TSMC, or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, is the world’s largest dedicated contract chipmaker.
Morris Chang founded TSMC in 1987 in Hsinchu, Taiwan. The company pioneered the pure-play foundry model: it manufactures chips designed by other companies without competing with those customers by selling its own branded processors.
This model allowed firms such as Apple, Nvidia, and AMD to design advanced chips while relying on TSMC’s factories for production. TSMC’s manufacturing technology and enormous capital investment have made it a central company in the global semiconductor industry and a frequent member of the world’s highest-value companies.
TSMC is sometimes confused with Samsung Electronics or Intel because all three manufacture advanced chips. Samsung also designs and sells many of its own products, while Intel historically focused more heavily on designing its own processors.