Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) regained its US$500 billion market capitalization after investors ramped up bets on tech leaders best placed to ride an anticipated artificial intelligence (AI) boom.
Asia’s most valuable company gained 3.31 percent yesterday in Taipei trading, fueled also by hopes that a post-COVID-19 chip downturn is nearing an end. That took its gain to 32.22 percent so far this year, cementing its position among the world’s 10 most valuable corporations after overtaking Visa Inc last month.
TSMC’s gains contributed about 160 points alone to the TAIEX yesterday, which closed up 261.23 points, or 1.54 percent, at 17,216.60, the highest since April 14 last year, when the benchmark index closed at 17,245.65.
Photo: Sam Yeh, AFP
“Investors remained upbeat about AI development, and TSMC is one of the biggest beneficiaries,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang (黃國偉) said.
Morgan Stanley this week raised TSMC’s price target, citing higher demand for energy-efficient and low-cost AI custom chip designs.
“With the killer apps of generative AI [such as ChatGPT], we are seeing the semi industry’s growth stage shifting from the mobile computing to the AI computing era,” Morgan Stanley analysts wrote over the weekend. “We view TSMC as a key enabler of future AI semis given its technology leadership.”
Meanwhile, Cathie Wood’s funds have re-entered TSMC and Meta Platforms Inc after nearly a year and a half, as the high-profile manager makes new bets on AI and chips.
Two Ark Investment Management LLC funds, including Wood’s flagship Ark Innovation ETF, bought 174,848 shares of Facebook’s parent company on Monday, while Ark Autonomous Technology and Robotics ETF picked up 98,170 shares of TSMC, data compiled by Bloomberg showed.
Before this, Ark last held the two stocks in the final quarter of 2021.
Ark’s moves came weeks after Wood spoke highly of Meta’s AI strategy and said her decision to drop Nvidia Corp was due to the company facing growing competition.
She added during an interview with Bloomberg last month that she would pivot “to another set of plays.”
Wood’s other AI-related bets include electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc among large caps and UiPath Inc, Twilio Inc and Teladoc Health Inc among smaller names.
The broader rally persists despite warnings that the market might be getting ahead of itself, given the uncertainty over how to monetize AI services.
TSMC, while touting its own potential role in the rollout of AI, has expressed caution over the outlook for the smartphone market that still comprises a significant chunk of its revenue, although company executives have called for a gradual recovery in the second half and a resumption of growth next year.
Last week, TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) said the chipmaker’s capital expenditure for this year might wind up close to the bottom end of a previously forecast range of US$32 billion to US$36 billion. That is a signal that TSMC, like its rivals across the electronics industry, remain cautious in the face of plunging consumer spending and an uneven post-COVID-19 economic recovery in China.
Additional reporting by CNA
CHIP RACE: Three years of overbroad export controls drove foreign competitors to pursue their own AI chips, and ‘cost US taxpayers billions of dollars,’ Nvidia said China has figured out the US strategy for allowing it to buy Nvidia Corp’s H200s and is rejecting the artificial intelligence (AI) chip in favor of domestically developed semiconductors, White House AI adviser David Sacks said, citing news reports. US President Donald Trump on Monday said that he would allow shipments of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China, part of an administration effort backed by Sacks to challenge Chinese tech champions such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為) by bringing US competition to their home market. On Friday, Sacks signaled that he was uncertain about whether that approach would work. “They’re rejecting our chips,” Sacks
NATIONAL SECURITY: Intel’s testing of ACM tools despite US government control ‘highlights egregious gaps in US technology protection policies,’ a former official said Chipmaker Intel Corp has tested chipmaking tools this year from a toolmaker with deep roots in China and two overseas units that were targeted by US sanctions, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter. Intel, which fended off calls for its CEO’s resignation from US President Donald Trump in August over his alleged ties to China, got the tools from ACM Research Inc, a Fremont, California-based producer of chipmaking equipment. Two of ACM’s units, based in Shanghai and South Korea, were among a number of firms barred last year from receiving US technology over claims they have
It is challenging to build infrastructure in much of Europe. Constrained budgets and polarized politics tend to undermine long-term projects, forcing officials to react to emergencies rather than plan for the future. Not in Austria. Today, the country is to officially open its Koralmbahn tunnel, the 5.9 billion euro (US$6.9 billion) centerpiece of a groundbreaking new railway that will eventually run from Poland’s Baltic coast to the Adriatic Sea, transforming travel within Austria and positioning the Alpine nation at the forefront of logistics in Europe. “It is Austria’s biggest socio-economic experiment in over a century,” said Eric Kirschner, an economist at Graz-based Joanneum
France is developing domestic production of electric vehicle (EV) batteries with an eye on industrial independence, but Asian experts are proving key in launching operations. In the Verkor factory outside the northern city of Dunkirk, which was inaugurated on Thursday, foreign specialists, notably from South Korea and Malaysia, are training the local staff. Verkor is the third battery gigafactory to open in northern France in a region that has become known as “Battery Valley.” At the Automotive Energy Supply Corp (AESC) factory near the city of Douai, where production has been under way for several months, Chinese engineers and technicians supervise French recruits. “They
RSS