Morris Chang
38 statements across 6 episodes · 9 bullish · 5 bearish · 4 people on the record · first statement Nov 3, 2021 by John Bathgate · said 193 times in 16 episodes since 2021 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Morris Chang's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by David Rosenthal (161), Ben Gilbert (27), John Bathgate (2), Brinton Johns (2), Michael Lewis (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2025 163 mentions in 4 episodes 41 per episode
2024 1 mention in 1 episode
2023 4 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
2022 18 mentions in 6 episodes 3 per episode
- Nvidia: The GPU Company (1993-2006) · Acquired
- The Playbook: Lessons from 200+ Company Stories · Acquired
- Nvidia: The Machine Learning Company (2006-2022) · Acquired
- Qualcomm · Acquired
- Walmart · Acquired
- Platforms and Power (with Hamilton Helmer and Chenyi Shi) · Acquired
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
2021 7 mentions in 2 episodes 4 per episode
Everything said about Morris Chang, oldest first
Nov 3, 2021 positive
Bathgate: TSMC keeps margins below its customers to prioritize long-term platform value
“TSMC has lower margins than most of their gross margins than most of their customers. And so at any point they could probably take the margins from 50% to 60% and say, Hey, I'm obviously have a monopoly in this market, but the way, you know, Morris Chang archi…”
Jun 20, 2022 positive
Mar 29, 2023 neutral
TSMC Was a Solution in Search of a Problem Founders Shouldn't Copy
“It's like Morris Chang and TSMC. It's like, he invented the notion of a fabulous semiconductor company before there was any demand for that, and then it turned out that his timing was exactly right, that, like, within a couple of years, a whole ton of, you kno…”
Jan 21, 2025 neutral
Jan 21, 2025 positive
Jan 21, 2025 neutral
Rosenthal: Morris Chang built his TSMC stake by buying shares with personal cash
“Well, what he did as TSMC started to work, he basically put all of his money into buying. He bought his own shares. In the company. I don't know if it was privately before they went public on the Taiwan Stock Exchange in 1994 and then the New York Stock Exchan…”
Jan 21, 2025 neutral
Jan 21, 2025 neutral
Jan 21, 2025 positive
Jan 21, 2025 positive
Jan 27, 2025 negative
Chang: TSMC's 2009 CEO circumvented board approval by framing layoffs as performance dismissals
“So I said to him, if you want to lay off, bring it to the board. I'll call a special board meeting. And I knew what I would ask the board to do, you know, which was not to grant the permission. That's right. But he decided to circumvent that, the CEO, you know…”
Jan 27, 2025 bullish
Chang: TSMC matched Intel in technology and beat it in manufacturing in 2011
“Technology. At that time, we thought we were almost at par with Intel. Almost. In fact, I thought we were, I think I thought we were at par with Intel at that time. Manufacturing. I thought we were better than Intel. And customer trust. We thought that our cus…”
Jan 27, 2025 neutral
Chang: Power comes from strategic proximity, not headcount, much like Kissinger
“Actually, back in my mind, I was thinking of the time when Kissinger was Nixon's national security advisor, and somebody else whose name I have even forgotten was the Secretary of State. And Kissinger, you know, probably had a couple hundred people reporting t…”
Jan 27, 2025 negative
Chang: Layoffs based on supervisor performance reviews lack credibility
“People would not respect us if we lay off by performance ratings.
[1196] Ben Gilbert: And why is that?
