TSMC founder declares free trade of chips dead
The founder of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) warned the company faces its biggest challenge as the free trade of chips continues to be stifled, Bloomberg reported.
Morris Chang, who retired as chairman in 2018, told a company event in Taiwan that, as geopolitical tensions rise, global free trade in semiconductors “has died”, creating new barriers to growth, the news agency wrote.
He reportedly said TSMC had become a battleground and it is now “truly a turf all major powers want to secure”.
Last week, the company was forced to stop shipping chips made for a China-based customer after discovering the components ended up on a Huawei processor.
US sanctions bar Huawei from importing advanced 5G and AI chips.
TSMC is a major chip supplier to Nvidia and Apple. It is receiving $11.6 billion in government grants and loans to build a third chip production facility in the US state of Arizona.
It recently raised its 2024 revenue growth forecast to 30 per cent, after recording a 54.2 per cent year-on-year increase in net profit in Q3. It expects Q4 revenue to grow by 33 per cent to 37 per cent.
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