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(Reuters) - Vietnam's President To Lam pledged to expand the country's semiconductors and AI industry in meetings with top U.S. corporations in New York, as the Communist-ruled nation seeks more investment from tech firms and other American companies.
In his first visit to the United States as Vietnam's president, Lam is scheduled to meet with U.S. President Joe Biden later on Wednesday.
Lam held meetings with several U.S. companies, including tech corporations Apple and Meta, and financial firms Blackstone and Warburg Pincus, according to pictures of handshakes with the companies' representatives published on Vietnam's government portal.
Lam, who is also the general secretary of the Communist Party, Vietnam's most powerful job, plans to meet Google later on Wednesday, according to a person familiar with his schedule, confirming a Reuters report from last week.
At the meeting with Lam on Monday, Meta's President for global affairs Nick Clegg shared plans for production in Vietnam of virtual reality glasses, according to Vietnam's government portal.
Meta, which has tens of millions of users in Vietnam of its Facebook social media, did not respond to requests for comment.
At a separate business forum, Lam signed cooperation agreements with U.S. firms on energy, artificial intelligence and for a data centre, the government said.
Other participants included representatives of tech firm Amazon, payment company Visa, consumer goods multinational Procter & Gamble and energy firm AES.
Lam "has made it absolutely clear that his presidency, his time as general secretary, they're going to grow the tech economy," Ted Osius, head of the US-ASEAN Business Council, the advocacy group which co-hosted the event, told Reuters.
In meetings with U.S. companies, Lam said Vietnam considered digital transformation as a driving force to take the country into a new era, according to the government portal.
"Developing the semiconductor and AI industries is ... a strategic choice and a priority," Lam said.
(Reporting by Simon Lewis, Phuong Nguyen, Francesco Guarascio and Khanh Vu; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
