“There is no shortcut,” C.C. Wei, TSMC’s chairman and CEO, told analysts on the company’s second-quarter 2026 earnings call. “Choosing a technology, ramping it up, is not buying milk from 7-Eleven.” The remark came from the head of a company that makes about 90% of the world’s most advanced semiconductor chips, according to TheStreet.
That share is the reason buyers from Asia to Arizona watch Hsinchu-based TSMC so closely. Nvidia, Apple, AMD and Broadcom all rely on it to manufacture chips they design themselves.
How it started
TSMC was formed in 1987 as a joint venture between Taiwan’s government, the Industrial Technology Research Institute and private investors. Morris Chang, a veteran semiconductor executive, founded it around a then-new idea: a pure-play foundry that builds chips designed by other companies instead of competing with them. Philips, the Dutch electronics company, put in $58 million, handed over manufacturing technology and licensed intellectual property for a 27.6% stake. Jim Dykes was the first president and general manager. When he left in 1988, Chang took over the job while remaining chairman.
The stock market listing came in Taiwan in 1994, and American Depositary Shares reached the New York Stock Exchange in 1997. Chang stepped down as CEO in 2005, by which point TSMC held roughly half of the global foundry market. He came back four years later, at 78, to steer it through the financial crisis. He stayed on as the top executive until 2013 and gave up the chairman’s seat five years after that. On June 5, 2018, he retired for the last time and Wei became CEO.
The numbers now
TSMC controls roughly three-quarters of the foundry business. Alex Frew McMillan of TheStreet Pro put its share at 73% “at last count,” up from 54.6% in 2021. The company employs more than 90,000 people. In 2025 it reported record revenue of $122.42 billion and net income of $55.21 billion, increases of 35.9% and 51.2% on the year before, driven by demand for AI and high-performance computing chips.
The momentum carried into this autumn. When TSMC reported third-quarter results in October 2026, it was a sixth straight quarter of record profits. Profit jumped nearly 69% and revenue surged 51%, Yahoo Finance reported. Gross margin came in at 66.4%, down from 67.7% in the second quarter. Wei said demand for leading-edge technologies “continue to be extremely robust,” pointing to “increasing AI demand fueled by the rising adoption of agentic AI.” Even so, the shares slipped 2% that day in a sector-wide sell-off.
Where the money is going
Spending is climbing. In July, TSMC lifted its 2026 capital budget guidance by about $8 billion, to a range of $60 billion to $64 billion, and announced an additional $100 billion investment in Arizona. Wei also said the company is building 13 leading-edge and advanced packaging fabs in Taiwan over the next several years, adding that “we will continue to further invest in Taiwan.” Chief financial officer Wendell Huang told analysts that capital spending from 2026 to 2028 should be “even more significantly higher than the past three years.”
Texas is now on the map as well. After Elon Musk acknowledged early talks with TSMC about his Terafab semiconductor project there, the company confirmed it was exploring the state. “We send the teams to Texas to do all the evaluation,” Wei said.
Sources
- History of TSMC & its stock: Company timeline, facts & milestones (TheStreet via Yahoo Finance)
- TSMC stock drops despite record profit amid 'extremely robust demand' for AI chips (Yahoo Finance)
