There are two ways for chipmakers to make money from the AI boom. The first is to make the stuff that everyone wants. Taiwan’s mighty TSMC — which produces more than 90 per cent of the world’s most advanced chips — does this, and beat its own forecasts in quarterly earnings on Thursday. The other is to make the products that people turn to when they can’t get their first choice. Samsung, which like TSMC just enjoyed a record quarter with Won20tn ($14bn) of earnings, has so far slipped into this category.
The Korean behemoth’s struggles to produce cutting-edge chips have, oddly, hel