TSMC manufactures chips designed by many of the world's largest technology companies.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, commonly called TSMC, is the world's largest dedicated semiconductor foundry. A foundry manufactures integrated circuits for customers that design chips but generally do not operate their own large-scale fabrication plants.
TSMC was founded in 1987 by Morris Chang in Taiwan. Its business model helped popularize the separation between chip design and chip manufacturing. Customers can create processors and accelerators while relying on TSMC's fabrication facilities and process technology to produce them.
This role makes TSMC strategically important to the global technology industry. Companies associated with smartphones, personal computers, graphics processors, and artificial intelligence can appear to compete with one another while using the same manufacturing partner. TSMC's market value is therefore tied to worldwide demand for advanced semiconductors and the capital-intensive economics of chip production.