TSMC’s $265B US fab push still lacks a timeline

TSMC says it now plans to expand its US manufacturing footprint to 12 facilities with total investment of $265 billion. But for now, the company’s latest $100 billion pledge looks more like an ambition than a build schedule.

The Taiwanese foundry giant made the announcement after another AI-driven quarter, with Q2 revenue above $40.2 billion and profits topping $22 billion. Even so, building advanced chip plants is a slow, difficult process, and recent industry history suggests these headline numbers should be treated cautiously.

Intel offers a clear example. The company had laid out major factory investments across several regions: $30 billion for two fabs in Arizona, €30 billion for a megafab in Magdeburg, Germany, $25 billion for a fab in Israel, and $20 billion for a manufacturing plant in Ohio. So far, only one Arizona plant has materialized. The Germany project has been canceled, the Israel site has been delayed indefinitely, and the Ohio expansion has been pushed back until at least 2030.

TSMC’s own US track record tells a similar story. Since first announcing a leading-edge US fab during Trump’s last administration, the company has built two fab sites and broken ground on a third, spending $65 billion in the process. The first facility came online in late 2024, with Apple and Nvidia named as flagship customers early last year. The second, set to make chips on TSMC’s 3 nm process, is not expected to come online until the second half of next year. The third Arizona fab, announced in spring 2024, is not expected to begin volume production until at least “the end of the decade,” according to TSMC’s own documents.

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That context matters because TSMC had already announced another $100 billion US manufacturing expansion in March 2025. Standing with President Donald Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, CEO CC Wei outlined plans for:

• three new fabs
• two new advanced packaging facilities
• an R&D center

None of those facilities has been completed, and their timelines are still vague. TSMC only acquired the additional 900 acres needed for that expansion earlier this year.

Now the company says it will add another four fab sites. But when investors asked for a firm schedule on the Q2 earnings call, Wei did not provide one.

“If you ask me to give you a firm schedule, no, we don’t have it today, but we do have a plan.”

That caution is not surprising. New fabs typically take four to five years to build and ramp. On top of that, TSMC needs a much larger workforce to staff them. According to an analysis by McKinsey and SEMI, the shortage of skilled chip workers could reach 157,000 by the time TSMC’s third fab is completed.

TSMC clearly has the financial capacity to keep spending. The harder part is turning a stack of press releases into operating fabs on the ground in Arizona.