TSMC’s Sales Beat Estimates in Good Sign for AI Chip Demand

The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) posted a better-than-expected 39 percent rise in quarterly revenue, assuaging concerns that AI hardware spending is beginning to taper off.

The main chipmaker to Nvidia and Apple reported September-quarter sales of TWD 759.7 billion (roughly Rs. 1,97,885 crore), versus the average  projection for TWD $748 billion (roughly Rs. 1,94,838 crore). Taiwan's largest company will disclose its full results next Thursday.

The better-than-anticipated performance may reinforce the view of investors betting that AI spending will remain elevated as companies and governments race for an edge in the emergent technology. Others caution that the likes of Meta Platforms and Alphabet's Google can't sustain their current pace of infrastructure spending without a compelling and monetisable AI use case. 

Hsinchu-based TSMC is one of the key companies at the heart of a global surge in spending on AI development, producing the cutting-edge chips needed to train artificial intelligence. Its sales have more than doubled since 2020, with the seminal launch of ChatGPT sparking a race to acquire Nvidia hardware for AI server farms.

Shares in Nvidia were up about 1.2 percent in premarket trading in New York on Wednesday, while TSMC's US-traded ADRs rose a more modest 0.8 percent.

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