Bloomberg, company filings <\/p>\n
(Bloomberg) — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is earmarking as much as $56 billion in capital spending for 2026, a stronger-than-anticipated projection that signals its confidence in the longevity of the global AI boom.<\/p>\n
Asia\u2019s most valuable company expects expenditures of $52 billion to $56 billion this year, up at least a quarter from 2025. It also foresees revenue growth of close to 30% in 2026, faster than the average analyst estimate. TSMC\u2019s ADRs climbed as much as 5.6% in US trading, while shares in key supplier ASML Holding NV rose as much as 8% to a record in Europe, sending its market value beyond $500 billion.<\/p>\n
Most Read from Bloomberg<\/p>\n
The outlook from TSMC \u2014 a bellwether for the artificial intelligence boom \u2014 reflects a development frenzy by the likes of Meta Platforms Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. that\u2019s spurred demand for Nvidia Corp. accelerators. It\u2019s likely to help assuage some concerns about the sustainability of current data center spending. TSMC \u2014 Nvidia\u2019s main chipmaker \u2014 is accelerating its own global capacity buildout, most notably in the US, to sate future demand.<\/p>\n
WATCH: TSMC\u2019s strong capital spending target signals its confidence in the longevity of the global AI boom. Bloomberg Intelligence\u2019s Robert Lea explains.Source: Bloomberg <\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re trying to ask us whether AI demand is real or not. I\u2019m also very nervous about it,\u201d Chief Executive Officer C. C. Wei said in response to an analyst\u2019s question on a conference call. \u201cWe\u2019re investing $52 billion to $56 billion in capex, right? If we don\u2019t do it carefully, that\u2019d be a big disaster for TSMC.\u201d<\/p>\n
Click here for a liveblog on the results.<\/p>\n
TSMC reported NT$505.7 billion ($16 billion) in net income for the December quarter, beating the average estimate. That\u2019s off previously reported sales of $33.1 billion in the period, helping the company surpass $100 billion in annual revenue for the first time in 2025.<\/p>\n
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TSMC also raised its long-term forecast for gross margins to 56%, demonstrating its ability to profit from the surging AI demand. Its projection for the first quarter is about 64%.<\/p>\n
\u201cMargin is the real surprise,\u201d David Dai, an analyst at Bernstein, wrote in a research note after results.<\/p>\n
Nvidia Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang this month reaffirmed demand for AI accelerators continues to run hot. That\u2019s a sentiment echoed by his Advanced Micro Devices Inc. counterpart Lisa Su, who expects the need for more AI computing power and the number of users to surge again.<\/p>\n
\u201cTSMC\u2019s 2026 guidance underscores AI as a key driver of earnings growth for Asian equities in the near term,\u201d said Gary Tan, a portfolio manager at Allspring Global Investments.<\/p>\n
The effort to build and fill data centers with AI chips, now surpassing $1 trillion in planned expenditures, has helped TSMC achieve more than 30% annual sales growth over the past two years. But it may also hamper some parts of the company\u2019s business.<\/p>\n
An acute memory chip supply crunch emerged in 2025, when manufacturers prioritized premium high-bandwidth memory to go with Nvidia and AMD chips. That\u2019s forcing consumer electronics makers to hike prices. Industry watchers like IDC are slashing their shipment estimates for this year.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Hsinchu-based TSMC still relies on Apple Inc.\u2019s iPhone and smartphones using Qualcomm Inc.\u2019s advanced processors for a substantial portion of its business. The memory crunch is expected to cut into mobile device sales in 2026: Macquarie Capital expects an annual decline for smartphones of 11.6%.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Wei said his company won\u2019t get impacted by the memory chip crunch this year or next as high-end smartphones are still selling well.<\/p>\n
TSMC will be a key part of an imminent trade deal between the US and Taiwan. It\u2019s expected to commit to build more chip fabrication facilities and add to plans to invest as much as $165 billion in the US.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also building plants in Japan and Germany, propelling an international expansion while developing the most advanced technology at home. Wei said several times that TSMC will work to \u201cclose the gap\u201d in supply versus demand.<\/p>\n
–With assistance from Cindy Wang, Ville Heiskanen, Gao Yuan, Jessica Sui, Henry Ren, Mayumi Negishi and Abhishek Vishnoi.<\/p>\n
(Updates with shares from second paragraph)<\/p>\n
Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek<\/p>\n
\u00a92026 Bloomberg L.P.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bloomberg, company filings (Bloomberg) — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is earmarking as much as $56 billion in capital…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285995,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,45262,489,289,290,4932,143415,18,143416,19,17,14609,69300,82,18707],"class_list":{"0":"post-285994","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-ai-accelerators","10":"tag-amazon-com-inc","11":"tag-artificial-intelligence","12":"tag-artificialintelligence","13":"tag-bloomberg","14":"tag-company-filings","15":"tag-eire","16":"tag-global-ai-boom","17":"tag-ie","18":"tag-ireland","19":"tag-revenue-growth","20":"tag-taiwan-semiconductor-manufacturing-co","21":"tag-technology","22":"tag-tsmc"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115899909088856545","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}