TSMC takes stakes in Anthropic and OpenAI as its board widens the building budget

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TWSE: 2330, NYSE: TSM) said its board approved investments of up to $500 million in Anthropic and up to $500 million in OpenAI on Tuesday, November 10, according to the board resolutions published the same day as its October revenue report.

Two AI customers become two holdings

The board approved buying shares of "Anthropic, PBC at its per share initial public offering price in an amount not to exceed US$500 million," according to the resolutions. A second resolution allows up to $500 million "to acquire OpenAI’s preferred stock," in OpenAI Group PBC.

The Anthropic purchase belongs to a $26 billion private placement at the offering price that Anthropic agreed with seven suppliers and partners, TSMC among them, as FinanceInTime reported on Tuesday. The board's resolution is the first figure for TSMC's own share of it.

The board also approved up to $500 million to set up an investment company "for the purpose of making strategic investments in the semiconductor industry and related ecosystem." The resolutions do not name its first investments.

A larger building budget than in August

The same meeting approved capital appropriations of about $40.93 billion, mainly for advanced technology capacity, advanced packaging and specialty capacity, fab construction and 2027 research and development spending, the company said. In August the board approved about $29.44 billion, so the new approval is 39.0% larger (computed).

Set against that budget, the two AI stakes together amount to 2.4% of the new appropriations (computed). The board also approved a cash dividend of NT$9.0 per share for the third quarter, payable on April 8, 2027, up from NT$7.0 for the second quarter.

Sales that keep the spending funded

TSMC's consolidated revenue for October was about NT$586.89 billion, up 14.7% from September and 59.7% from October 2025, the company said. Revenue for January through October reached NT$4,485.62 billion, up 43.3% from the same period of 2025.

September had been flat: revenue of about NT$511.86 billion was 0.6% lower than in August, though 54.6% higher than a year earlier, according to the September report.

In its third-quarter results on October 15, TSMC reported revenue of $46.72 billion, up 41.2% from a year earlier, a gross margin of 66.4% and an operating margin of 58.7%. Wafers made with 3-nanometer technology accounted for 33% of wafer revenue. For the fourth quarter, it guided to revenue of $52.3 billion to $54.3 billion, 11.9% to 16.2% above the third quarter (computed), based on an exchange rate assumption of 31.8 New Taiwan dollars per US dollar.

"Our business in the third quarter was supported by strong demand for our leading-edge process technologies," Wendell Huang, senior vice president and chief financial officer, said in that release.

A chipmaker buying into its customers carries a new kind of risk

We think the stakes matter less as money than as a signal. One billion dollars is small next to a $40.93 billion building budget, but it ties part of TSMC's balance sheet directly to the valuations of two model developers that are also among the largest buyers of the chips it makes.

The opportunity is closer ties with customers whose demand already shows up in a 59.7% jump in monthly sales. The threat is concentration: if AI spending slows, TSMC would feel it in orders and in the value of these holdings at once. Our forecast, conditional on monthly sales staying above NT$500 billion, is that fourth-quarter revenue lands inside the guided range; we would revisit the view if November sales fall back toward September's level.

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