2026-08-25 — Apple ships the first commercial silicon on TSMC’s N2 node

• Apple unveiled the M6, in a refreshed Mac mini, as the first commercial product built on TSMC’s N2 (2nm) process, with the M5 Ultra shipping alongside in a refreshed Mac Studio. N2 is now a proven production node rather than a roadmap promise — the gate the smartphone, HPC and custom-ASIC customers queued behind it all sit behind. (Apple Newsroom)

2026-08-17 — TSMC’s overseas fabs turn real money: Arizona +663% YoY, Japan’s Kumamoto profitable for the first time

• TSMC’s four overseas subsidiaries earned a combined NT$58.5B in H1 2026 (+215% YoY). Arizona alone contributed NT$36.1B (+663% YoY, ~$1.1B, ~2.4% of TSMC’s total net profit), though Q2 alone moderated to NT$17.3B (-8.2% QoQ) as depreciation from new construction bites. Japan’s Kumamoto (JASM) fab turned profitable for the first time in 2026 (NT$951M Q1, NT$727M Q2) after 2025 losses — notable given this thread’s prior entries on that fab’s earthquake exposure. A risk flagged in the same coverage: the July Kumamoto quake’s equipment requalification/calibration/wafer losses could weigh on JASM’s Q3 numbers. (TrendForce, TSMC SEC 6-K)

2026-08-11 — Board approves $29.4B more capex; a new Sony sensor JV lands alongside it

• TSMC’s board approved roughly $29.4B in new capital appropriations for advanced-node capacity and packaging, citing AI/HPC demand — weeks after raising 2026 equipment-spend guidance to $60-64B. The capacity race keeps compounding rather than plateauing. (TipRanks)
• Separately, TSMC and Sony executed a definitive agreement to jointly build a next-generation image-sensor fab in Kumamoto, Japan (Sony contributing ~¥465B, TSMC ~¥282B; production targeted 2029), aimed at sensors for AI-driven robotics and vehicles — a capacity commitment adjacent to, not competing with, the core logic/AI-accelerator race this thread tracks. (Sony Semiconductor Solutions)

2026-08-05 — The real constraint gets a number: TSMC pushes CoWoS front-end work out to OSATs

• TSMC is reportedly expanding outsourcing of the CoW (chip-on-wafer) front-end bonding step within CoWoS packaging to OSAT partners — ASE, Amkor and SPIL are picking up the step, ordering their own dicing/bonding equipment to build new lines, as Nvidia and ASIC demand outstrips TSMC’s own packaging capacity. This is the clearest evidence yet for this thread’s standing framing that the real constraint is CoWoS packaging, not wafers: TrendForce puts Nvidia’s 2026 wafer reservation at ~800,000-850,000 wafers, over half of total CoWoS capacity. Monthly CoWoS capacity is tracked growing from ~70,000 wafers/month (2025) to 130,000-140,000 by end-2026, but TrendForce still projects a ~20% supply-demand gap persisting through the year. (TrendForce)

2026-08-04 — the human toll, missing from this record for a week

The 07-28 quake below was tracked in this thread only through TSMC’s fab status and Tokyo Electron’s supply exposure. The disaster itself was absent from the map entirely — flagged by the /week world-news digest (2026-08-02) as a real gap, and by Ben as a lens-boundary question worth a direct call rather than a silent add: does a natural disaster belong in the world-news lens (scoped to conflict/geopolitical narratives — AGENTS.md discipline 13’s own coverage bar is “all active military conflicts,” not disasters generally), or does it stay narrowly scoped to conflict as designed? Ruling: it stays out of world-news — a natural disaster isn’t a conflict/geopolitical narrative, and stretching the lens’s definition to fit it would be scope creep beyond what the lens was built for. It’s also not a flash-rail candidate a week on: the event was never hidden, only narrowly framed, and the flash rail’s late-catch allowance exists for stories genuinely missed, not for widening an existing story’s frame after the fact. The actual fix, and the real gap: the human toll belongs in the record somewhere, so it lands here, where the event is already tracked — not as a new thread, just an honest account. Verified fresh against primary/consolidated sources (figures below are the FINAL tallies, updated from the developing-disaster numbers first reported 07-28, which undercounted as rescue efforts continued): 38 dead, 127 injured. The Aeon Mall in Kashima’s second floor collapsed onto an estimated 3,000 shoppers, followed by a suspected gas- leak explosion — 7 of the 38 deaths and roughly 55 of the injuries were at this one site; two of the dead were store employees ordered back inside after evacuating, to retrieve cash. ~48,300 households lost power in Kumamoto Prefecture (restored by 07-31); up to 84,000 households lost water across Kumamoto and Nagasaki; ~15,000 people sheltered across 400 evacuation centers. (Wikipedia, consolidated · Al Jazeera · NPR)

2026-07-30 — “Limited impact” verdict lands, not unanimous; Tokyo Electron’s exposure gets a number; 1.4nm pulls ahead

• A “limited impact” verdict on the Kumamoto quake lands (Focus Taiwan, GuruFocus) — JASM utilities back to normal, construction resumed (Digitimes, 07-29) — but not unanimous: Korea JoongAng Daily still frames full-normal-production as delayed.
• Tokyo Electron’s Kyushu exposure now has a number: ~91% global share of an equipment category (XenoSpectrum) — sharper than the 07-29 entry’s vague “some equipment categories.”
• Separately, not quake-related: TSMC’s 1.4nm (A14) fab is ahead of schedule — first building before April 2027, mass production mid-2028 (TrendForce/Wccftech) — a real roadmap acceleration.

