TSMC plans to establish a $500 million venture fund to back chip startups, suppliers and other upstream partners, according to a November 13, 2026, IT Home report citing Nikkei Asia.
TSMC senior vice president and co-chief operating officer Zhang Xiaoqiang said the company wants a more formal investment mechanism as the AI industry grows. The new fund would broaden its investment scope beyond direct customers. Zhang said TSMC hopes to support emerging semiconductor companies as well as established clients such as Apple, Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom.
The planned fund is larger than the $200 million emerging-business fund TSMC established in 2021, which primarily helped startups use its advanced chip manufacturing technology. Zhang said the earlier fund had delivered strong returns and that TSMC could expand the new fund if needed.
Zhang also discussed TSMC’s plans to invest up to $500 million each in Anthropic and OpenAI, describing those investments as a way to strengthen the broader industry ecosystem and support future computing demand. Across the 2021 fund, the planned venture fund and the proposed AI-company investments, TSMC’s total funding commitments could reach $1.7 billion.