Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, commonly called TSMC, is the world's largest contract semiconductor manufacturer and produces chips for Apple.
TSMC was founded in Taiwan in 1987 by Morris Chang. Its business model separated chip design from chip fabrication: customers could design processors while TSMC manufactured them in advanced foundries. This helped create the modern fabless semiconductor industry.
TSMC manufactures chips for many major technology companies, including processors designed by Apple and GPUs designed by Nvidia. It does not generally sell a consumer device under its own brand; its role is the specialized production behind products made by other companies.
The company's importance to market capitalization comes from the rising value of advanced chips and the difficulty of reproducing leading-edge manufacturing capacity. TSMC is listed in Taiwan and also has American depositary receipts traded in the United States.