Nvidia Takes Lead: TSMC Shifts Focus as AI Demand Surges

The head of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, stated that his company is currently the largest client of the Taiwanese contract semiconductor manufacturer TSMC. Previously, Apple had been the number one partner for TSMC for many years.

During the conversation, the host recalled the story of Huang’s first meeting with TSMC founder Morris Chang, when the future head of Nvidia declared that his company would become the factory’s largest customer. “Morris will be pleased to know that Nvidia is indeed now TSMC’s largest client,” Huang noted. Nvidia had already occupied a leading position among TSMC’s customers in the early 2000s, but in the 2010s, it gave way to Apple. At that time, TSMC became a key manufacturing partner for the SoCs of the iPhone, iPad, and later Apple Silicon for Mac.

The situation has changed amid the AI boom. The demand for Nvidia’s AI accelerators is rapidly growing, with corporate clients ready to spend billions of dollars on expensive and powerful GPUs for training and operating neural networks. Unlike the consumer electronics market, where buyers have a strict price limit, the corporate segment shows an almost unlimited appetite for computing power.

Amid this backdrop, there are rumors that TSMC is raising prices for chip production for Apple, and the company itself may have lost its preferred access to advanced processes. However, there is no official confirmation of this information, and such details are generally not made public.

The current leadership of Nvidia is directly related to the excitement around AI. As technology giants continue to invest in building data centers and purchasing accelerators, Nvidia’s position looks strong. However, should the AI market cool, Apple, with its consistently large volume of orders for mass single-chip systems, could regain its status as TSMC’s largest client.