“They actually have their own employees going on site to data centers now… checking to see how far along these fabs are… Here's a foundry. They're multiple layers removed from data centers, but they actually have people doing site inspection, trying to figure out what's real. I remember the days not so long ago when TSMC would just call up a sell side and say, what's your forecast for handsets? What's your forecast for PCs? And that would be their modeling.”
The Circuit · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · October 2026
Goldberg's takeaway from TSMC's latest earnings call: the foundry now checks AI demand on the ground instead of relying on analyst forecasts. He called it a big change from how chipmakers used to plan.
Transcript
Yeah, but they don't understand. He has flying cars. So
he has cars that can do very fun tricks. Yes. Yeah. He's Elon Musk. That's why I guess why he's going to get some SML machine.
…a lot happening in this space. I think the other thing is TSMC reported this week. And I've given up trying to track what expectations were. I guess it wasn't what people thought. I don't know. Numbers look fine to me. But they said a few interesting things on their call, right? They talked about TerraFab 2, but they kind of played it down. I thought the most fascinating thing they said is they actually have their own employees going on site to data centers now around probably the US, maybe around the world, checking to see how far along these fabs are, which I thought was very fascinating, right? Here's a foundry. They're multiple layers removed from data centers, but they actually have people doing site inspection, trying to figure out what's real, what's going to get built on what time frame, which is a big change from the world of the past, right?…
Yeah, I thought the data center point, to be honest with you, was probably the most interesting, but as a broad thematic for TSMC, I just, again, right? I'm trying to, Ben's not in the market. Ben doesn't recommend stocks or try to really analyze the stock market. I'm trying to keep these things…
Okay. I'm not quite there yet, but we can debate that on a different day. In terms of demand, there's a lot of, yeah, I'll save it for another time. But I certainly agree. There's a lot of, there is a lot of demand right now. It will stick around for a while. And we need, I think, I think the way I…
Yeah, which raises the question I think we've either asked or noodled about or discussed in private: what happens to all of the demand for five nanometer and below? Because it is still there. There is still demand for, let's just say, trailing-ish edge. And as TSMC does this, that creates…
More from The Circuit
