The Ledger
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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…”
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…”
Chang: Previous TSMC CEO Offered NVIDIA Zero Dollars in Dispute
“The previous CEO did not even give him a number, you know. The previous CEO gave him zero.”
Morris Chang: China heavily subsidized and took control of solar manufacturing
“The solar business could have been pretty good. However, China ruined it. They subsidized the hell out of it. And they now control that business, solar cells.”
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 …”
Chang: Apple placed initial 16nm chip orders with Samsung over TSMC
“I mean, it was a real shock when I heard that Apple had placed their first orders of 16 with Samsung.”
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…”
Rosenthal: Tesla Will Have to Shift to TSMC for 3nm Chips
“They're gonna have to go to TSMC, though, in the next generation, because you want three nanometer.”
David Rosenthal: TSMC outspends all competitors on ASML equipment
“It's TSMC's insane capital operating cash flow production that enables them to spend capex above anybody else that allows them to buy more ASML equipment than anyone else.”
Nvidia bifurcated its architecture to monopolize TSMC's CoWoS packaging capacity
“And by NVIDIA bifurcating their chip architectures into a gaming segment that does not have this latest COWAS technology, this allows them to monopolize, like, a huge amount of TSMC's capacity to make the COWAS chips, specifically for these H-one hundreds, whi…”
Rosenthal: TSMC is the only leading-edge foundry not competing with customers
“They are truly the only foundry at the leading edge that does not in any way compete with their customers. They don't have their own end product division, they don't design their own chips, it is truly they only serve their customers, and they do not compete a…”
Chang: TSMC launched 16nm six months later and won most Apple orders
“We developed, we had our own 16 about half a year later, and most of Apple's 60 nanometer requirements still belonged to us.”
Morris Chang: TSMC's LED venture failed due to restrictive patent concentration
“LED did not take off either, because LED, it's not, the market is not as big as solar. However, it's controlled, the patents are controlled by just a few companies. And they wouldn't let the few companies that control the patterns of LED were not let up at all…”
Chang: NVIDIA became a top-five TSMC customer within three years
“Within two or three years, they were, they did become one of the biggest five customers.”
Chang: TSMC led foundries at 28nm, but trailed Intel
“At 28 nanometers, we were very definitely the leader among foundries. Yeah. And maybe among a few other companies such as Texas Instruments and so on, but not Intel.”
Gilbert: TSMC will ramp its 2nm process in the second half of 2025
“I think they're actually doing the small production runs, getting ready to ramp in the second half of this year on the two nanometer process.”
NVIDIA raised only $20 million in venture funding prior to going public
“NVIDIA was started in 1993, only ever raised twenty million dollars.”
TSMC announced a $100 billion, three-year capital expenditure plan in 2021
“TSMC just announced they're going to spend a hundred billion dollars in capex over the next three years, thirty billion dollars this year, 60 over the next two.”
Morris Chang received zero founder equity when starting TSMC
“It was zero dollars. Morris Chang got no equity in the company. Zero.”
TSMC invested $9 billion and 6,000 workers to build Apple's dedicated fab
“And for TSMC, it meant an initial investment of nine billion dollars, Fabs are expensive to build, and devoting 6000 employees to building a dedicated plant for Apple in just 11 months.”
TSMC was founded with $220M, heavily funded by Taiwan and Philips
“So they put up 28% of the capital. Government puts up 50%. It ends up being two hundred twenty million in total.”
Rosenthal: TSMC caught up to chipmaking leaders within 10 years
“Within about 10 years, they catch up and then they start to exceed everybody else.”
Rosenthal: TSMC will likely be sole manufacturer at 3nm node
“So, very likely in the next process, it's just going to be TSMC.”
Rosenthal: TSMC sustained 17.4% annual revenue growth over 27 years
“Since the first IPO in Taiwan in 1994, TSMC has had compound annual revenue growth of 17.4% for 27 years.”
ASML is the sole manufacturer of the world's most advanced chipmaking machines
“They make the most advanced chip manufacturing machines in the world. They're the only company that makes them. They're located still in the Netherlands. Their biggest customer is TSMC.”
