Another impressive round of earnings results from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company sparked a broad chip stock rally Thursday morning. TSMC’s U.S. listed shares jumped more than 12%—pushing the company’s market capitalization above $1 trillion—as surging profits and booming AI demand have outweighed geopolitical concerns that hang heavily over the sector.
While Nvidia is virtually the only game in town for the graphics processing units, or GPUs, that Big Tech and other AI companies need to train their models, it doesn’t make the chips it designs and sells. That task falls to TSMC, which controls roughly 90% of the market for advanced chip manufacturing, also known as the foundry business.
