The Financial Post reports in its Wednesday edition that Nvidia's $3.5-billion outlay in Mediatek, its largest direct investment outside the United States, has thrust a Taiwanese chip designer into the centre of the global artificial intelligence infrastructure boom (all figures U.S.). A Bloomberg dispatch to the Post reports that Mediatek gained 10 per cent, or about $20-billion of market value Tuesday after Nvidia agreed to buy bonds convertible into Mediatek shares. That has reinvigorated a stock that has tripled in value over the past year as it steadily its footprint in the business of designing AI chips for data centres. Mediatek has emerged as a key beneficiary of a push by technology companies to design custom semiconductors, using its expertise in mobile processors to participate in the AI infrastructure rush. With a market value of around $220-billion, it is Taiwan's second-biggest firm after Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which eclipses it with a capitalization nearly $2-trillion. Led by former TSMC chief Rick Tsai, the company has collaborated closely with Nvidia in the past and has now committed to using Nvidia's Nvlink Fusion and other technologies in helping its future data centre customers.