TSMC manufactures semiconductors for clients including Apple and Nvidia at its Taiwan facilities.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, commonly called TSMC, is the world’s largest dedicated semiconductor foundry. It manufactures chips designed by other companies, allowing customers to outsource fabrication instead of building and operating their own advanced factories.
Morris Chang founded TSMC in 1987 in Hsinchu, Taiwan. The company helped establish the pure-play foundry model, in which a manufacturer does not design competing branded chips for sale under its own name. This separation encouraged companies such as Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Apple to focus on chip design while relying on specialist manufacturing partners.
TSMC operates major facilities in Taiwan and has announced or developed additional capacity abroad, including in Arizona and Japan. The company is not the same as Nvidia: Nvidia designs many of the processors used in artificial-intelligence systems, while TSMC fabricates chips for Nvidia and numerous other customers. “Foundry” therefore describes TSMC’s business model, not a type of consumer product.