TSMC became the world’s most valuable semiconductor foundry by market capitalization.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, usually called TSMC, is the leading pure-play semiconductor foundry. It manufactures chips designed by other companies rather than competing broadly with those customers through its own branded processor lines.
TSMC was founded in Taiwan in 1987 by Morris Chang. Its business model helped establish the modern fabless semiconductor industry: companies such as Nvidia, AMD, and many others could design chips while outsourcing fabrication to a specialized manufacturer.
TSMC’s importance grew as advanced manufacturing processes became increasingly difficult and expensive to build. The company produces chips for smartphones, computers, automobiles, data centers, and artificial-intelligence systems. It is often confused with a chip designer such as Nvidia or with an integrated device maker such as Intel, but a foundry’s defining role is contract manufacturing.