Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday obtained the government’s approval to inject an additional US$7.5 billion into its US subsidiary, the Department of Investment Review said in a statement.
The department approved TSMC’s application of investing in TSMC Arizona Corp, which is engaged in the manufacturing, sales, testing and design of IC and other semiconductor devices, it said.
The latest capital injection follows a US$5 billion investment for TSMC Arizona approved in June. The chipmaker has broken ground on two advanced fabs in Arizona with aggregated investments approved by the department totaling US$24 billion thus far.
Photo: An Rong Xu, Bloomberg
According to TSMC, the first Arizona fab is scheduled to start mass production using sophisticated 4-nanometer process technology in the first half of next year, while the second fab is to begin volume production using 3nm and 2nm process technology in 2028.
TSMC has also unveiled plans to build a third fab there using the 2nm process or more advanced technology with overall investments above US$65 billion in Arizona.
The chipmaker also in February launched a fab in Kumamoto, Japan and announced plans for a second, as part of an estimated US$20 billion investment. In Europe, it broke ground on a 12-inch wafer fab in Dresden, Germany, last month.
However, TSMC said earlier yesterday that it has no new concrete overseas expansion plans, following news reports that its top executives recently held talks in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
While not addressing the UAE rumors directly, TSMC told CNA that it was always open to constructive discussions on promoting the development of the semiconductor industry, adding it remained focused on its current global projects.
On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal reported that top TSMC executives recently visited the UAE to discuss building a plant cluster similar in scale to the chipmaker’s largest and most advanced facilities in Taiwan.
According to the Journal, the UAE has also courted chipmaking investment from South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co.
Under the initial discussions, the investment plans of TSMC and Samsung would be funded by the UAE with the aim of raising global chip production and capping soaring prices without hurting chipmakers’ bottom lines, the Journal said, citing a source familiar with the matter.
Commenting on the report, Ray Yang (楊瑞臨), an international strategy development consulting director at the government-sponsored Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), said that he suspected speculation arose after TSMC sent its marketing personnel to the UAE.
“But, TSMC investing in the UAE is a thing which has not even begun to take shape,” Yang said.
RECYCLE: Taiwan would aid manufacturers in refining rare earths from discarded appliances, which would fit the nation’s circular economy goals, minister Kung said Taiwan would work with the US and Japan on a proposed cooperation initiative in response to Beijing’s newly announced rare earth export curbs, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday. China last week announced new restrictions requiring companies to obtain export licenses if their products contain more than 0.1 percent of Chinese-origin rare earths by value. US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent on Wednesday responded by saying that Beijing was “unreliable” in its rare earths exports, adding that the US would “neither be commanded, nor controlled” by China, several media outlets reported. Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato yesterday also
China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) said it expects peak season effects in the fourth quarter to continue to boost demand for passenger flights and cargo services, after reporting its second-highest-ever September sales on Monday. The carrier said it posted NT$15.88 billion (US$517 million) in consolidated sales last month, trailing only September last year’s NT$16.01 billion. Last month, CAL generated NT$8.77 billion from its passenger flights and NT$5.37 billion from cargo services, it said. In the first nine months of this year, the carrier posted NT$154.93 billion in cumulative sales, up 2.62 percent from a year earlier, marking the second-highest level for the January-September
‘DRAMATIC AND POSITIVE’: AI growth would be better than it previously forecast and would stay robust even if the Chinese market became inaccessible for customers, it said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its full-year revenue growth outlook after posting record profit for last quarter, despite growing market concern about an artificial intelligence (AI) bubble. The company said it expects revenue to expand about 35 percent year-on-year, driven mainly by faster-than-expected demand for leading-edge chips for AI applications. The world’s biggest contract chipmaker in July projected that revenue this year would expand about 30 percent in US dollar terms. The company also slightly hiked its capital expenditure for this year to US$40 billion to US$42 billion, compared with US$38 billion to US$42 billion it set previously. “AI demand actually
Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), founder and CEO of US-based artificial intelligence chip designer Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) on Friday celebrated the first Nvidia Blackwell wafer produced on US soil. Huang visited TSMC’s advanced wafer fab in the US state of Arizona and joined the Taiwanese chipmaker’s executives to witness the efforts to “build the infrastructure that powers the world’s AI factories, right here in America,” Nvidia said in a statement. At the event, Huang joined Y.L. Wang (王英郎), vice president of operations at TSMC, in signing their names on the Blackwell wafer to
RSS