Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company was founded in 1987.
TSMC was established in Hsinchu, Taiwan, by Morris Chang in 1987. Its central innovation was the dedicated foundry model: TSMC manufactures chips designed by other companies instead of primarily selling chips under its own consumer brand. That separation allowed specialist design firms to develop processors without building and operating their own semiconductor factories.
The company became a crucial part of the global semiconductor industry, producing chips for customers in fields such as smartphones, computers, automobiles, and artificial intelligence. TSMC is often confused with a chip-design company because it manufactures highly recognizable processors, but many of those products are designed by customers such as Apple, Nvidia, and AMD. TSMC’s main campus is in Hsinchu Science Park, and its manufacturing footprint later expanded beyond Taiwan.