TSMC, chipmaker to the tech giants, bounces back

The world’s leading semiconductor saw its sales jump 17% in the latest quarter

4/10/24 10:38AM

In Silico

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has caught the AI wave, posting double-digit growth for the first time since 2022, with a 17% surge in sales for the first quarter of 2024.

The world’s largest chipmaker, TSMC manufactures chips designed by the likes of Nvidia and Qualcomm. The output of the Taiwanese titan ends up in a countless number of products that make modern life tick, from smartphones to smart cars — and Apple is “by far” TSMC’s largest customer, spending tens of billions of dollars on TSMC chips for its Macs and iPhones.

After the pandemic-fueled tech binge cooled off, TSMC had a more sluggish 2023, reporting its first back-to-back quarterly sales decline since 2017. However, the AI revolution has reinvigorated demand for TSMC's high-end chips, with companies scrambling to stock up on the silicon that powers AI, bolstering the chipmaker’s sales in the most recent quarter: revenue in March alone was reportedly up 34% year-on-year.

TSMC's dominance remains a political football in the ongoing tensions between China and the US. In an attempt to bring more advanced semiconductor manufacturing back to American shores, the government has been working to boost its domestic semiconductor industry — on Monday announcing that TSMC could receive up to $11.6bn in grants and loans to help build its factories in Arizona.

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OpenAI’s ARR reached over $20 billion in 2025, CFO says

Sam Altman’s $500 billion artificial intelligence behemoth hit a major financial milestone last year, according to a new blog post over the weekend from OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar, as the company confirmed it had hit a more than $20 billion annual revenue run rate at the end of 2025.

Elsewhere in the blog post, Friar spent time addressing the company’s shifting goals, referencing plans to “close the distance between where intelligence is advancing and how individuals, companies, and countries actually adopt and use it.” As has become customary in the AI company press release genre, the CFO was also keen to tout the unending growth of the business, writing:

“Both our Weekly Active User (WAU) and Daily Active User (DAU) figures continue to produce all-time highs. This growth is driven by a flywheel across compute, frontier research, products, and monetization.”
“Compute grew 3X year over year or 9.5X from 2023 to 2025: 0.2 GW in 2023, 0.6 GW in 2024, and ~1.9 GW in 2025.”

And, perhaps most importantly for current backers and those keeping an eye on the private company before its rumored mega IPO:

“Revenue followed the same curve growing 3X year over year, or 10X from 2023 to 2025: $2B ARR in 2023, $6B in 2024, and $20B+ in 2025. This is never-before-seen growth at such scale.”

That latest figure has certainly set tongues in the tech world wagging, just as the company announced it would begin rolling out ads to free and ChatGPT Go users. It also puts the chatbot giant a fair way ahead of competitors like Anthropic, the company behind Claude.

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“Both our Weekly Active User (WAU) and Daily Active User (DAU) figures continue to produce all-time highs. This growth is driven by a flywheel across compute, frontier research, products, and monetization.”
“Compute grew 3X year over year or 9.5X from 2023 to 2025: 0.2 GW in 2023, 0.6 GW in 2024, and ~1.9 GW in 2025.”