TSMC manufactures chips designed by many leading technology companies, including Apple and Nvidia.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, commonly called TSMC, was founded in Taiwan in 1987 by Morris Chang. Its key business model was the dedicated semiconductor foundry: customers design chips, while TSMC manufactures them rather than selling competing branded processors of its own.
This separation helped create the modern fabless semiconductor industry. Companies such as Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm, and Apple can focus on architecture and product design while relying on specialist foundries for production. TSMC operates advanced fabrication plants, known as fabs, in Taiwan and has expanded manufacturing and construction elsewhere.
TSMC is not the same kind of company as a chip designer. It is primarily a contract manufacturer, although its process technology is central to the performance and efficiency of many processors. Its importance to artificial intelligence, smartphones, and high-performance computing has made it one of the world’s most valuable companies by market capitalization.