Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC), China's largest contract chipmaker, this week announced its financial results for the first quarter of 2023. Despite crushing US sanctions, SMIC is now the world's second-largest pure-play foundry after TSMC. The company managed to outsell GlobalFoundries and UMC, two of the other pure-play foundries, which it used to trail for years. However, it still lags behind IDMs like Intel and Samsung.
With $1.75 billion revenue for the first quarter, SMIC is ahead of the two other leading pure-play foundries, UMC (which earned $1.71 billion, up 0.8% YoY) and GlobalFoundries (which earned $1.549 billion, down 16% YoY). As a result, SMIC is the No. 2 pure-play foundry in the world for now.