[1198] Morris Chang: Because it's very subjective. Performance reviews, the performance ratings are done by everyone's own supervisor. So, the 700 was perf…”
Jan 27, 2025 negative
Chang: Companies needing workers back within one year should not do layoffs
“If in a year you have to hire people back, you have to hire the laid off people back, then you shouldn't lay off, because the layoff, the separation expense is usually half a year, about half a year, and it takes at least half a year to train a person. So if y…”
Jan 27, 2025 neutral
Jan 27, 2025
Chang: TSMC Offered NVIDIA Over $100M with 48-Hour Deadline
“Yes. More than a hundred million. And I also said, our offer is effective, 48 hours. If you do not, there is not going to be, we are not going to argue, we are not going to bargain. If you don't accept the offer within 48 hours, we will have to go to an arbitr…”
Jan 27, 2025
Jan 27, 2025 neutral
Chang: Replaced TSMC CEO kept same pay, grade, and successor status
“Well, as far as the CO is concerned, I didn't keep him. I had More than one nice talk with him. I intended to, and I told him that he was still a potential, ah, successor to me. So I kept him at the same job grade, we have job grades, and the same salary and b…”
Jan 27, 2025 neutral
Morris Chang: Mark Liu declined TSMC BD role due to small headcount
“So, I, ah, first offered the marketing, ah, business development job to the guy who was in the Bigger job, advanced technology, Mark. And I explained to him that I did not think he had had any significant marketing experience in the past, and this would, this …”
Jan 27, 2025 bearish
Jan 27, 2025 neutral
Chang: Foundries demand running one standardized factory for many diverse customers
“The difficulty was, you know, you have to satisfy a lot of customers, you know, and everyone, you know, wanted the factory to run his way, you know. But you can only run for one way, you know, which will satisfy more or less all the customers. And the advantag…”
Jan 27, 2025 neutral
Rosenthal: Learning Curve Pricing Requires Early Unprofitable Aggressive Pricing
“The insight is that like the goal that you are playing for is to be the largest volume player kind of at the end of the game. So if you take that as a given of like, if we get to be the largest volume player, this is a fixed cost business. This is a scale econ…”
Jan 27, 2025
Jan 27, 2025
Chang: Texas Instruments repeatedly rejected raising semiconductor R&D to 5.5% of revenue
“At that time, when I was the head of Worldwide Semiconductors, our R&D budget,
Was, 4.8% of revenue, of our revenue, and I thought it was not enough.
I just wanted to raise it to 5.5% of the revenue, but my request was denied all the, every time I raised it.”
Jan 27, 2025
Chang: TSMC historically used six-month probations rather than layoffs
“Well, we never did that, you know. I mean, the worst we would do was to put them on, place them on probation for six months, and quite often, you know, at the end of the six months, everybody would go back to the, to his or his or her old job, and some of them…”
Jan 27, 2025
Chang: TSMC gross margins crossed 50% after his retirement
“Now, of course what happened later was that there was COVID and so on, and also we began to have leadership, technology leadership. So our margin, you know. Jumped up to over 50%, but when I retired, I was still short of 50%, slightly short of 50%. I was almos…”
Jan 27, 2025 neutral
Chang: Apple rejects unprompted supplier pitches until they are ready
“Apple is a very close mouthed company. If you try to talk with, if you offer, you know, your service, I mean, they will just tell you to go away, you know. They will come to see you when they are ready, you That's what I knew about Apple, even then, and I knew…”
Jan 27, 2025 positive
Jan 27, 2025 neutral
Chang: I did not foresee how big smartphones would become for 28nm
“No, I didn't. Maybe the business development guy, I mean, that was another interesting story. Yeah, maybe he knew. Maybe he, or at least, I now hope and I, of course, hoped at that time, too, that he had a more detailed visibility than I did”
Jan 27, 2025
Chang: 2009 TSMC CEO retake was triggered by 600-700 performance layoffs
“Another problem was the immediate one that triggered me to retake the CO ship because the previous CO had laid off, except he didn't use the term laid off, you know. He used the bad performance review, the worst performance review people, and there were about …”
Jan 27, 2025 neutral
Chang: TSMC rejected IBM co-development deal that UMC accepted and regretted
“So we declined without having to think about it at all. We declined the IBM office. And IBM, in fact, was quite angry, you know. I mean, they thought we're still a small Taiwan backward place, you know. It's a Taiwan company, and they are going to pick IBM. So…”
Jan 27, 2025 positive
Jan 27, 2025
Jan 27, 2025 positive
Chang: TSMC fixed R&D spending at 8% of revenue through recessions
“So I almost just literally picked a number out ahead.
We've been running six or seven percent already.
So I said, oh, let's pick eight percent.
Okay.
Yeah.
Eight percent, regardless of
Whether there's a recession or not.
And it's just eight percent of revenue…”
Jan 27, 2025 negative
Jan 27, 2025
Dec 15, 2025 neutral
Morris Chang told Acquired TSMC's solar and memory diversification was a mistake
“We were sitting down with Morris Chang, and he was talking about TSMC, and he told us that one of the ways that they aired was trying to exit the integrated circuit market, or diversify from that market, and go into solar.
Memories, and there was one other thi…”