Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. plans to invest up to $1 billion in Anthropic and OpenAI, taking stakes in two of the artificial intelligence industry’s leading developers as the world’s largest contract chipmaker bets that demand for AI will keep growing despite mounting concern about the cost of the boom.
TSMC’s board approved the investments on Tuesday: up to $500 million to buy Anthropic shares at the price of its initial public offering, and up to $500 million of preferred stock in OpenAI. The move takes TSMC beyond its familiar role as the manufacturer of the chips that power AI systems and into the ranks of the developers’ shareholders.
Anthropic priced its flotation on Tuesday at $70 to $78 a share, seeking a valuation of up to $1.4 trillion in what would be one of the largest stock market debuts on record. The Claude maker is also raising $26 billion through a separate private placement backed by Google, Nvidia, AMD and Microsoft. At the top of the price range, TSMC’s $500 million would buy about 0.05 per cent of Anthropic.
The stakes are modest beside TSMC’s scale — the company reported a sixth consecutive quarter of record profit last month — but they underline how central the chipmaker has become to the AI build-out. It supplies Nvidia, whose processors underpin many of today’s AI models, and says demand for AI-related chips remains “extremely robust”, with orders still outstripping its manufacturing capacity. It expects full-year revenue growth of about 44 per cent in 2026.
The same board meeting approved a record quarterly dividend of NT$9.0 a share, up from NT$7, alongside capital appropriations of about $40.93 billion for new capacity, advanced packaging, fab construction and next year’s research spending. Directors also approved up to $500 million to set up an investment company focused on the semiconductor industry. TSMC is expanding production in the United States, including a $265 billion investment in manufacturing facilities in Arizona.
The investment comes as investors question whether spending on AI infrastructure is running ahead of returns. TSMC’s answer, in effect, is to back both sides of the trade: the factories that make the chips and the companies building the models that use them. The figures are approval ceilings, not money already spent.
Sources: Reuters, “TSMC to invest up to $1 billion in Anthropic, OpenAI”, 10 November 2026 — https://www.reuters.com/world/china/tsmc-invest-up-1-billion-anthropic-openai-2026-11-10/ ; TSMC Board of Directors Meeting Resolutions, 10 November 2026 (via SemiWiki) — https://semiwiki.com/forum/threads/tsmc-october-revenue-jumps-59-7-as-growth-accelerates.26184/ ; TSMC Investor Relations, dividend history — https://investor.tsmc.com/english/dividends
