TAIPEI -- Foxconn's chairman on Friday downplayed concerns about a possible artificial intelligence bubble, saying demand for the key Nvidia server supplier was clear and strong, and sales growth was expected to be double-digit in 2027.

"The argument that the AI industry is bubbling doesn't hold up," Foxconn chief Young Liu told a group interview on the sidelines of its annual Hon Hai Tech Day in Taipei. "If you ask the finance industry, they might be worried about the stock market performances, but for AI industry people, we don't worry about it." Liu's comments come as global tech stocks suffer volatility over AI monetization worries and weaker-than-expected earnings.

The industry is also battling unprecedented shortages for a wide range of components and resources, from memory chips and printed circuit boards to power infrastructure, utilities and lasers.

"To me, the current supply chain constraints are a happy problem, as it means the demand is far greater than the supplies," Liu said.

Liu, who met OpenAI CEO Sam Altman earlier in the day, said Foxconn's collaboration with the ChatGPT creator on AI data center hardware had been progressing well, with more concrete plans likely to be announced later.

Earlier, Liu had said that Foxconn was expanding its global manufacturing footprint for AI servers across Asia and North America, producing everything from components to trays and racks, as the world's largest electronics contract manufacturer seeks to strengthen its grip on tech product production, where it holds a 40% market "We have been expanding production for all components and systems for AI data center servers in Taiwan, Vietnam, Mexico and the U.S.," he said during an opening speech at the event.

Liu later told reporters that Foxconn already has six buildings operating in Houston, Texas, and plans to keep expanding capacity there to meet strong local demand for AI infrastructure. The chairman added that Foxconn was also working with the Taiwanese government and an industry association to develop a science park in the state to bring tooling, molding, connectors, cables and printed circuit boards there and build a more complete supply chain.

Foxconn has 241 manufacturing sites and offices in 24 countries. Its top clients include Nvidia, Apple, Google, Amazon and Cisco. In the Americas alone, Foxconn has 56 sites, including its massive manufacturing campus in Houston.

Liu said in the speech Foxconn was no mere "box mover" assembling systems; it is the world's most integrated design and manufacturing service company.

"Take smartphones for instance, we are capable of providing more than 50% of components and parts inside," he said in his address. For AI servers, Foxconn provides server cabinets, cables, connectors, GPU (graphics processing units) boards, compute trays, switch trays, printed circuit boards, and liquid cooling systems.

Liu listed statistics that reflect Foxconn's enormous size and range. It has about 1 million employees worldwide, including 122,000 engineers. Last year, the company helped global clients successfully launch 941 new products, or about 2.5 per day, he said.

"We are not just a product assembler; we are capable of delivering design, verification, mass production and global manufacturing footprints to our clients, which makes us hard to replicate," the chairman said.

At the Hon Hai Tech Day, the company debuted Nvidia's Spectrum- CPO tray an optical-technology breakthrough that moves the optical engine closer to the main switch chip than conventional pluggable optical transceivers. Foxconn also demonstrated Nvidia's latest container-sized DSX POD, a modular AI factory that could cut infrastructure deployment time from six months to two weeks.