TSMC is dispatching staff to inspect US datacenter construction and power availability as it weighs billions in additional chipmaking capacity. The company reported strong third-quarter revenue of $46.72 billion, up 41.2 percent year on year, and guided fourth-quarter revenue to between $52.3 billion and $54.3 billion. Yet CEO C.C. Wei also warned that consumer and price-sensitive markets are being challenged by rising component prices and macroeconomic uncertainty, making the company "prudent" in planning for 2027.
AI demand, by contrast, remains robust. Wei said CPUs for agentic workloads and networking chips are adding to silicon demand, and that semiconductors will stay essential to the AI trend. TSMC now expects capital expenditure of $60 billion to $64 billion this year, with 2026–2028 spending projected to exceed the 2023–2025 total. But those plans depend on more than customer orders: datacenters need power, networking, memory, and other infrastructure to come together on schedule.
That is why TSMC is checking how US datacenter projects are progressing before expanding further. Asked whether power shortages, construction delays, advanced-packaging constraints, or limited high-bandwidth memory could hold back growth, Wei said TSMC factors all of those into its capacity planning. He declined to say whether wafer supply tightness would be greater next year than this year, but repeated that demand is "extremely robust" and still higher than supply.
TSMC is also preparing its A14 process, marketed as 1.4 nm, with risk production scheduled for 2027 and volume production in 2028. Wei expects A14 to become a larger business than the current 2 nm generation.