TSMC, the leading chipmaker, is set to invest $1 billion in Anthropic and OpenAI. That would give the Taiwanese chipmaker direct stakes in major AI developers, even as its own contract chipmaking business has benefited greatly from the AI data center buildout.
The chipmaker’s board of directors approved plans to invest up to $500 million in OpenAI preferred shares reserved for large investors and another $500 million to buy Anthropic common stock at the latter’s expected IPO price, according to Reuters. Such an investment may give markets “a shot of confidence as AI trading shows signs of strain,” The Wall Street Journal reported.
But analysts also warned that such circular financing between investors, suppliers and customers has made it difficult to assess real market demand for AI-related hardware and services, according to the Journal.
TSMC’s chip manufacturing plants physically produce the vast majority of Nvidia chips designed for AI data center workloads and make the majority of Apple’s custom chips used in iPhones, Mac laptops and desktop computers, in addition to Apple’s planned AI computing server. Most of these factories are located in Taiwan, but TSMC also operates factories in Japan and China, and has an expanding American manufacturing group in Arizona. It is also building a new factory in Germany.
