TSMC CEO C.C. Wei took a subtle jab at Samsung this week, suggesting the company’s long-running goal of catching up to the foundry leader remains just that: a goal.
Speaking during a shareholder-related Q&A session, Wei expressed confidence that Taiwan’s dominance in contract chip manufacturing isn’t going anywhere. Without mentioning Samsung directly, he mocked a familiar pattern from a rival that has spent years promising to close the gap.
“Twenty years ago, our competitor said they would catch up with TSMC in 10 years,” Wei said. “Ten years ago, they said they would catch up in another 10 years; and recently, they said yet again that they would catch up in 10 years.”
The comment landed as demand for AI hardware continues to push the semiconductor industry into overdrive. While both TSMC and Samsung are investing heavily in advanced nodes, including 2nm production, the reality is that the two companies remain far apart in the foundry business.
TSMC controls roughly 70% of the global pure-play foundry market, according to recent industry estimates. Samsung sits closer to 7%, and despite years of investment, it has struggled to consistently challenge TSMC’s lead in advanced manufacturing and production scale.
A major reason is AI. Companies building accelerators for AI workloads increasingly rely on TSMC not only for leading-edge process technology but also for advanced packaging solutions such as CoWoS. Those capabilities have become just as important as transistor density, especially for customers like NVIDIA racing to deploy increasingly powerful AI hardware.
That’s not to say Samsung lacks strengths. The company remains a major force in memory and is widely viewed as a leader in High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), one of the most critical components inside modern AI systems. Wei himself acknowledged Samsung’s position in that segment.
Still, when it comes to foundry services, TSMC continues to benefit from something that’s difficult to replicate: execution. Consistent yields, deep customer relationships, and a manufacturing ecosystem built over decades have helped the company maintain a lead that rivals have yet to seriously threaten.
For now, Wei appears unconcerned. His message was simple: competitors can keep setting deadlines, but catching up is much harder than predicting it.
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