TSMC is eyeing a new Texas campus packed with multiple fabs, each carrying a price tag of at least $20 billion.
The chipmaker's expansion plan hinges on Congress extending a 35% manufacturing tax credit that underpins the economics of building in the US. Every fab in the proposed campus would cost upward of $20 billion. For comparison, TSMC's only European plant, a Dresden joint venture, totals just above EUR 10 billion combined. That plant will run older 28nm to 12nm process nodes, nothing close to what today's AI chips require.
The contrast tells you where TSMC thinks the real money is. The US is in line for leading-edge AI manufacturing capacity, while Europe gets mature nodes suited to cars and industrial hardware, not AI accelerators. That split will shape who can source state-of-the-art chips domestically as the AI buildout continues, and it leaves Europe's chip ambitions further behind the frontier.
A plan worth tens of billions that depends on Congress renewing a tax break is still a maybe, not a done deal.