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.
TECH TITAN: Pandemic-era demand for semiconductors turbocharged the nation’s GDP per capita to surpass South Korea’s, but it still remains half that of Singapore Taiwan is set to surpass South Korea this year in terms of wealth for the first time in more than two decades, marking a shift in Asia’s economic ranks made possible by the ascent of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電). According to the latest forecasts released on Thursday by the central bank, Taiwan’s GDP is expected to expand 4.55 percent this year, a further upward revision from the 4.45 percent estimate made by the statistics bureau last month. The growth trajectory puts Taiwan on track to exceed South Korea’s GDP per capita — a key measure of living standards — a
Samsung Electronics Co shares jumped 4.47 percent yesterday after reports it has won approval from Nvidia Corp for the use of advanced high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, which marks a breakthrough for the South Korean technology leader. The stock closed at 83,500 won in Seoul, the highest since July 31 last year. Yesterday’s gain comes after local media, including the Korea Economic Daily, reported that Samsung’s 12-layer HBM3E product recently passed Nvidia’s qualification tests. That clears the components for use in the artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators essential to the training of AI models from ChatGPT to DeepSeek (深度求索), and finally allows Samsung
READY TO HELP: Should TSMC require assistance, the government would fully cooperate in helping to speed up the establishment of the Chiayi plant, an official said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said its investment plans in Taiwan are “unchanged” amid speculation that the chipmaker might have suspended construction work on its second chip packaging plant in Chiayi County and plans to move equipment arranged for the plant to the US. The Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported earlier yesterday that TSMC had halted the construction of the chip packaging plant, which was scheduled to be completed next year and begin mass production in 2028. TSMC did not directly address whether construction of the plant had halted, but said its investment plans in Taiwan remain “unchanged.” The chipmaker started
MORTGAGE WORRIES: About 34% of respondents to a survey said they would approach multiple lenders to pay for a home, while 29.2% said they would ask family for help New housing projects in Taiwan’s six special municipalities, as well as Hsinchu city and county, are projected to total NT$710.65 billion (US$23.61 billion) in the upcoming fall sales season, a record 30 percent decrease from a year earlier, as tighter mortgage rules prompt developers to pull back, property listing platform 591.com (591新建案) said yesterday. The number of projects has also fallen to 312, a more than 20 percent decrease year-on-year, underscoring weakening sentiment and momentum amid lingering policy and financing headwinds. New Taipei City and Taoyuan bucked the downturn in project value, while Taipei, Hsinchu city and county, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung