TSMC to Invest Up to $1B in Anthropic and OpenAI as the Foundry Buys Into Its Customers

The world’s largest contract chipmaker is buying into the AI companies it builds chips for. TSMC’s board on Nov. 10 approved investments of up to $500 million each in Anthropic and OpenAI, a combined ceiling of $1 billion. The Anthropic stake will be common shares bought at its IPO price, and the OpenAI stake will be preferred stock.

TSMC disclosed the resolutions in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing lists each investment as “not to exceed” $500 million and does not give ownership percentages, valuations or a purpose.

The board also approved about $40.9 billion in capital appropriations for advanced-technology and packaging capacity, fab construction and 2027 R&D and sustaining spending. It cleared a separate investment company of up to $500 million for semiconductor ecosystem deals and a third-quarter dividend of NT$9 per share, up from NT$7 for the second quarter.

Part of Anthropic’s $26B private placement

TSMC’s Anthropic stake is tied to the company’s Nasdaq listing. Reports citing Anthropic’s amended S-1, filed the same day, say it will sell 825 million Class A shares at $70 to $78 each, for gross proceeds of roughly $57.8 billion to $64.4 billion. Separately, it will sell $26 billion of non-voting Class N shares at the IPO price to seven strategic buyers.

Google and Nvidia are each said to be taking about $10 billion, AMD about $2.5 billion, Broadcom, Micron and Microsoft about $1 billion each, and TSMC about $500 million, the smallest of the seven. The final price and listing date are not set. Media reports put pricing on Nov. 18 and first trade on Nov. 19, but the filing does not state dates. We covered the offering in our S-1 breakdown.

Less is known about the OpenAI stake. No price or timing has been disclosed. OpenAI reportedly cut its fundraising target recently, with its current round at about a $1.25 trillion valuation. It is unclear whether TSMC’s purchase is part of that round.

From order-taker to partner

TSMC did not explain the investments. Taiwanese media read them as a sign of confidence in AI and a shift from filling orders from chip designers toward partnerships backed by equity. Shared ownership, they said, could give TSMC more flexibility over capacity allocation and pricing. They also noted that Nvidia accounts for a very large share of TSMC’s revenue, and that direct ties to AI labs could ease that concentration.

Both labs are also building their own chips. OpenAI launched a first inference chip with Broadcom, and Anthropic was reported in July to be discussing its own chip with Samsung on a 2nm process. Those talks were at an early stage and are not a contract. Cutting-edge AI chip manufacturing has largely sat with TSMC, so where the labs’ own chips get built matters to it.

Chip suppliers buying into customers is not new. AMD was reported to have committed up to $5 billion in Anthropic equity, released as deployment milestones are met. That is cash invested in the customer rather than the warrants AMD gave OpenAI and Meta. Google, for its part, took warrants to buy up to $12.2 billion of Marvell stock in August as part of a TPU chip deal, released as it buys chips. Samsung Electronics and SK hynix took part in Anthropic’s Series H earlier.

For TSMC the exposure is modest. Even if it uses the whole $1 billion, that is about 2.4% of the approved capital budget and roughly 4% of third-quarter net income, about $24 billion. The two companies carry real weight in AI demand: Menlo Ventures estimated that Anthropic, OpenAI and Google took 69% of enterprise AI spend this year.

Third-quarter profit up 68.7%

The checks are backed by earnings. TSMC reported third-quarter revenue of NT$1.49 trillion and net income of NT$763.06 billion, up 68.7% from a year earlier, with diluted EPS of NT$29.43. October revenue, released the same day, hit a monthly record of NT$586.89 billion, up 59.7% from a year earlier and 14.7% from September. Revenue for January through October is up 43.3%.

Fourth-quarter guidance is $52.3 billion to $54.3 billion. At its October investor conference, TSMC kept its 2026 capital spending forecast at $60 billion to $64 billion. Taiwanese media said TSMC described the new capital budget as reflecting strong customer demand over the next few years, including from agentic AI.