Google, Nvidia, Tesla and Others Eye Samsung as TSMC Capacity Tightens
The shift signals a potential realignment in semiconductor supply chains, with Samsung poised to absorb overflow from TSMC's constrained capacity amid the AI boom.
Reporting from 1 sources: GIGAZINE.
As AI demand pushes TSMC's production capacity to its limits, major tech companies including Google, Nvidia, AMD, Tesla, and BYD are reportedly considering Samsung as an alternative foundry partner. Samsung is one of the few companies capable of advanced process nodes below 5nm, and is seeing increased chipmaking requests from firms struggling to secure TSMC lines.
TSMC's manufacturing lines are overwhelmingly occupied by existing customers like Apple, Nvidia, and AMD, leaving little room for new orders. While TSMC has announced expansion plans, building semiconductor fabs requires years of capital investment. Samsung, one of the few foundries capable of sub-5nm nodes, is now fielding inquiries from Google, Nvidia, Tesla, BYD, and AMD.
Google is reportedly designing Tensor Processing Units with MediaTek and considering outsourcing key components to Samsung, as well as discussing production of its next-generation Axion AI accelerator. AMD is rumored to have secured a contract for future EPYC server CPUs on a second-generation 2nm process. Nvidia is already producing Groq chips at Samsung's foundry and may outsource next-generation chips there. Tesla plans to have its next-generation A16 chip exclusively manufactured at Samsung's Texas factory, and Neuralink has offered Samsung a high-value contract for brain implant chips.
Samsung's foundry business has been running annual losses of hundreds of billions of yen, but the current surge in requests could help turn that around.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.