TSMC has now become the world’s biggest semiconductor company, passing the likes of Intel and Samsung when it comes to market capitalisation.
The firm also known as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company reported the news having reached a peak height of $66.40 per share meaning a market capitalisation of $313 billion dollars. It was something that was fairly likely to happen eventually but it’s still a massive achievement. It has surpassed the likes of Samsung’s $261 billion worth and Nvidia’s (a fabless semiconductor firm, to be fair) $257 billion.
As a sign of its strength, TrendForce research has found that TSMC has 51.9 percent of the global foundry market share in comparison to Samsung’s mere 18.8 percent. Reports suggest that this could grow too with TSMC likely to make around $11.2 to $11.5 billion in revenue during Q3 2020 – an increase of 7.9 percent to 10.8 percent year-over-year.
The firm develops chips for mostly every major company you can think of including AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm, and many more. Although, one place it won’t be providing orders is Huawei. At roughly the same time as the news of TSMC’s success emerged, it also revealed that it will stop all orders from Huawei, thereby complying with US regulations. Those regulations require all non-US companies to apply for a license to ship any American-made technology to Huawei and TSMC has decided to no longer do so, despite a source suggesting that Huawei is TSMC’s number two customer and a valuable asset.
TSMC announced plans earlier this year to build a $12 billion plant in Arizona so, presumably, it’s picking a side and sticking to it.
In other TSMC news, the firm has also announced it will be manufacturing Apple silicon for Arm-based Macs that are set to launch in the future. It’s uncertain just yet if TSMC will be using the new 6nm process node or sticking with the old 7nm option but, regardless, it’s a huge contract for the semiconductor firm. TSMC is also meant to be currently working on smaller nodes like 3 nm, ensuring there’s plenty going on for the giant.
It seems safe to assume that TSMC is going to continue to go from strength to strength with its achievements as number one semiconductor company in the world.