TSMC Says AI Demand Is 'Endless' After Record Q4 Earnings (arstechnica.com)
- Reference: 0180602524
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/26/01/16/213211/tsmc-says-ai-demand-is-endless-after-record-q4-earnings
- Source link: https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/01/tsmc-says-ai-demand-is-endless-after-record-q4-earnings/
> On Thursday, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) [1]reported record fourth-quarter earnings and said it [2]expects AI chip demand to continue for years . During an earnings call, CEO C.C. Wei told investors that while he cannot predict the semiconductor industry's long-term trajectory, he remains bullish on AI. "All in all, I believe in my point of view, the AI is real -- not only real, it's starting to grow into our daily life. And we believe that is kind of -- we call it AI megatrend, we certainly would believe that," Wei [3]said during the call. "So another question is 'can the semiconductor industry be good for three, four, five years in a row?' I'll tell you the truth, I don't know. But I look at the AI, it looks like it's going to be like an endless -- I mean, that for many years to come."
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> TSMC [4]posted net income of NT$505.7 billion (about $16 billion) for the quarter, up 35 percent year over year and above analyst expectations. Revenue hit $33.7 billion, a 25.5 percent increase from the same period last year. The company expects nearly 30 percent revenue growth in 2026 and plans to spend between $52 billion and $56 billion on capital expenditures this year, up from $40.9 billion in 2025.
[1] https://investor.tsmc.com/english/quarterly-results/2025/q4
[2] https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/01/tsmc-says-ai-demand-is-endless-after-record-q4-earnings/
[3] https://seekingalpha.com/article/4860033-taiwan-semiconductor-manufacturing-company-limited-tsm-q4-2025-earnings-call-transcript
[4] https://investor.tsmc.com/english/quarterly-results/2025/q4
Endless because no one questions the code (Score:2)
Programming is physics. This is just a result of a large-scale nepotistic hiring spree where nobody cares about scalability as long as those closest to the "leadership" get in on it. It needs a cleanup in terms of code and algorithmic efficiency, and I am working on that. However, this makes me a pariah, and I have to do it for free in my spare time as nobody hires for skills anymore, only nepotism now.
Re: (Score:2)
You have inverted reality. Hiring for nepotism is a human norm. Hiring for skill regardless of nepotism is exceedingly novel, and hasn't really been practiced at all in most human societies to this day.
Only a tiny handful of societies hire for skill over nepotism even today, and even they, only to some extent.
Hint: it's even visible in last names in the few nations that were early adopters of the idea of hiring not because of relationships. Smith, Miller, etc. Pretty much every profession once we invented p
Endless growth - until the money is gone (Score:2)
Does the ruling class really have the trillions needed to build all of this infrastructure, maintain it, and improve it forever? That's the question that's really being asked. We're probably talking tens of trillions of dollars. Remember, they still want to buy yachts, vacations, cars, watches, and homes. They're not going to stop doing that for 20 years do this.
Re: (Score:2)
The beauty of it is that if you invest in the stock market in index funds (which are heavily ai because the total value of the stock market is heavily ai) or just plain buy NVDA and decide you need money for a boat you can sell some of your shares and buy the boat without having to sell all of your shares.
Someone else will buy the shares you need to sell.
You invest the shares at 0 risk because the stock market always* goes up
*Ok there are some blips but most of the time it does
Plus inflation has been kinda
Re: (Score:2)
This "I don't understand what money is" ranting is rather sad to see.
There is no cap on money, because money represents only one thing. Trust in value. It has no value in of itself. This is why "gold standard" societies either gave it up or failed after hitting large growth spikes. Because if trust in value is tied to a specific metal, you need enough supply to expand the value of medium of exchange to keep up with societal trends. It's what killed Spanish Empire for example. They grew so fast, they couldn'
DRAM Glut (Score:2)
Didnt we say this about DRAM 10 or so years ago?
Endless until... (Score:2)
The bubble bursts and all that memory comes on the market Surplus
TSMC will be using a piece of rope to hold up their pants.
This is going to remake our civilization (Score:3)
The scale of this is in the trillions. The ruling class are planning on replacing all of our jobs.
We can debate how successful they're going to be but the reality is that they're going to do it to a large extent and we are looking at a high degree of permanent unemployment. And no we can't all be plumbers the economy can't sustain that many plumbers and if everybody learns to do blue collar work the demand for Blue collar work is going to drop substantially. When was the last time you took your computer to a shop? If you're a blue collar guy you don't hire other Blue collar guys unless it's a bigger job than you can do yourself...
Remember that the problem AI solves is paying wages.
What's worse is that billionaires really really do not like being dependent on employees and consumers and ai and automation offers a way out.
This means that they will spend way more money than is profitable to build out AI in order to get the benefit of not being dependent on your labor or your consumer spending.
And that means AI does not have to be profitable. It's the end of capitalism. Billionaires are not capitalists they are a parasite on capitalism. They do not like capitalism just because they benefit from it. A tick does not like the dog it's sucking blood from.
Re: (Score:2)
The funniest part about this rant is that this specific group of people are genuinely easy to replace with LLMs, and they feel it.
Because their thought patterns are like that of an LLM. Exceptionally limited memory, with severe trouble grasping context, and extreme need to reference self rather than ground understanding in reality and project references from there.
And here you see it. Everything from "ruling class" to "capitalism is not about making people fabulously wealthy if they make things that are ver
Re: (Score:1)
> Exceptionally limited memory, with severe trouble grasping context, and extreme need to reference self rather than ground understanding in reality and project references from there.
every accusation is a confession