TSMC Still Matters More Than You Think (Industrial AI Series #25)
The AI boom has pushed GPU designers and AI software companies into the spotlight. Much of the attention focuses on companies building the chips that power modern AI systems. But behind those chips sits another critical layer of the industry. Manufacturing. Most advanced AI chips are not produced by the companies that design them. Instead, they are manufactured by specialized semiconductor foundries. Among these foundries, one company plays an especially important role. TSMC. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company produces the majority of the world’s most advanced chips. Companies like NVIDIA, AMD, Apple, and many others depend on TSMC to fabricate their designs. This relationship makes manufacturing capacity one of the key constraints in the AI hardware ecosystem. Designing a powerful chip is only part of the process. Producing it at scale requires extremely advanced fabrication facilities. Modern semiconductor fabrication plants cost tens of billion...