Chongqing - "China is no longer a supplier for the world. It's an innovator for the world." With that line at the 2025 Chongqing Mayor's International Economic Advisory Council (CMIA), Dr.-Ing. Michael Mertin, CEO of Austria Technologie & Systemtechnik AG (AT&S), stressed the need for policymakers and manufacturers to work hand in hand, ensuring innovation thrives and artificial intelligence advances in factories and beyond.
Dr.-Ing. Michael Mertin is at the 2025 Chongqing Mayor's International Economic Advisory Council.
Operating in Chongqing since 2011, AT&S builds high-end IC substrates and printed circuit boards for everything from consumer devices to the processors that power AI systems. The company employs about 13,000 people worldwide. Chongqing is one of the group’s most important sites.
This was Mertin's first CMIA appearance since becoming CEO in May 2025. He noted that he is "not just a manager" but also "a scientist" by training, with work in microlithography and laser technology, hence he keeps steering his observations and input to grounded engineering and management decisions.
Mertin cited Chongqing's fast progress in building an AI-driven manufacturing base while prioritizing embedded intelligence and hard infrastructure. Progress, however, is constrained by fragmented technologies, large stocks of legacy equipment, security risks across digital networks, tightening talent pipelines, rising global supply-chain uncertainty, and regulatory ambiguity that complicates upgrades and data flows.
His advice is practical: expand digital infrastructure with regional data centers and shared AI testbeds, while subsidizing upgrades of older equipment to cut adoption costs. He underscores the need for industrial cybersecurity built on secure-by-design standards and clear rules for data and cross-border flows. Equally vital is nurturing talent through enterprise–university partnerships and training programs. To anchor long-term investment, he recommended stable and transparent policies, faster approvals, priority access to green energy, and streamlined factory retrofits.
In Mertin's view, Chongqing's edge starts with people and position. He praised what he sees as an open, team-oriented workforce with a spirit for innovation in a fast-developing city that also offers affordable living and convenient infrastructure.
While framing Chongqing as a platform bridging Europe and China, the central idea he brought to the stage was "local for local." In practice, that means moving to co-develop technologies and products with partners so the company can better integrate into the Chinese market. He also encouraged more decision-making and the contribution of ideas from Chongqing and China: "People from here have to have international responsibilities."
Mertin emphasized a two-way learning network across sites globally. Methods proven in Chongqing are also rolled out worldwide: As it scales in Malaysia, AT&S is benefiting from the lessons learned here. Meanwhile, it continues to leverage European strengths in materials science, thermal-mechanical simulation, and laser technology.
In the future, energy use will be the key junction where Mertin sets AT&S to tap into waves of AI development. He called the rising energy consumption of AI centers globally the defining problem to solve. AT&S's contribution lies in improving the parts that move power and signals efficiently, as it continues to research and develop substrates for AI processors and more secure and efficient energy-management solutions for data centers.
Substrates are the dense interconnect foundation beneath a chip. Enhancements in routing density, signal integrity, power delivery, and thermal performance cascade into system-level energy efficiency gains, which in turn translate into higher performance per watt—the defining metric of today’s AI boom. This is not an abstract point: in Chongqing, AT&S is already producing high-tech IC substrates and modules for high-performance processors, data centers, 5G, and AI—precisely where incremental innovations translate into tangible improvements in everyday life.