Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has quietly emerged as Asia’s most valuable company by market cap. As at April 21st, 2026, the market value of TSMC was US$1.92 trillion based on its ADRs listed on NYSE. Only American companies, such as Nvidia, Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon, are bigger by market cap as shown below.
| No. | Companies | US$ trillion |
| 1 | Nvidia | 4.86 |
| 2 | 4.00 | |
| 3 | Apple | 3.91 |
| 4 | Microsoft | 3.15 |
| 5 | Amazon | 2.69 |
| 6 | TSMC | 1.92 |
| 7 | Broadcom | 1.90 |
TSMC has replaced Toyota Corporation of Japan as Asia’s most valuable manufacturing company, which was only US$260 billion (US$0.260 trillion). The closest Asia’s giant by market cap is Saudi Arabia’s national oil company, Aramco, at US$1.752 trillion.
The rise of TSMC
Many years ago, my Taiwanese friend, the late Dr Hsu of Hambrecht and Quist Asia Pacific based in Taipei, Taiwan, told me that his US colleague, Dr Morris Chang, was returning to Taiwan from the US to start TSMC at the Hsinchu Science Park, near Taipei. It would focus on contract manufacturing of ICs for IC design companies in Silicon Valley and Taiwan. Thus, these IC design companies would not need to establish their own foundries, which required substantial capital outlay. At that time, IC manufacturing was dominated by Intel. The IC design companies called fabless companies, often were started by Taiwanese engineers in Silicon Valley. One such company was Nvidia, which was started by Jason Huang, a Taiwanese engineer in Silicon Valley.
Over the years, TSMC has emerged as very important company in the AI ecosystem, which helps Nvidia to design AI and manufacture them. In the process, TSMC has replaced Intel as the largest IC manufacturing company in the world, whose market cap was only US$0.33 trillion.
TSMCs’ manufacturing capability
TSMC operates its manufacturing facilities known as GIGAFAB fabs primarily in Taiwan, with major fabs in Hsinchu Science Park, Taipei, Southern Taiwan Science Park , Tainan, and Central Taiwan Science Park, Taichung. It is reported that TSMC has a production capacity of 15.02 million 12-inch equivalent wafer per year. It produces chips ranging from 2 microns to 3 nm. It has started mass production of 2 nm chip. This technology requires advanced manufacturing capability and features nanosheet transistors designed for superior energy efficiency and density, targeting AI and computing applications.
As at 2025, TSMC had about 90, 557 employeews. This is expected to increase as TSMC establishes new fabs in the US and Japan.
It has about 10,000 R&D staff, which is focusing on breakthroughs for 2 nm and beyond. At the same time, the R&D team is also focusing on FAB R&D to improve the fab process models like 2 nm. It is spending about US$6 billion in 2025, which was equivalent to 5% of revenue of US$120 billion.
TSMC is important to Taiwan, and it is a dominat driver of Taiwan’s economy. Its market value of US$1.92 trillion easily surpasses the GDP of Taiwan of about US$ 0.9 trillion.
My small investment in TSMC
I have a small interest in TSMC through an investment in its ADRs via Moomoo trading platform. I am looking forward to TSMC achieving a market cap of US$2.0 trillion soon. I believe Taiwanese and the world would be thanking the late Dr Morris Chang for his vision of starting TSMC with the help of Taiwan’s government and Philips of Nederland. It was the pioneer of world’s dedicated “pure play” semiconductor foundry business model, solely focusing on manufacturing IC chips for other companies. It also helped fabless IC design companies to develop various chip for many applications. It is truly Asia’s global manufacturing giant located in a tiny country of Taiwan.