TSMC, or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, manufactures chips for many of the world’s highest-valued technology companies.
TSMC was founded in 1987 by Morris Chang in Hsinchu, Taiwan. It pioneered the dedicated foundry model: designing and manufacturing chips for customers that generally do not operate their own leading-edge fabrication plants.
This business model allowed companies such as Apple, Nvidia, AMD, and Qualcomm to focus on chip design while TSMC handled wafer fabrication. Its advanced manufacturing processes made the company a crucial supplier for smartphones, data centers, graphics processors, and artificial-intelligence systems.
TSMC is often confused with a chip-design company. It generally manufactures customer designs rather than selling a broad range of branded consumer processors. Its scale and technical position have made it one of the world’s most valuable semiconductor businesses.