TSMC approves $1b investment in OpenAI, Anthropic to deepen AI ties

TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker, plans to invest a total of $1 billion in AI companies OpenAI and Anthropic. The move is a strategy to reduce the Taiwanese foundry's heavy revenue dependence on Nvidia and build direct partnerships with AI firms to expand its influence in the semiconductor market.

According to Taiwan's United Daily News and China Times, TSMC's board approved plans on Tuesday to invest up to $500 million each in OpenAI and Anthropic. The company will acquire Anthropic common shares up to the $500 million limit and invest up to $500 million in OpenAI preferred shares.

The price for the Anthropic share acquisition will be set based on the company's initial public offering price. Anthropic announced Tuesday (local time) that it plans to raise up to $64.4 billion by selling 825 million shares at $70 to $78 per share. The company also plans to raise an additional $26 billion through a private placement targeting Google, Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom, Micron, Microsoft and TSMC.

TSMC's board also approved the establishment of a separate investment vehicle to make strategic investments in the semiconductor industry and its broader ecosystem, with an investment ceiling of $500 million.

The board also approved a major production facility investment, greenlighting capital expenditures of approximately $40.93 billion to secure long-term production capacity. The funds will go toward expanding advanced semiconductor processes, advanced packaging, specialty processes, factory construction and research and development in 2027.

The investment is drawing attention because it marks a shift for TSMC beyond its traditional contract manufacturing role, forging equity ties with AI companies to deepen direct collaboration. As OpenAI and Anthropic push to develop their own custom application-specific integrated circuits optimized for AI model inference, the importance of cooperation between AI developers and chip manufacturers is growing.

Taiwanese media noted that Nvidia accounts for a large share of TSMC's sales, making heavy reliance on a single customer a potential risk. By investing directly in OpenAI and Anthropic, TSMC aims to diversify its customer base and gain strategic flexibility in allocating production capacity and negotiating prices going forward.