(Reuters) – Vietnamese President Tho Lam met with major U.S. companies in New York and pledged to expand the country’s semiconductor and artificial intelligence (AI) industries, as communist Vietnam seeks more investment from tech and other U.S. companies.
Lam, the first Vietnamese president to visit the United States, is due to meet with U.S. President Joe Biden later on Wednesday.
Lin met with several U.S. companies, including tech firms Apple and Meta, and financial firms Blackstone and Warburg Pincus, according to photos of him shaking hands with company representatives posted on a Vietnamese government portal.
Lam, who also serves as general secretary of Vietnam’s most powerful Communist Party, is due to meet with Google later on Wednesday, a person familiar with her schedule said, confirming a Reuters report last week.
According to the Vietnam Government Portal, during a meeting with Lam on Monday, Meta’s president of international affairs, Nick Clegg, shared plans for the production of virtual reality glasses in Vietnam.
Meta, which has tens of millions of Facebook social media users in Vietnam, did not respond to a request for comment.
At a separate business forum, Lam signed cooperation agreements with US companies on energy, artificial intelligence and data centres, the government said.
Other attendees included representatives from technology company Amazon, payments company Visa, multinational consumer goods manufacturer Procter & Gamble and energy company AES.
“Lim has made it very clear that he intends to grow the high-tech economy during his term as president and as secretary-general,” Ted Osias, executive director of the US-ASEAN Business Council, an advocacy group that co-hosted the event, told Reuters.
According to a government portal, Lam said during a meeting with U.S. companies that Vietnam sees digital transformation as a driving force to lead the country into a new era.
“The development of the semiconductor and AI industries is a strategic choice and priority,” Lam said.
(Reporting by Simon Lewis, Phuong Nguyen, Francesco Guarascio and Khanh Vu; Editing by Lincoln Feast)
