Taiwan’s semiconductor industry restarted operations and emergency personnel worked to help injured and trapped citizens as the island begins to recover from its worst earthquake in 25 years.
TSMC’s U.S.-listed shares rose 2.16% in morning trading on Thursday.
Taiwan’s biggest chipmaker said late Wednesday that it had brought 70% to 80% of machinery back online within 10 hours after the earthquake hit. Its most expensive gear is extreme ultraviolet machines from ASML Holding NV, which are used to engineer processors for the latest iPhones and Nvidia chips for training AI models like ChatGPT.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the leading producer of advanced chips for Apple Inc. and Nvidia Corp., said it would resume production less than 24 hours after evacuating staff and halting operations. The company said there has been no damage to its most critical chip-making equipment.
Technological advancements in Taiwan appear to have kept damage and casualties relatively low after the 7.4 magnitude quake struck the island’s east coast early Wednesday. The government revised building codes and other regulations after a 1999 temblor that killed more than 2,400 people.
While the full extent of the damage from the latest quake isn’t yet known, the latest figures are nine people dead and more than 1,000 injured. Almost 100 people are trapped, including more than 60 miners.
Taiwan plays an outsized role in the global economy because its companies craft the semiconductors at the foundation of technologies like artificial intelligence, smartphones and electric vehicles. Led by TSMC, national players produce an estimated 80% to 90% of the highest-end chips.
“There is no damage to our critical tools including all of our extreme ultraviolet lithography tools,” TSMC said in a statement late Wednesday. A small number of tools were damaged at some facilities, but the company is deploying all available resources to ensure a full recovery, it added.
The smaller United Microelectronics Corp. also said it would restart normal operations and shipments, and that the quake had not had any major impact on operations. UMC had halted some machinery at some plants and evacuated certain facilities at its hubs in the cites of Hsinchu and Tainan.
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