for AI? Is it an equaliser? Will it create a more inclusive society in Vietnam? AI should be for everybody, from leaders to the working on floor. And we can save 90% of time and 50% of workforce.
AI is called in centers of change and therefore we invest heavily to A.I.. Actually, we started more than ten years ago because we think AI is way the machine if in the past help our hand and legs. Now the machine helps us in brain. You say your going all in in this area. What does that mean? Are you betting all your money in this right now? When the OpenAI appear, immediately, I asked the whole corporation to study how you bring generative AI to the job.
Luckily, we have partnership with Nvidia and we immediately decide to build very first A.I. factory in Vietnam. I want to talk about your partnership relationship with Nvidia. How do you intend to build on it? We buy machines because, Jensen said every year the data for world doubling just one year and therefore the will need to increase the AI computing by two fold of four for per year and Nvidia, they set only equity in the wool, provide complete AI and to end solutions and this is needed because everybody know A.I.
is so important. Are you getting all your Nvidia chips for your datacenters? Yeah. All that you need? Really? Yeah. And this is where those Nvidia chips are put to work. I got a tour of FPT's tightly controlled and very noisy Hanoi Data center.
This network of servers, stores, processes and distributes huge amounts of data. Demand for facilities like this is growing globally as the use of cloud computing and A.I. applications explodes. We're in a room full of software
engineers, and we have just come from your data center, your first data center. Some might call it your crown jewel. What is the significance of that data center to you? That is so significant for us. I give you example. If those young talents, they have some ..., they don't have such
infrastructures. They spend one month, two months to understand the ideas, good or not. And today that's should be done in days. Until now, you always think about Nvidia being the dominant player.
You always think about the U.S. being the dominant AI player. With DeepSeek, shouldn't you be viewing China and China's A.I. players differently? Actually, not exactly this. Because DeepSeek is innovation for democratization,
Fundamental is still the US. But as competition heats up and companies like China's DeepSeek launch low cost, open source A.I. models, big questions remain about the return on investment for the trillions of dollars being channeled into A.I.. One industry where artificial intelligence is reducing costs and increasing productivity is orders, like this quality control system developed by FPT. A camera connected to a computer software application that can identify faults in car parts in a fraction of the time it takes a human employee. The company works with global car manufacturers from Toyota and Ford to Mercedes and BMW.
I think it's a revolution for quality productions. So it is about accuracy. It is about precision. Right now it is for the auto industry. Could something like this be used, for
example, for watch manufacturing? For sure. This would be amazing because watch so expensive and quality is critical and this can help. I'm not really Boris. This this is an AI generated video showing just how far technology has come. While many of the real world benefits of AI are still at a theoretical stage, the risks from the technology are becoming clearer, like deepfakes and A.I. crime. Something Binh agrees needs urgent action. If I'm met people, they never follow the government regulations.
They underground to develop something dangerous fake. I think every government should invest more time, more forth and cooperate closely with the AI community to solve the problem, to make the AI serve the progress, but not for that purpose. Another big concern when it comes to AI is jobs. That AI would take away jobs from people. That is a fair concern and it we have to educate more AI for people. They should change the job from old job to new job.
Upskilling, upskilling. That's critical. Why we commit to educate half million people to AI. And that's the challenge for every country's.
Because AI move much faster than people move. Business move or government move. Coming up building the workforce of the future. Why Binh thinks I can accelerate Vietnam's progress. Hundred million people, young people, good educations and latest technology. That's the only way to go.
When Latitude returns. In a classroom outside Hanoi... Vietnam's next generation of tech leaders is being nurtured.
The FPT has a network of five private university campuses across the country and has trained 150,000 students. Binh believes their skills will be in high demand in Vietnam and beyond. It was a business trip to Japan's industrial conglomerate Sumitomo that led Ben to decide FPT needed to address Vietnam's education shortages and develop the country's top talent. Message from a Japanese company is Yeah, your ideas, great, but we don't speak English. And I said, okay, we going to learn Japanese language and go back to you. And this is key to enters a very difficult market like Japan by speaking Japanese and we up nice this same time learning English and Japanese. That's very challenging because in the
school our university's foreign language was very poor and no internet. And last time we opened empty universities. In 2006. And now we need to spread education, more technology and languages, and we try to be in every mix. See this?
And we start with Hola, Hanoi, and then Ho Chi Minh City and then Lenin and then Queenan and Canto Phi Campus. And now we're going to open more less a unit because no one university is open such multi campus. Alongside private universities, FPO now run private schools that aim high with almost 20,000 pupils, and technology is central to their learning. The six and seven year olds are programming simple robots.
They get lessons in coding, how to interact with air systems and daily life and the basics of algorithms for trying to build. You're never too young to learn A.I.. That's why he's urging the government for school kids as young as six to be taught how to use it. Within this system from first grade, they all start with the A.I.
locations. They play for years, really just playing. And then from 5th grade they start to develop A.I. by themselves. STEMs and robotics. I see very clearly how Vietnam should be in future Vietnam. Just about the 100 million people, young people, good educations and latest technology.
