TSMC's stock surged over 5% on Monday, setting a new all-time high and pushing its market capitalization beyond $2.28 trillion. This rally is primarily fueled by two key drivers: the launch of NVIDIA's latest AI chips and expectations of price increases for TSMC's 3nm process technology.
At the Computex event in Taipei, NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Huang unveiled the Vera CPU, designed specifically for AI agent workloads, which is now in full production. This processor completes tasks up to 1.8 times faster than x86 CPUs in workloads involving agent AI, reinforcement learning, and data processing. Initial major customers include OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX. NVIDIA also announced the RTX Spark PC chip, marking its official entry into the personal computer processor market to compete directly with Intel and AMD.
Jensen Huang stated that NVIDIA plans to invest approximately $150 billion annually in Taiwan to strengthen the AI supply chain. He referred to Taiwan as the "center of the AI revolution" and emphasized that NVIDIA and TSMC will "work closely to secure capacity and component supply."
Driven by soaring AI demand, TSMC is planning to raise prices for its 3nm wafers by up to 15% in the second half of 2026, with potential further increases of 5% to 10% in 2027. Current 3nm capacity is fully utilized, with no signs of easing in customer wait times.
Simultaneously, TSMC is leveraging NVIDIA's accelerated computing and AI technologies to optimize its own manufacturing operations. By utilizing NVIDIA's cuLitho computational lithography platform, TSMC has achieved a 20% to 50% improvement in cost efficiency or production cycle time without increasing the total cost of ownership. Chemical simulation speeds have been boosted by an average of 50 times.
TSMC forecasts second-quarter revenue to be between $39 billion and $40.2 billion, with full-year dollar revenue growth expected to exceed 30%. The company reported a first-quarter gross margin of 66.2% and a net profit margin of 50.5%, demonstrating robust profitability.
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