By John Werner
Publication Date: 2026-06-14 14:45:00
Samsung logo displayed on a glass door at the company’s Seocho building in Seoul
AFP via Getty Images
Some of the newest reports on hardware in tech media today have to do with efforts to diversify away from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, abbreviated TSMC, which has held fab foundry customers in its palm for decades.
The context: World chip makers are trying to rival the Taiwanese firm, but they’re moving slowly: recent American investments in companies like Intel have not fully diversified this part of the market, especially for AI-specific chips, and as for Europe, Africa, or other Asian countries, none of these quarters have produced a robust TSMC competitor. Taiwan, it seems, just has too much of an edge.
To be fair, it’s not that other countries and other firms don’t have foundry production. It’s more that the customers, the designers of chips which have been put onto another track than the manufacturers, want the best, and TSMA is the best, leading to estimates that…