That's the only way to go. A new location, not contribute much profit for pretty much from the quantity point of view that's most useful consumption, what equities should do. And today we're thinking about the everyday kids not in cities like Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City, but kid in the countryside should be got the good education. That's what we going to do now. So you are leapfrogging. Yes, exactly. Still ahead, 50 years after the fall of Saigon, pomp and legacy of war and Vietnam's struggle for independence left their mark on Binh. I met Ho Chi Minh twice.
I talked to his colleagues and I learned a lot, of course, quite interesting. And also the war, history and so on. I think that's very help me to see the problem. When Latitude returns. April 1975, the chaotic final days of the war. As the North Vietnamese army captured Saigon and the U.S.
scrambled an extraordinary evacuation. 7000 people flown out by helicopter. Today inside of Ho Chi Minh mausoleum, Hanoi's War Memorial commemorates the men and women killed in 20 years of fighting. A figure Vietnam estimates at more than 3 million. 50 years since the end of the Vietnam War. And the United States is now this country's largest export market. It's just one symbol of Vietnam's transformation from ruins to reconciliation.
It's a journey that is reflected in Binh's own story from a struggling young graduate just back from university in what was the Soviet Union to a major player in one of the world's cutting edge industries. I returned to Vietnam in eighties. Trouble. Inflation is three digits and my classmate
came and asked. Please save my family. One wife, two kids, $5. I said, okay, we'll try to do something. I came to Minister of Technology Progress and asking to set a company. And he asked me what products. I don't have any ideas. I said, I just want high tech.
And he suggests, okay. In food processing technology, you should have a very high tech. I agree immediately. But we didn't do food at all.
We start with the computer. And during this time, Vietnam under embargoes and no one countries teaching us on computers. And the way we do it is to buy books from Hong Kong and to to learn by ourself. And we start with the first project for ticket booking for Vietnam Airlines. And then we moved to the banking core banking in Vietnam at that time. Step by step, we go up and at the first
day of FPT, we wrote something. And later on we understood that these are our visions. We dream of the powerful company. And at last time, we know just few company in the world.
IBM, for example, Hitachi, for example. And we see they have three letters. Three solved. And therefore, we recite instead of FTPC, we cut C and put just FPT. We grow fast. We work day and night. Then you're among the richest in Vietnam. Yet you choose to fly economy class. Why is that?
Why remain frugal despite the wealth you have accumulated? I learned from legend. Legendary general. How will they behave? How will they do things? And the talking with the talk. They listen with the soldiers. I think that's good. Let's do it. Binh, you've had a fascinating journey. You and your family moved to Hanoi to follow Uncle Ho. Ho Chi Minh being the revolutionary
leader who helped Vietnam win against the French and then the US. On reflection, all through these years. What are some of the thoughts that comes through your mind when you think about how even, like in the case of Vietnam, you know, an emerging economy that's now leading in a tech space and your own journey at FPT. How what are some of your own reflections? Our family originally live in Danang, but my father followed Ho Chi Minh for freedom in Independence. He left the now alone to the north. And after 1954, my mother and my sister
and brother follow father, move to north. I grown up in Hanoi, and my youth, lack of nearly everything, Don't have clothes enough. I used to use the clothes of my sisters, as the youngest guy. I don't have new one, just all from
brother or from sisters. But really the spirit of the family. Just one freedom and independence. Every guy had to somehow to supply surplus, even for me as a young student. Study is top up job. Even when I graduate the country
selects us and give us the pass. Okay. You are young guy. What will be and it and your purpose is to build countries after the war.
These are really uncertain times with Trump tariffs impacting every industry. How are you assessing the impact of the Trump administration this time round on Vietnam and Vietnam's economy? Yeah, that's the is uncertainties for every countries, including Vietnam. Case in point, since recording this interview, Vietnam became one of the countries hardest hit by Trump's initial tariff salvo. It's not just about the government in the US, it's also about the government in Vietnam. How should foreign investors be viewing the climate here in Vietnam? Our prime minister said Vietnam should be safest hiding place in geopolitics terms at current moment. Really, something big happened with Vietnam. I think the forces is a clearly announce
our priorities is technologies, private sectors, start ups. So you're saying never mind the politics. Growth is there for investors to tap. Yeah, ignore all the noise. Politics is just noise. That's the real case.
And there are times when escaping from all the noise means making the most of an oasis of quiet. The home been built overlooking one of Hanoi's Lakes. The house has a special meaning, right for you? It's tranquility.
It's peace, it's quiet. Especially on the. Because the kind of life you lead in trying to grow FPT. For me, the concept ideas is the most critical. Thus ideas not appear in office, be here in quiet and relaxed, but the most critical issues people get here are they together? Bring together and solve problem together.
Let's talk about this villa. Very traditional, a lot of things of the past. I live my very first independent life in the farmhouse and I built it by the memory of the farmhouse, the philosophy, Ying, Yang, fire elements, the concept of the life, of the happiness. They built this kind of roof like boat and man and woman and more rice. Everyone should be happy, even have
somewhere to live, something to eat and someone to love. So you're defined a lot by your past experiences? Yeah. Actually, I'm lucky man, because not everyone should have the experience of the war and peace. Poor and rich technology progress. But change during my life. Rich, my experience, not today's kids, they don't know.
So what is the title for whom? How the people shouldn't die in front of you. They don't see it at all. There's an appreciation for what you have and therefore peace is most important thing for today for Vietnamese and I think for human being.
2025-05-30 06:08
