Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said its board had approved a plan to spend as much as US$126 million to acquire Taiwan OmniVision Investment Holding Co Ltd and a 49 percent stake in VisEra Holding Cayman Ltd, both local subsidiaries of OmniVision Technologies Inc
The world’s largest contract chipmaker said in a statement that the acquisitions are conditional on regulatory approval from related governments, including the US approving a Chinese consortium’s acquisition of OmniVision Technologies, which is based in Santa Clara, California.
TSMC supplies microprocessors for Apple Inc’s iPhone. The company’s proposed purchase of OmniVision Technologies’ local subsidiaries is to help clear a regulatory hurdle for a group of Chinese investors to acquire the firm, as Chinese firms are not permitted to operate semiconductor businesses in Taiwan.
OmniVision Technologies — which provided the rear camera sensor for Apple’s iPhone 4S — in April agreed to a US$1.9 billion acquisition by a Chinese conglomerate that includes Hua Capital Management Co (華資本管理公司), Citi Capital Holdings Ltd (中信資本) and GoldStone Investment Co (金石投資).
TSMC’s proposed deal would allow the Hsinchu-based chipmaker to increase its stake in VisEra Holding to 98.2 percent. VisEra Holding was established as a joint venture between TSMC and OmniVision Technologies.
TSMC’s board yesterday also gave the go-ahead for capital appropriations of roughly US$1.24 billion to expand capacity for advanced technology and packaging and assembly. The capital expenditures are also to cover certain logic capacity and specialty technology spending this quarter, as well as research and development costs.
TSMC plans to spend between US$10.5 billion and US$11 billion on capital expenditure this year, mostly on advanced technologies.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
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INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
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