TSMC's Wei-Chung Hsu: AI equipment demand nearly doubled in half a year

On September 2, TSMC Senior Vice President and Co-COO Dr. Wei-Chung Hou stated that the speed of change in AI demand far exceeds past industry experiences. Taking TSMC's equipment demand as an example, the estimated equipment needed for this year at the end of last year was calculated to be 1 times, but just one quarter later it increased to 1.5 times, and by July of this year, it had reached 1.9 times, with demand nearly doubling in just six months.

Dr. Hou pointed out that the semiconductor industry has never faced such rapid changes in demand in the past 30 years. The entire industry needs to provide nearly double the original equipment, capacity, and resources in an extremely short time. TSMC is currently constructing 13 fabs in Taiwan and about 5 to 6 overseas, totaling nearly 20 fabs globally, with the scale of construction expanded to about 3 to 4 times that of the past, yet still unable to fully meet customer demand.

He emphasized that in the AI era, the entire system or module needs to be optimized, and traditional collaborative models can no longer meet the demand. The supply chain must be restructured into a new cooperation model that is more closely integrated. The entire ecosystem is not yet prepared for such rapid growth, with equipment demand nearly doubling in six months, and almost no suppliers can completely avoid capacity constraints.