Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing captures 73% of foundry revenue as AI demand widens its lead

When one company controls nearly three-quarters of an entire global industry’s revenue, calling it dominant feels like an understatement. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has done exactly that, capturing approximately 73% of the worldwide foundry market in the second quarter of 2026, according to Counterpoint Research.

That’s the second consecutive quarter TSMC has held that share. Its closest competitor, Samsung Foundry, sits at roughly 5.9%.

The numbers behind the dominance

TrendForce data largely mirrors the Counterpoint findings, pegging TSMC’s Q2 2026 share at 72.5% with quarterly revenue approaching $40.2 billion. That figure represents a 12.1% increase from the prior quarter, driven by full utilization of advanced manufacturing capacity and a boost from smartphone inventory builds.

For the full year of 2025, TSMC pulled in $122.54 billion in foundry revenue. That was a 36.1% jump year-over-year, giving it a 69.9% share for the calendar year.

Advanced nodes, meaning chips built on 7-nanometer process technology and below, accounted for 74% of TSMC’s wafer revenue in 2025. These are the chips that power AI training clusters, high-end GPUs, and the servers that companies like Nvidia, AMD, and Apple depend on.

Samsung Foundry, despite being part of one of the world’s largest conglomerates, has been stuck in the 5.9% to 7.2% range across recent periods. China’s SMIC holds about 5.4%. UMC and GlobalFoundries each occupy single-digit slivers below 6%.

Why the gap keeps growing

TSMC’s process technology leadership on 3nm nodes is well established, and initial contributions from its 2nm node are already showing up in the revenue mix. Every generation of chip shrinkage requires billions of dollars in R&D and capital expenditure, and TSMC’s massive revenue base lets it reinvest at a scale competitors simply cannot match.

The AI boom has turbocharged this dynamic. Increased wafer shipments and rising average selling prices on leading-edge nodes have both contributed to the company’s revenue growth.

Advanced packaging technology adds another layer to the competitive barrier. Techniques like TSMC’s CoWoS (Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate) packaging are essential for assembling the complex multi-chip modules that AI accelerators require.

What this means for the broader chip landscape

For investors, TSMC’s position as the sole manufacturer capable of producing the world’s most advanced chips at scale gives it pricing power, and rising average selling prices on leading-edge nodes translate directly into margin expansion, especially when capacity is fully utilized.

The crypto mining hardware sector provides a useful lens here as well. TSMC fabricates the chips inside Bitmain’s latest ASIC miners and many of the GPUs used for proof-of-work mining and AI-adjacent workloads. Any constraint on TSMC’s capacity or pricing ripples directly into the cost structure of mining operations worldwide.

The gap between TSMC’s 73% and Samsung’s 5.9% is wider than Samsung’s entire share.