Is TSMC the most important AI company for the next 100 years?

Welcome to AI Collision 💥,

In today’s collision between AI and our world:

• Expensive popcorn… again.
• Look, Optimus popcorn is better
• The real brains of AI

If that’s enough to get the robot serving popcorn, read on…

***NOTE: before we dive in today, I must apologise. Tuesday’s AI Collision (which you’ll see below) had been set and scheduled to send on Tuesday at 5pm. But for some reason it never sent! Don’t know why, don’t know how. It just didn’t go. Must have been a deep state attack vector not happy with me for some reason. Anyway, apologies again, so here’s Tuesday’s, now Thursday’s edition of AI Collision.

AI Collision 💥

Recently I went to the movies with the kids, and I thought, let’s just get some popcorn there, drinks, snacks, the whole shebang. It’ll be fine and fun!

Now, this clearly was not my first time to the movies. I did know beforehand what I was getting myself into when I decided this. I knew it would cost me an arm and a leg. But… the idea was sound, the execution, meh.

At the cinema, we grabbed a large popcorn, coke, and some Maltesers. $30 later I was lamenting my stupid idea. The cost was as much as the movie tickets (almost). Why do I put myself through these things?

Then (as I do) started lamenting the fact I had to deal with a human in this transaction to vent my frustrations. Why can’t I just get a machine to serve my popcorn and coke? I’d get it faster, less hassle, and no doubt the cost might be less because there’s no need to pay someone to do it.

Less than a week later (my algorithms are stalking me) I see an Optimus robot on my social feeds. And what do you think that Optimus robot was doing…?

I’ll show you…

A few days ago in Los Angeles, the new Tesla Diner opened with waiters that don’t need wages, bathroom breaks, or training. Just Optimus humanoid robots built by Tesla.

You’d be forgiven for brushing this off as a one-off Elon stunt. The diner itself, maybe so, but behind that popcorn cabinet is a glimpse of tomorrow.

And there’s one company at the heart of it all, that turns this from a far-off sci-fi vision to tomorrow’s reality.

It’s not Tesla.
It’s not Nvidia.

It’s Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (NASDAQ:TSM).

Speaking during the company’s latest earnings call, Chairman C.C. Wei said that, “You can’t build robots without TSMC.”

A question came in during the call from Bank of America,

So we have learned that humanoid robot started to contribute to TSMC and it is gaining momentum as the next frontier of the AI hardware. How does TSMC evaluate the market size of humanoid robot in the semiconductor and in terms of the potential market TAM, compute and also sensor requirements?

Wei’s answer,

You know that humanoid robot will be most of the time will be used. I think the first one will be used in the medical industry to taking care of the people getting over like me. And I probably someday I need some humanoid robot to help me. But it’s very complicated because it’s not — we are talking about the brand only. Actually, you are talking about a lot of sensor — sensor technology, the image sensor, the pressure sensor, the temperature sensor and all the feedback to the CPU. And so it’s very complicated. And since it’s dealing with human being directly, has to be very, very careful. But then once you start to fly, it was a big, big plus. I talked to one of my customers and he say that the EV car is nothing — is robot will be 10x of that. I’m waiting for that.

A market ten times larger than electric vehicles (which is projected to grow to nearly a $2 trillion market by 2032).

So, humanoid robots worth $20 trillion…

Yes, you read that right. And every part of that robot, from vision sensors to neural accelerators to motor controllers, runs on chips.

The entire nervous system of a humanoid is semiconductors. And most of the world’s most advanced semiconductors come from TSMC.

No TSMC, no Nvidia, no Tesla Dojo, no Optimus.
No Atlas. No Figure 01. No Agility Digit.
No popcorn for Sam.

It’s not just TSMC making these projections.

Jensen Huang — Nvidia’s CEO and arguably the architect of the current AI era — recently called robotics the next big wave:

“The next wave of AI is here. Robotics, powered by physical AI, will revolutionise industries,”

And he’s on record saying that he believes humanoids are a “multi-trillion dollar” opportunity.

That’s the new gold rush — not just training massive LLMs, but deploying physical AI, humanoids, at scale across every industry from healthcare to logistics to hospitality to manufacturing.

And guess who’s fabricating the brains?

TSMC doesn’t make headlines like Nvidia or Tesla or OpenAI. It doesn’t run splashy demos or post sci-fi videos of robot dance routines.

You probably didn’t even know who C.C Wei was before you read his name above. Meanwhile Musk, Huang, Altman are virtually household names.

Because TSMC doesn’t need to trumpet their importance here. They just need to do what they do and keep on doing it.

The good thing for them, and their shareholders, is that no one else really even comes close to their size, scale, and deep roots in all aspects of modern AI.

From wafer to robot its TSMC is at the center.

If Wei’s customer, and Jensen Huang are right and humanoid robotics becomes a multitrillion-dollar market… then we’re not looking at just a big shift. We’re looking at the most strategically important manufacturing dependency of the 21st century.

People get excited about AI models. But models without chips are just ideas. And chips without fabs are just vaporware.

TSMC isn’t just important — it may be indispensable for the next hundred years and cutting edge AI hardware development.

For every Optimus that scoops some popcorn, or every robot that walks into an aged care facility, chances are it will be semiconductor brains straight out of a TSMC fab that make it all happen.

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Boomers & Busters 💰

AI and AI-related stocks moving and shaking up the markets this week. (All performance data below over the rolling week).

Boom 📈

• Brainchip (ASX:BRN) up 12.5%
• Arm (NASDAQ:ARM) up 12%
• Taiwan Semiconductor (NYSE:TSM) up 5%

Bust 📉

• Micron (NASDAQ:MU) down 4%
• SK Hynix (KOR:A000660) down 9%
• Gorilla Technology (NASDAQ:GRRR) down 10%

From the hive mind 🧠

• Yes, AI has reached THAT PLACE where the current President of the United States of America, has posted an AI generated video on his own social network of a former President of the United States of America getting arrested in the oval office.
• If you think your latest water bill was expensive thanks to worse service and water bosses getting pay rises instead of bonuses well, think again! It’s set to skyrocket even more in the coming years thanks to Labour Ai data farms.
• China does not need the US to move their AI industry along. And if they’re shut off from the US as we’ve seen, they will likely accelerate things even further leaving the US behind. So, it’s in the interests of the US to ensure there’s relative harmony between AI industry on both sides of this fence.

Artificial Polltelligence 🗳️

Weirdest AI image of the day

ChatGPT’s random quote of the day

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to leave comments and questions below,

Sam Volkering

Editor-in-Chief

AI Collision