TSMC's April Revenue Soars

Taiwanese chip giant TSMC said that April revenue jumped nearly 60 percent on-year, riding a huge wave of demand for the advanced semiconductors used in AI hardware.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company controls more than half the world's output of chips, and supplies them for everything from Apple's iPhones to Nvidia's cutting-edge artificial intelligence hardware.

Consolidated revenue for April was "approximately US$7.2 billion an increase of 59.6 percent from April 2023", the firm said in a statement. This compares with a 34.3 percent on-year jump in March. The company said last month that first-quarter revenue increased 13 percent on-year to US$18.87 billion, and expects a 27.6 percent rise in the second.

The wild success of OpenAI's ChatGPT has sparked an AI gold rush, with demand surging around the world for the cutting-edge chips needed to train and run AI services.

TSMC dominates the global chip industry, and the bulk of its fabrication plants are based in Taiwan, a self-ruled island that is claimed by neighboring China.

The semiconductor supply chain is highly vulnerable to shocks, and concerned governments have lobbied TSMC to move more production away from Taiwan.

The United States in particular has made a huge push, passing the Chips and Science Act in 2022 to overhaul the semiconductor industry on American soil.

TSMC announced plans in April for a third factory in the United States, raising its total investment in the United States to US$65 billion. Its US projects have faced obstacles in the past year, which the company had attributed to a lack of human resources, as making chips requires highly specialized skills.

But if successful, the TSMC fabs in Arizona would be the first time that super-advanced chips will be made on American soil.