TSMC became the first Asian company to reach $1T as demand for AI increased

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd., commonly known as TSMC, surpassed Berkshire Hathaway on June 20 to become the world's eighth most valuable company to become the first Asian company to reach a market capitalization of more than $1 trillion.

The company's steady increase comes on the wings of its massive technology and manufacturing portfolio that produces semiconductors.

Apple and the bandit

TSMC is the world's largest semiconductor manufacturer. Its top customers include Apple, AMD, Intel, Nvidia, Intel and Qualcomm. However, Apple accounts for a fifth of its total revenue thanks to the use of TSMC semiconductors in iPhones.

Basically, TSMC enjoys a monopoly position in the market due to its massive manufacturing capacity. Global competitors including AMD, Intel and Nvidia use it as a source for some of their chips.

TSMC also has strict controls on cryptocurrency mining. Its semiconductors are used in Lion's mines, including the world's most popular Bitmain Antminer models.

In China, 98% of the rigs used to mine Bitcoin are made by Bitmain and feature TSMC semiconductors. Samsung has also used the company's chips to build its mining operations.

retreat and beyond

As of press time, TSMC's market capitalization of more than a trillion dollars has retreated from its previous high of $859.69 billion. This puts it behind Berkshire Hathaway and currently holds number nine on the global leaderboards, ahead of Eli Lilly and Tesla.

Discount Nvidia, currently ranked third with a market capitalization of $2.9 trillion, is the next-highest chipmaker on the list beyond TSMC, which is Broadcom — the other chipmaker for TSMC — in 12th place with a market capitalization of $732.4 billion.

While there's no predicting the market or how different businesses will operate, TSMC's unique position allows it to gain advantages from competitors' headwinds. Its fate is tied to both Apple and Nvidia, for example, and demand for products like the iPhone and Nvidia GPUs is increasing, requiring more semiconductors.

If the growth rate in the field of artificial intelligence continues and TSMC continues to meet the demand for new chips, TSMC may become the first Asian company to dethrone Meta (formerly Facebook) and enter the largest technology zone in the list of the world's most valuable companies. .

Related: Nvidia claims progress on path to GPU-based quantum computing