That Fed moniker fits because TSMC is the ultimate arbiter of the band of chip supply the world gets over the coming years, driven by how much forward in money and time it wants to invest in future capacity.
And the Fed of the chips has spoken again. And from those pronouncements, capacity is not going up dramatically any time soon.
“Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s global chip supply will fall short of AI-fueled demand for years to come, according to chief executive officer C.C. Wei.”
“TSMC won’t be able to fulfill demand led by American customers even as more manufacturing capacity comes online in the US over the next few years, Wei told shareholders.”
“Wei reiterated a forecast for sales growth of more than 30% for this year and said TSMC staff will get more than a 30% bump in their bonus payouts this year on average.”
So just like the 2% inflation target band for the real Fed, it’s 30% growth band for the Chip Fed. Notable because the lag times involved of 3-5 plus years to build new fabs. Not to mention the tens of billions of dollars for new chip fabrication facilities.
They’ve even nailed down the determined ‘Fedspeak’. Another legacy of their founder and chairman emeritus Morris Chang:
“Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s global chip supply will fall short of AI-fueled demand for years to come, chief executive officer C.C. Wei said, suggesting production capacity remains a key bottleneck in the buildout of global computing infrastructure.”
“TSMC won’t be able to fulfill demand led by American customers even as more manufacturing capacity comes online in the US over the next few years, Wei told shareholders on Thursday. Still, Taiwan’s largest company — which makes the majority of the world’s advanced semiconductors for AI — will refrain from initiating the sort of abrupt price hikes that shook up the memory chip sector, Wei added. TSMC’s intent is to ensure a stable business, he said at an annual shareholders’ meeting in Hsinchu, Taiwan.”
That price hike restraint is important. And it means more margins captured upstream by Nvidia, the LLM AI and cloud hyperscaler companies in the middle boxes of our AI Tech Stack.
“Wei reiterated a forecast for sales growth of more than 30% for this year — an outlook TSMC raised just weeks ago. Asia’s largest company is an essential player in the global AI industry, making cutting-edge semiconductors for the likes of Nvidia Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. TSMC has been expanding its footprint beyond its home island to add capacity, yet even that isn’t enough to satisfy all needs with major hyperscalers set to spend $725 billion on AI this year alone.”
““It will be a long time before we can meet customer demand,” Wei said.”
“TSMC is racing to expand at a time customers from Nvidia to Broadcom Inc. are vying for access to its cutting-edge facilities.”
And TSMC is of course playing hard to placate Washington in its demands to make more chips in the US.
“As part of the US-Taiwan trade pact, the Asian company envisions building at least four more US chipmaking plants — on top of six already planned that entails $165 billion in investments — requiring roughly an additional $100 billion of capital, Bloomberg News has reported. Two plots of land TSMC has acquired in Arizona should be enough to satisfy its needs for a decade, Wei added.”
It’s all been of course noticed by investors around the world.
“TSMC’s shares slid 1.7% in Taipei after Broadcom provided a disappointing outlook. Still, the stock has more than quadrupled over the past three years, fueled by a surge in its core business. On Thursday, Wei reiterated that TSMC staff will get more than a 30% bump in their bonus payouts this year on average, addressing growing demands for the winners of the AI boom to share more of their profits.”
“In April, the company raised its full-year sales guidance and said its own capital spending should trend toward the upper end of an existing forecast range of as much as $56 billion.”
