TSMC, or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, was founded in 1987 by Morris Chang and became the world’s largest dedicated semiconductor foundry.
A semiconductor foundry manufactures chips designed by other companies. This business model allowed customers such as Apple, Nvidia, AMD, and Qualcomm to develop advanced processors without owning and operating their own leading-edge fabrication plants.
TSMC helped establish the “fabless” semiconductor model, in which chip designers outsource manufacturing. Its fabrication plants, commonly called fabs, produce chips using increasingly sophisticated process technologies. Because advanced chips power smartphones, data centers, vehicles, and AI systems, TSMC is strategically important as well as highly valuable by market capitalization.
TSMC is headquartered in Hsinchu, Taiwan. It is not the same type of company as ASML, which makes lithography equipment used by chip manufacturers, or Nvidia, which designs many of the GPUs produced by foundries.