TSMC is the world’s largest contract chipmaker and was founded by Morris Chang in 1987.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company pioneered the dedicated foundry model: it manufactures chips designed by other companies rather than competing with customers by selling its own branded processors. That structure allowed specialist designers to create advanced chips without building their own fabrication plants.
TSMC’s customers have included major semiconductor designers such as Apple, NVIDIA, and AMD. Its manufacturing operations span Taiwan and overseas locations, and its advanced process technologies are central to high-performance computing, smartphones, and artificial-intelligence hardware.
TSMC is sometimes confused with a chip designer such as NVIDIA or a vertically integrated manufacturer such as Intel. The key distinction is that TSMC’s defining business is contract manufacturing. Its market value reflects both that strategic role and the capital-intensive nature of semiconductor production.