TSMC pioneered the dedicated semiconductor foundry business model.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, commonly called TSMC, was founded in 1987 by Morris Chang in Hsinchu, Taiwan. Its central idea was to manufacture chips designed by other companies without competing with those customers by selling its own competing chip products.
That model helped separate chip design from chip fabrication. Companies such as Qualcomm, Nvidia, and many startups could concentrate on architecture and product design while contracting TSMC to manufacture physical wafers. TSMC’s advanced process technologies later made it one of the most important suppliers in the global electronics industry.
“Foundry” can also mean a factory, but in the semiconductor industry it specifically describes a manufacturer that produces chips for external designers. TSMC is not the same company as Taiwan’s government or as Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn, which primarily performs electronics assembly.