TSMC boss bets big on AI growth, says he'd like to hike chip prices - MSN

TSMC CEO Chen Nanguang expressed confidence in the company's future growth, driven by robust demand for computing power and advanced semiconductors amid the relentless AI boom. Speaking at the annual ... Read original →

TSMC's signaling of potential price hikes marks a pivotal shift: AI compute demand has entered a phase where foundry capacity dictates pricing power. Technically, sub-3nm nodes and advanced packaging like CoWoS are now non-negotiable for AI accelerators, compelling clients like NVIDIA to absorb higher costs while forcing upstream EDA, materials, and equipment suppliers to upgrade rapidly. Geopolitically, delayed U.S. CHIPS Act disbursements and tightening export controls from Taiwan, China amplify TSMC’s compliance burdens and capex risks. Samsung and Intel, despite aggressive 2nm roadmaps, lack both yield maturity and ecosystem lock-in to challenge TSMC’s HPC dominance in the near term. Over the next 18 months, ‘compute inflation’—rising cost per TFLOPS—will become structural, invalidating decades of Moore’s Law-driven cost declines.