TAIPEI - Taiwanese chip giant TSMC said on Friday that April revenue jumped nearly 60 percent on-year, riding a huge wave of demand for the advanced semiconductors used in AI hardware.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company controls more than half the world's output of chips, and supplies them for everything from Apple's iPhones to Nvidia's cutting-edge artificial intelligence hardware.
Consolidated revenue for April was "approximately NT$236.02 billion (US$7.2 billion)... an increase of 59.6 percent from April 2023", the firm said in a statement.
This compares with a 34.3 percent on-year jump in March.
The company said last month that first-quarter revenue increased 13 percent on-year to US$18.87 billion, and expects a 27.6 percent rise in the second.
The wild success of OpenAI's ChatGPT has sparked an AI gold rush, with demand surging around the world for the cutting-edge chips needed to train and run AI services.
TSMC dominates the global chip industry, and the bulk of its fabrication plants are based in Taiwan, a self-ruled island that is claimed by neighbouring China.
Beijing has said it would not rule out the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control, and has in recent years ramped up pressure by sending in record-breaking numbers of warplanes and naval vessels around the island.
The semiconductor supply chain is highly vulnerable to shocks, and concerned governments have lobbied TSMC to move more production away from Taiwan.
The United States in particular has made a huge push, passing the Chips and Science Act in 2022 to overhaul the semiconductor industry on American soil.
US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said Wednesday during a US House hearing on the department's budget that an invasion of Taiwan by China and a seizure of TSMC would be "absolutely devastating" to the American economy.
"Right now, the United States buys 92 percent of its leading edge chips from TSMC in Taiwan," she said. "They are vastly ahead of anything we are doing in the United States."