TSMC holds over 90% global market share in 5-nanometer chip manufacturing
“In the five nanometer, Samsung has like five, 10% market share, and TSMC has 90 plus percent.”
TSMC expects its AI hardware revenue to grow 50% annually through 2028
“TSMC, in their last earnings, said that AI hardware currently only represents six percent of their revenue, but all indications over there is that they expect AI revenue to grow 50% per year for the next five years.”
Bathgate: TSMC manufactures a quarter of the world's digital chips
“TSMC fabs a quarter of the digital chips made in the world right now.”
Bathgate: Intel, TSMC, and Samsung bought 25% of ASML to fund EUV
“Intel and TSMC and Samsung partnered and actually bought 25% of ASML to inject capital into ASML to develop EUV systems.”
Gilbert: TSMC's Fabs 2 and 3 Built in 1980s Still Operate
“Fabs two and three were the first TSMC specific fabs that they built, and they're still running from the late eighties.”
Gilbert: Semiconductor market grew from $26B in 1987 to $527B in 2024
“Since TSMC was founded in 1987, the world's semiconductor market has grown from twenty six billion to five hundred and twenty seven billion last year.”
Rosenthal: TSMC, Arm, Synopsys, Cadence, and ASML were founded within years of each other
“Not only TSMC, ARM, Synopsys, Cadence, and ASML all founded,
Right within a couple years of each other.”
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…”
Morris Chang: TSMC exceeded $1 billion in revenue in 1995
“We had exceeded, I remember we had exceeded the one billion U.S. Dollars in revenue in 95, and this was 97.”
Rosenthal: Intel Upgrades Old Fabs Rather Than Keeping Legacy Capacity
“Intel It is constantly taking their existing fab footprint and repurposing it and upgrading it for the leading edge, which, you know, on the one hand is great. It's utilizing their assets, you know, for the most valuable, highest valuable products. On the othe…”
Gilbert: TSMC commands over 50% of global foundry market share
“They have over 50% of the market for foundries, for all contract manufacturing of chips.”
TSMC manufactures all NVIDIA chips and every iPhone and Mac processor
“They make the primary chip inside every MacBook and iPhone shipped today. They're powering the AI wave, manufacturing all of NVIDIA's chips.”
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…”
Gilbert: TSMC maintains 50% gross and 40% operating margins
“And because they have 50% gross margins and 40% operating margins, they can take that profit and buy more advanced machinery.”
TSMC and Aramco are the only non-US West Coast trillion-dollar firms
“They and Saudi Aramco are the only trillion dollar companies in the world that are not located on the west coast of the United States.”
Rosenthal: TSMC's market cap doubled from $550B in 2021 to over $1T
“TSMC's market cap has doubled since then, From five hundred and fifty billion to over a trillion dollars.”
TSMC is spending $12 billion in Arizona for non-leading-edge fabs
“They are spending, I think, twelve billion dollars this year to start a plant in Arizona, which will not be the three nanometer, I don't even think it'll be the five nanometer.”
Semiconductor chips cannot be etched larger due to extreme ultraviolet photolithography limits
“Due to a quirk of the extreme ultraviolet photolithography that we talked about, the EUV on the TSMC episode, chips are already the full size of the reticle. It's a physics and wavelength constraint. You really can't etch chips larger without some new inventio…”
Nvidia split consumer and data center GPU architectures in September 2022
“Up until NVIDIA's current GPU generation, the hopper generation of GPUs for the data center, there was only one GPU architecture at NVIDIA, and that same architecture and those same chips from the same wafers made at TSMC, some of them went to consumer gaming …”
Rosenthal: NVIDIA Hopper will be TSMC's first 4nm chip
“I think Hopper is going to be the world's first four nanometer process chip using TSMC's new four nanometer.”
Rosenthal: Nvidia and TSMC signed a multi-year foundry partnership that remains today
“The next year, the two companies sign a huge multi-year deal for TSMC to become the primary foundry for NVIDIA and still are today.”
ASML took nine years between first EUV shipment and high-volume production
“They shipped the first EUV tool in 2010 to TSMC, and EUV didn't even really start high volume, and this was after, you know, a decade of R&D already, but then they didn't start high volume manufacturing on EUV until 2019. So they had, like, almost a decade of …”