Report: TSMC to Moderately Raise Foundry Prices in 2H; 3nm Process May See 15% Hike - AASTOCKS.com

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) plans to moderately increase its foundry prices for advanced processes in the second half of the year due to rising upstream costs. According to sourc... Read original →

TSMC’s planned 15% price hike on its 3nm node in Taiwan, China signals a fundamental recalibration of advanced-node economics—not just cost pass-through. Surging expenses for EUV photoresists, ultra-pure wafers, and logistics are forcing foundries to prioritize margins over volume. For clients like NVIDIA, this erodes high-end GPU profitability and accelerates chiplet adoption to bypass monolithic die cost inflation. Geopolitically driven equipment export controls further inflate maintenance and spare parts costs, making supply chain resilience a direct pricing factor. Samsung and Intel may lure mid-tier customers with subsidies but can’t breach TSMC’s 3nm ecosystem moat. Over the next 18 months, the industry will shift to ‘precision-capex’—expansion judged by per-transistor cost efficiency, not wafer output—likely sidelining smaller fabless firms from leading-edge nodes.