TSMC (Remastered)

Acquired’s Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal trace TSMC’s rise from 1987 startup to $1T semiconductor monopoly, with Morris Chang at the center.

• TSMC has 90%+ market share in leading-edge chips (5nm and below); Samsung holds ~5-10%, everyone else negligible.
• Since Taiwan IPO in 1994, TSMC compounded revenue at 17.4% annually for 27 years; market cap grew from $4B to $550B+ (19.9% IRR).
• Morris Chang was passed over for TI CEO, demoted to ‘head of quality’ at 52, then founded TSMC at 56 — a company the entire world’s AI and smartphone supply chains now depend on.
• Intel passed on manufacturing the original iPhone chip because Jobs’ offer was deemed too low — Apple went to Samsung, then TSMC, costing Intel arguably its most important strategic partnership.
• Intel invested $4B+ in EUV lithography in 2012 but never shipped a chip using the technology it funded — a textbook Innovator’s Dilemma failure.
• Rock’s Law: semiconductor fab costs double every four years; combined with Moore’s Law, this structurally favors a winner-take-all monopoly at the leading edge.
• TSMC’s primary existential risk is geopolitical — a Chinese annexation of Taiwan would halt global leading-edge chip production with no near-term replacement available anywhere.

2025-01-21 · Watch on YouTube