TSMC is the world’s largest contract chip manufacturer by revenue.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, commonly called TSMC, specializes in making chips designed by other companies. This business model is known as a pure-play foundry: TSMC generally manufactures integrated circuits for customers rather than selling a large portfolio of its own branded processors.
The company was founded in Taiwan in 1987 by Morris Chang. Its foundry model helped separate chip design from chip manufacturing and allowed many firms to develop advanced processors without building their own fabrication plants.
TSMC manufactures chips for major customers in smartphones, graphics processing, computers, automobiles, and artificial intelligence. Its advanced manufacturing capability has made it one of the world’s most valuable companies by market capitalization. TSMC is often confused with chip designers such as Nvidia or Qualcomm, but those companies primarily design chips, whereas TSMC is best known for producing them for customers.