TSMC’s $100 billion promise to invest in the U.S. won’t shake up the chip supply chain: ‘Most of its capacity is still in Taiwan’

David Chuang, a senior research analyst at Isaiah Research, is skeptical that TSMC’s $100 billion pledge will fully materialize.

“The market is there,” he says. “But it boils down to the value proposition. How much can TSMC charge for U.S. manufacturing?”
TSMC’s current manufacturing in Arizona emulates what the chipmaker is already doing in Taiwan, such as a “lower cost” version of its 4-nanometer chips. “The process is simplified,” Chuang says, with the result going into less powerful devices like smartwatches, rather than high-end smartphones.

With its established chipmaking ecosystem and steady supply of talent, the latest chips will come from Taiwan first.

And with the AI boom continuing to drive demand for more and more advanced chips, Chuang says Taiwan is going to be key for fulfilling that demand. Timelines for reaching the next generations of chips are “not quite aligned with U.S. capacity right now,” he says.