TSMC: First Revenue from 2-Nanometer Chips for Apple and AMD
A year-on-year comparison by the globally important chip manufacturer shows how processors, GPUs, and accelerators are becoming more expensive.
(Image: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd.)
The world's largest contract chip manufacturer, TSMC, is reporting a record quarter with sales of around 40 billion US dollars. Net profit for the second quarter of 2026 is just under 22.4 billion US dollars. “High-performance chips” now account for two-thirds of TSMC's revenue. The company refers to all processors, GPUs, accelerators, and other chips from notebook class to data center variants.
The year-on-year comparison is particularly impressive: Compared to the second quarter of 2025, revenue increased by 34 percent. Net profit grew even more strongly, with a plus of a good 74 percent. Analogously, the gross margin increased from 58.6 to 67.7 percent, an immense value for a contract chip manufacturer.
This shows how much TSMC's prices must have risen and supports corresponding rumors. Exact prices remain a matter of speculation, as the industry traditionally keeps them secret.
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More wafers
Production expansion contributes a rather small part of the growth: TSMC exposed nearly 17 percent more silicon wafers in the second quarter of 2026 than a year earlier. The company currently reports good 4.3 million so-called 300 mm wafer equivalents. TSMC also scales wafers with a diameter of 200 mm or smaller to the current 300 mm standard, which is common in all modern manufacturing processes. Dozens to thousands of chips are ultimately cut from one wafer.
(Image: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd.)
2 nm included for the first time
The wafer revenue distribution between manufacturing generations has only changed slightly in that year. The 3-nanometer share increased from 24 to 30 percent, while the 5 nm share decreased from 36 to 33 percent. Among others, Nvidia is now having its new AI GPU Rubin and the server processor Vera manufactured with 3 nm structures by TSMC.
The company also recorded its very first significant revenue from 2 nm processes, although it still accounts for only three percent. AMD and Apple are the first customers with processors and AI accelerators.
(Image: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd.)
TSMC does not explicitly report revenue from wafer exposure. However, based on the reported data, this should be around 34 billion US dollars, or 84 percent of total revenue. 3 nm would thus account for about ten billion and 2 nm for one billion US dollars.
The remaining money comes primarily from so-called advanced packaging, where multiple chiplets are married on a common substrate. This is particularly common for AI accelerators, which often combine multiple compute chiplets, sometimes separate I/O dies, and high-bandwidth memory (HBM).
In the current third quarter, TSMC expects revenue between 44.6 billion and 45.8 billion US dollars. For the full year, TSMC is raising its growth forecast from over 30 percent to slightly over 40 percent. The stock markets are reacting mixedly to the results: the stock in Taiwan is minimally up. The American Depositary Receipt (ADR) traded here, however, is down nearly four percent, although influenced by the US-Iran conflict.
(mma)
