TSMC CEO Dismisses Competition, Reiterates No Price Hikes

Per Kr-Asia's reporting of TSMC's annual general assembly on June 4, chairman and CEO Che-Chia Wei told shareholders the company is "not afraid of competition" and wished Elon Musk "good luck" on his proposed large-scale, cutting-edge fab. Wei said the plan "will take quite long to [materialize]," according to Kr-Asia. Wei also said Intel "is still one of our top ten customers," while noting competitive activity in contract chipmaking, per Kr-Asia. He told the meeting that TSMC "won't raise prices like memory chips" and explicitly rejected sudden double- or triple-digit price hikes, saying customer trust and sustainability are more important, as reported by Kr-Asia. Wei maintained TSMC's 2026 outlook, saying revenue in US dollars could grow 30%, and he flagged that tensions in the Middle East "have added further uncertainty to the outlook," per Kr-Asia.

Companies scaling advanced logic and packaging capacity for AI accelerators typically face long lead times for tool procurement, qualified fab construction, and process ramp. Industry observers note that building a modern node-scale fab and associated ecosystem commonly takes several years and requires substantial capital expenditure and supply-chain coordination. For practitioners, that time-to-volume constraint matters when planning procurement cycles for GPUs and custom accelerators.

Industry reporting frames Wei's comments on pricing and customer trust against a backdrop of heightened AI-driven demand for logic wafers and historically volatile memory pricing. Companies in the semiconductor supply chain have previously seen sudden memory-price swings that compressed downstream demand; public remarks emphasizing stable pricing are being watched by OEMs and cloud providers as a signal about supply-cost expectations.

• •Orders and backlog disclosures from major cloud service providers and AI OEMs, which will indicate whether demand supports TSMC's 30% revenue outlook.
• •Announcements from Intel, Samsung, and other foundries on capacity additions and customer wins, which will show how competition for contract manufacturing and packaging is evolving.
• •Market pricing trends for memory and logic wafers, since sustained price volatility would affect procurement strategies and margin planning.