Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC, became the world’s most valuable semiconductor company during the 2020s.
TSMC is the world’s largest dedicated semiconductor foundry. It manufactures chips designed by other companies, including processors and graphics chips for smartphones, computers, and artificial-intelligence systems. This business model lets customers design chips without owning their own advanced fabrication plants.
The company was founded in Taiwan in 1987 by Morris Chang. Its rise helped establish the pure-play foundry model and made Taiwan central to the global semiconductor supply chain. TSMC produces chips for customers such as Apple and Nvidia, but those companies design the products and TSMC manufactures them.
“Most valuable” can mean market capitalization rather than manufacturing capacity or revenue. TSMC’s ranking has changed as semiconductor demand and share prices moved, but its strategic importance comes from its advanced process technology and enormous production scale.