On October 14th, it was reported that TSMC, the world's largest chip foundry, is expanding its global business and plans to open more factories in Europe, with a focus on the artificial intelligence chip market.
A person familiar with the situation recently revealed that TSMC has started building its first wafer fab in Dresden, Saxony, Germany, and plans to build several more wafer fabs for different market sectors in the future.
At present, TSMC has not announced a timetable for its further expansion in Europe. However, TSMC stated in an email statement that the company is still focused on its current global expansion projects, but currently has no new investment plans.
Make efforts in the artificial intelligence market
Most of TSMC's semiconductor production is carried out in Taiwan, China, China. However, the company is currently investing billions of dollars to establish new factories in the United States, Japan, and Germany, partly to hedge against geopolitical tensions.
In August of this year, TSMC broke ground on a 10 billion euro ($10.9 billion) chip manufacturing plant in Dresden, Germany, which will be the company's first factory in the European Union. About half of the funding for this project will come from local subsidies, and it is expected that the factory will start production by the end of 2027.
Recently, it has been reported that TSMC has also set its sights on other regions of the European Union as locations for its new wafer fabs. Among them, the Czech Republic is expected to become a "winner". At present, Taiwan, China and the Czech Republic have joint research and development projects in the academic community.
In addition, in North America, TSMC has committed to investing over $65 billion to establish three factories in Arizona.
The artificial intelligence market will be TSMC's most important market, and its customers will include chips from Nvidia and AMD in the United States, while artificial intelligence chips from other semiconductor companies may also bring more OEM orders to TSMC.