Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is evaluating building an advanced production facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and has discussed the possibility with officials in US President Donald Trump’s administration, people familiar with the matter said, in a potentially major bet on the Middle East that would only come to fruition with Washington’s approval.
The company has had multiple meetings in the past few months with US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and officials from MGX, an influential investment vehicle overseen by the UAE president’s brother, the people said.
The conversations are a continuation of talks that began under former US president Joe Biden’s administration, but had died down by the end of his term.
Photo: An Rong Xu, Bloomberg
The project being discussed is a substantial investment in what is called a “gigafab” — a complex of six factories similar to what TSMC is building in Arizona. The total cost of such a facility in the UAE is unclear. TSMC plans to spend US$165 billion on its Phoenix project, which also includes research and packaging facilities.
The timeline for a potential UAE site also remains unclear, the people said, adding that a groundbreaking is likely several years away, if not longer.
Whether TSMC moves forward is contingent on buy-in from Washington, where some senior Trump administration officials are concerned about the national-security and economic implications of the world’s top chip manufacturer expanding to the Gulf, the people said.
A TSMC spokeswoman said the company would not comment on market rumors and is focusing on its current expansion plans. The White House and Witkoff’s office did not respond to requests for comments. The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and MGX also did not respond to queries.
TSMC long operated exclusively on its home turf in Taiwan, but moved to open plants in Japan, Germany and the US in the past few years — in part due to the supply-chain and geopolitical risks of concentrating semiconductor production in Taiwan as Beijing becomes increasingly more aggressive.
A facility in the UAE would be a major new phase of TSMC’s overseas expansion and a substantial win for the Gulf nation’s ambitions to become a Middle Eastern artificial intelligence powerhouse. While the UAE currently lacks a workforce capable of operating such a plant, it offers ample land, energy and financial resources. TSMC executives visited the UAE last year to scope out the possibility of building factories there.
In Washington, some senior members of the Trump administration remain skeptical of or outright opposed to the idea, the people said.
Their concerns fall broadly into two buckets: fears that another overseas TSMC project could jeopardize its US investment, and worries that a facility in the UAE specifically could benefit China or Iran.
TSMC’s Phoenix site is the crown jewel of Washington’s efforts to revitalize domestic semiconductor manufacturing with the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, which set aside US$52 billion in subsidies for the industry.
Trump officials want to avoid a possible UAE plant draining financial or managerial resources from that project, which the company has already said could get more expensive if Trump follows through on threatened semiconductor tariffs.
Beyond economic competitiveness, some administration officials are concerned about a UAE site on national security grounds, given the Gulf nation’s deep ties to China and Iran’s influence in the region, the people said.
A TSMC factory in the UAE poses a much greater risk than an artificial intelligence data center operated in large part by US companies, the officials have said.
While Washington can exert some control over shipments of already-manufactured semiconductors — through a regulatory licensing process and government oversight of data centers that house the chips — a TSMC plant would enable the UAE to produce its own chip supplies and develop know-how that could benefit Beijing if the Gulf nation’s political allegiances shift in the future.
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