TSMC is the largest contract chip manufacturer and a major market-cap leader based in Taiwan.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, commonly called TSMC, manufactures integrated circuits designed by other companies. This business model is known as a pure-play foundry model: customers supply chip designs, while TSMC fabricates them in its advanced factories.
TSMC was founded in 1987 by Morris Chang with support from the government of Taiwan and Philips. The company helped establish the modern semiconductor foundry industry, allowing companies such as Nvidia, Apple, and AMD to design chips without owning comparable manufacturing networks.
TSMC’s market value is closely tied to demand for advanced processors used in smartphones, data centers, artificial intelligence, and high-performance computing. It is different from Intel and Samsung, which also design and manufacture chips but have broader business models.