Illustration by Hidayat via Adobe Firefly
This story is part of Forbes’ coverage of Taiwan’s Richest 2026. See the full list here.
As the AI juggernaut fuels data center expansion worldwide, companies in the so-called picks-and-shovels sectors providing the hardware and services supporting the buildout are cleaning up. With investors piling in, valuations are skyrocketing and new fortunes are being created in these previously unglamorous industries.
A case in point is that of the three Lin brothers, Por-Fong, Por-Shih and Por-Chun, who run Taiwan Glass. They join the list for the first time at No. 29 with a combined $4 billion fortune after the company’s shares jumped nearly fivefold over the past year. Sales of its fiberglass, which is used in printed circuit boards, accounted for almost a third of 2025 revenue of NT$41 billion ($1.3 billion), up from 23% in 2024. This helped offset a drop in sales of traditional glass products caused by the mainland Chinese property market slump and resulted in its net loss narrowing by 60% to NT$590 million. Founded in 1964 by the brothers’ late father, Lin Yu-Chia, Taiwan Glass has five plants on its home turf and 15 on the mainland.
Another set of siblings, Chu Te Hsiang and Ho Te Yu—the latter took their mother’s surname—also joins the roster for the first time. Their combined wealth of $2.5 billion is drawn from their stake in Lotes, the company they founded in 1986, which saw its shares more than doubling in the past year. Lotes makes the metal and plastic parts that link electronic components inside everything from computers to cars and mobile devices. Today, its connectors and sockets in data center servers make up more than 40% of its NT$34 billion revenue.
Existing list members who benefited from the AI frenzy include Bruce Cheng, founder of Delta Electronics, which provides power components and systems as well as cooling devices for products such as AI GPUs to global tech giants including Nvidia and Google. Its shares soared more than fivefold from a year ago, boosting his fortune to $14.5 billion and catapulting Cheng 16 places to No. 7 on the list.
Delta reported over a two-thirds increase in net profit to NT$60 billion on a 32% rise in revenue to NT$555 billion for 2025. “Delta Electronics is a key beneficiary of the AI data center buildout,” says Cheng Wang, a Singapore-based equity analyst at U.S. financial services firm Morningstar, in an email. But he cautions that while the company’s fundamentals are solid, its P/E ratio of roughly 50 times 2026 estimated earnings appears “stretched.”
Another rising fortune is that of Lin Tsung-Chi, founder and chairman of King Slide Works, whose wealth surged 155% to $7.4 billion. The company, run by his daughter Lin Shu-Chen as president, started forty years ago as a maker of home furniture rails and other fittings but has since expanded into AI server rail kits and cable management arms. Its revenue soared 73% last year to NT$17.5 billion, lifting net profit 60% to NT$9.8 billion. King Slide is on a tear to expand capacity. In November, it broke ground on a fourth Taiwan factory that it says will cost NT$1 billion when completed in 2027. A $26 million Texas plant is slated to start operations this year. The company is also mulling two additional plants in the next three to five years that would double capacity.
As to whether this runup in AI-adjacent stocks is justified, Phelix Lee, Hong Kong-based senior equity analyst at Morningstar, says by email that valuations are “more optimistic than usual” and are based on the assumption that there will be no semiconductor downcycle in the next five years.