
Expanding strategic investments to deepen AI computing alliance
AI-generated summary
Taiwan's TSMC, the world's largest foundry company, approved its board of directors to invest up to $500 million each in Antropic and OpenAI to deepen its AI computing alliance. In addition, the establishment of an investment company with a limit of $500 million and capital expenditure of approximately $40.9267 billion were approved.
Taiwan's TSMC, the world's largest foundry (semiconductor consignment production) company, has decided to invest up to $500 million (approximately KRW 669.3 billion) each in Antropic and OpenAI.
According to Taiwanese media such as Yonhap Newspaper and China Times on the 11th, the TSMC board of directors approved this plan the day before to expand strategic investment to deepen the core computing alliance.
The board of directors decided to acquire Antropic common stock up to $500 million and set the price per share based on Antropic's initial public offering (IPO) price. Open AI preferred stock was also approved for acquisition in the range of $500 million.
Separately, the board of directors approved the establishment of an investment company with a limit of $500 million for strategic investment in the semiconductor industry and related ecosystem.
The board of directors also approved capital expenditures of approximately $40.9267 billion (approximately KRW 54.7 trillion) to support long-term production capacity plans and decided to invest in advanced processes, advanced packaging, expansion of special processes, plant construction, and research and development (R&D) in 2027.
Taiwanese media interpreted the board's decision as an optimistic view of the development of AI, and analyzed that as Antropic and OpenAI are pursuing their own AI-specific semiconductor (ASIC) project specializing in artificial intelligence (AI) model inference, TSMC is breaking away from the model of receiving orders from fabless (a company specializing in semiconductor design) and entering into a direct partnership through equity investment.
Media outlets predicted that NVIDIA currently accounts for a very high proportion of TSMC's sales, which could lead to potential risks in the future, and that TSMC will secure a significant level of negotiating power and strategic flexibility in future production capacity allocation and pricing by establishing a cooperative relationship through equity investment.
Antropic announced through public disclosure data on the 10th local time that it plans to raise up to $64.4 billion (KRW 86.27 trillion) by selling 825 million shares in the public offering price range of $70 to $78 per share.
Separately, an additional $26 billion will be raised through private placements targeting Google, NVIDIA, AMD, Broadcom, Micron, Microsoft (MS), and TSMC.
AI outlook — possibilities, not facts
It is highly likely that TSMC will directly participate in the ASIC project specializing in AI model inference through equity investment cooperation with Antropic and OpenAI.
Likely · Within months
TSMC will reduce its sales dependence on NVIDIA and secure greater negotiating power in production capacity allocation and pricing.
Likely · Within months

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