
Taiwan Semiconductor, or TSMC as the cool kids call it, manufactures roughly 70% of the world’s processors. Which is, when you think about it, a rather alarming statistic. It means a significant portion of our digital reality is dependent on a single company. (One can only hope they have excellent disaster recovery plans, and a really good tea break schedule.) But alarming aside, it’s also a position of immense power. Every time Nvidia, or any other chip designer with a vaguely plausible business model, needs a processor fabricated, they turn to TSMC. The company recently reported a 26% revenue increase and a 35% jump in earnings per share. Management anticipates continued growth, estimating a 30% increase in sales by 2026. Will spending on AI data centers eventually slow down? Of course. Everything slows down eventually. (Entropy, you see. It’s a thing.) But to bet against TSMC’s dominance now seems…premature. Especially when tech giants are collectively splashing out $650 billion on capital expenditures, most of it related to AI. At a price-to-earnings ratio of 32, it’s a comparatively sensible valuation in a sector often characterized by, shall we say, optimistic pricing.