Semiconductor foundry
Appears in 15 stories
Produces 90% of world's advanced chips, creating economic deterrence
On December 29-30, 2025, China executed its largest military drills around Taiwan to date, called Operation 'Justice Mission 2025,' deploying 130 aircraft, 22 warships, and live-fire exercises across seven zones encircling the island. Over two days, fighter jets crossed the median line, naval vessels simulated port blockades at Keelung and Kaohsiung, and PLA ground forces conducted coordinated long-range strikes both north and south of Taiwan. The drills escalated on December 30 with 10 hours of live-fire activities in designated 'temporary danger zones,' forcing cancellation of 76 domestic flights and delays to 300+ international flights affecting over 106,000 passengers. China framed the exercises as dual punishment: for the record $11 billion U.S. arms package announced December 17, and for Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi's warning that Tokyo could intervene militarily if Beijing blockades Taiwan.
Updated 3 days ago
World's largest contract chipmaker, producing over 90% of advanced chips
TSMC makes over 90% of the world's most advanced chips, the processors that power AI systems from Nvidia, Apple, and others. In 2026, the company raised its capital spending budget to $60-64 billion, up from $52-56 billion planned in January, to expand AI chip capacity. It posted record profits in each of the first two quarters and again in Q3, when net profit jumped 69% year over year.
Updated 6 days ago
Manufactures both new Snapdragon chips on N2 process
Qualcomm's new flagship phone chips are the first mobile processors to break the 5 GHz clock-speed barrier. They're also the first built on TSMC's 2nm process, and they arrive in two versions instead of one.
Updated Sep 23
Partner and competitor in advanced packaging
Samsung has shown a working prototype of zHBM, a memory architecture that stacks high-bandwidth memory directly on top of AI accelerators. The design removes the interposer, the silicon bridge that currently carries data between logic and memory chips placed side by side.
Updated Sep 10
Corporate off-taker for the full 920 MW output
Ørsted finished the major construction on its 920 MW Greater Changhua 2b and 4 offshore wind farms off Taiwan's coast on September 2. The 66-turbine project is the company's second gigawatt-scale wind farm in Taiwan.
Updated Sep 4
Built the Tensor G6 on its 2nm process
Apple has been first to nearly every chip-manufacturing shrink for years. On August 12, 2026, Google beat it to the 2-nanometer mark, putting the chip inside the Pixel 11 weeks before Apple's next iPhone.
Updated Aug 12
Minority partner supplying process technology
For decades, Sony designed and built its own camera chips from start to finish. On August 11, 2026, it agreed to stop doing the second half alone.
Updated Aug 11
Apple's main chipmaker, now facing diversification
For almost two decades, the most advanced chips inside iPhones and Macs have been etched in Taiwan. On June 18, 2026, President Trump said Apple has agreed to design and build some of those chips with Intel, on U.S. soil.
Updated Jun 18
Sole foundry for Nvidia's leading-edge chips
Nvidia reported Q1 fiscal-2027 revenue of $81.6 billion on May 20, beating Wall Street's $78 billion consensus by $3.6 billion. Data center revenue hit $75 billion, up 92% from a year earlier. The company guided Q2 to $91 billion, above the $85 billion estimate, but the stock closed down 1.8% the next day as analysts said the beat was already priced in.
Updated Jun 3
Dominant contract chipmaker; Intel's primary competitive target
Intel's foundry strategy has shifted from a single Apple deal to a growing roster of major chip buyers in weeks. In early April 2026, Intel signed on as primary foundry partner for Terafab, a $25 billion AI chip venture backed by Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI.
Updated May 30
World's leading contract chip manufacturer; Tesla's benchmark competitor
Every company designing custom artificial intelligence chips today (Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft) pays someone else to manufacture them. Tesla just announced it will build and operate its own semiconductor fabrication plant, a $20 billion facility called TeraFab targeting the 2-nanometer process node, the most advanced manufacturing technology in existence. No company without decades of chipmaking experience has ever attempted this.
Sole manufacturer of Apple's M-series chips
Apple launched Creator Studio on January 28, 2026, for $12.99 monthly (about one-sixth Adobe Creative Cloud's price), bundling Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, and Pixelmator Pro. The M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pro arrived March 3, long anticipated after the base M5's October 2025 debut.
Updated May 23
Largest foreign investor in US chip manufacturing
The United States produced 37% of the world's semiconductors in 1990, but by 2024 that share had fallen below 10%, with Taiwan manufacturing over 90% of the most advanced chips. A $500 billion US-Taiwan trade framework was initiated with a January 16, 2026 memorandum and formally signed February 12.
Updated May 21
Controls critical CoWoS packaging capacity
For decades, chip packaging was the unglamorous final step—stacking and connecting silicon dies after the real engineering was done. Now it's the constraint holding back AI.
Updated May 20
Dominant foundry with 67% global market share
Intel just shipped its first client processors built on 18A, the most advanced semiconductor process ever made in America. The Core Ultra Series 3 chips, unveiled January 5 at CES 2026, went on sale globally January 27 with over 200 PC designs, offering 60% faster performance and 27-hour battery life.
Updated May 19
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