2026-07-29 — Kumamoto restoration in stages; the bigger exposure is Tokyo Electron’s, not TSMC’s

• TSMC’s Kumamoto fab is structurally intact, with employees safe and operations being restored in stages after Tuesday’s M7.1 quake — no resumption date was given. (Taipei Times)
• The site is under 3% of TSMC’s total capacity; the larger supply-chain exposure flagged is Tokyo Electron Kyushu’s share of some equipment categories, not TSMC output.

2026-07-28 — 7.1 earthquake hits TSMC’s Kumamoto plant

• A 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck Kumamoto, Japan, prompting a tsunami warning and a precautionary staff evacuation at TSMC’s JASM fab; TSMC confirmed all personnel safe and structural integrity intact after inspection, with operations “gradually resuming” the same day. TSM shares fell ~3.6% on 07-28, though coverage splits the cause between the earthquake and separate export-control/macro concerns — not a clean single-cause read. (Focus Taiwan · TradingKey)

← Backstory

Finding: artifacts/findings/tsmc-capacity-race-2026-07-28.md · bundle: artifacts/bundles/tsmc-capacity-race-2026-07-28/provenance.yaml

2026-07-22/23 — Price hike targets named: Apple and Nvidia

• TrendForce names Apple and Nvidia specifically as the customers “in focus” for the reported 2027 HPC price premiums; Digitimes frames the same hike as handing Intel Foundry fresh competitive pricing room. (TrendForce / Digitimes, via Google News RSS)

2026-07-21 — TSMC opens talks on 2027 price hikes, AI surcharge up to 25%

• TSMC is in talks to raise baseline advanced-node prices 5-10% for 2027, with AI-order/HPC surcharges reported as high as 25% — a company spokesperson called the move “not opportunistic” and said mature nodes are covered too, not just leading-edge. (Bloomberg/Nikkei)
• China reportedly weighing a ban on local firms using TSMC — a notable reversal of the friction’s usual direction (previously all US-outbound); reported the same week as the price-hike talks. (FT via Tech Times/Tom’s Hardware, via Google News RSS)

2026-07-16 — Q2 2026 earnings: capex raised 15% to $60-64B, +$100B Arizona

• TSMC lifted 2026 capex guidance 15% to $60-64B and raised full-year revenue growth guidance to “over 40%”; Q3 gross margin guided 65-67%, with N2 (2nm) ramp and overseas-fab expansion each cited as 3-4-point margin drags. Net profit hit a record NT$706.6bn (~$22B), +77% YoY — yet TSM shares fell ~5% on the margin-dilution/capex read. (TrendForce)
• Same call: TSMC committed an additional $100B to Arizona, bringing total planned US investment to $265B and covering “12 leading edge semiconductor and packaging facilities” per NIST’s own release — no public per-facility breakdown of node or timeline yet. (NIST.gov)
• CEO/Chairman C.C. Wei said AI demand would run “through 2030” (better-sourced than the thread’s seeded “2029-2030” framing). (biggo.com / Nikkei Asia, via Google News RSS)

2026-04-01 — Taiwan approves Kumamoto Fab 2’s 3nm upgrade, 2028 target

• Taiwan’s government formally approved upgrading Kumamoto Fab 2 to 3nm, with launch now targeted for 2028 — the fab had been delayed, paused, and reconsidered across most of 2025 before this reset. (Reuters/Taipei Times, via Google News RSS)

2026-02-06 — The Taiwan-vs-US split gets a number: ~85/15 by 2030

• Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs estimates sub-5nm production will be ~85% Taiwan / 15% US by 2030, even after factoring in Kumamoto Fab 2’s 3nm upgrade — the clearest hard split figure found in this crawl, confirming Taiwan keeps the most advanced work. (TrendForce)

2026-01-20 — Original 2026 capex guidance: $52-56B

• TSMC’s Q4 2025 earnings call set the original 2026 capex range at $52-56B, up from roughly $40B actual 2025 spend — the number that climbed 15% to $60-64B by the July raise above. (TrendForce / Yahoo Finance / Wccftech, via Google News RSS)

2026-01-18 — The “silicon shield” debate reopens

• Coverage of a new US-Taiwan semiconductor deal reopened the silicon- shield framing — CNBC asked what it means for the shield, WSJ wrote TSMC was “charting a future beyond Taiwan,” and SCMP ran the pointed “Taiwan has just sold out TSMC and half its chips industry to the US.” (CNBC/WSJ/SCMP, via Google News RSS)

2026-01-01 — US restores TSMC’s China tool-import license

• The US restored an annual tool-import license for TSMC’s Nanjing fab, restoring continuity after a September 2025 waiver revocation, alongside similar approvals for Samsung and SK Hynix. TrendForce later found China (Nanjing) was TSMC’s most profitable overseas unit in 2025 — ahead of a newly profitable Arizona and a still-loss-making Japan. (Reuters/SCMP/Taiwan News, via Google News RSS)