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At Thursday's annual shareholders' meeting, TSMC $TSM +0.34% chief executive C.C. Wei painted a sobering picture of the AI chip market, saying the semiconductor industry faces widespread capacity shortfalls that his company alone cannot resolve. "It will be a long time before we can meet customer demand," Wei said at the company's annual shareholders' meeting in Hsinchu, Taiwan.
After the meeting concluded, Wei told reporters that appetite for AI among his customers shows no signs of cooling and that keeping up with orders has become increasingly difficult. "Customer demand is so high, and we can only support so much. We are already working very hard," he said, according to Reuters. "We are doing our best to ensure TSMC does not become a bottleneck."
The capacity crunch extends well beyond TSMC's own fabs, Wei noted, with suppliers and upstream vendors across the chip industry similarly overwhelmed by AI-related orders.
On pricing, Wei acknowledged wanting to charge customers more but drew a clear distinction between TSMC's approach and the steep, sudden rate increases that have rattled the memory chip market. Asked directly whether the company could lift its prices, he said he would "like to do that," before stressing that TSMC had no intention of replicating those tactics. "I envy their 80% gross margins, but I would never do that," he told reporters.
