Industrial Technology Research Institute

Offers commercialization and innovation support through research infrastructure, entrepreneurship guidance, and startup pathways.

Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) is Taiwan's largest applied-technology research institute and a non-profit under the Ministry of Economic Affairs. Founded in 1973, it has more than 6,500 researchers and staff and has long served as a bridge between government R&D, industry adoption, and startup formation in Taiwan's high-tech economy.

ITRI's work cuts across semiconductors, ICT, biomedical technology, green energy, smart manufacturing, and related industrial systems. The institute runs open labs, incubation, technology transfer, contract research, pilot production, process improvement, and IP services, while also administering government-subsidized industrial innovation routes such as the A+ Industrial Innovation R&D Program on behalf of MOEA's Department of Industrial Technology. Its record also ties it to open-lab collaboration, spin-off and incubation support, and industry-academia innovation programs.

The institute's role is unusually tangible for a research body: it helped incubate TSMC, UMC, Epistar, and more than 600 other companies, and it uses that same model today through strategy offices focused on AI, grid modernization, net zero, southern Taiwan innovation, and intelligent and green vehicles. The 2023 approved budget in the record is NT$25.5 billion, which underscores the scale of its public backing and the degree to which it functions as Taiwan's industrial R&D workhorse rather than a narrow grant office.