TSMC Capacity Race — The Projection

This week's evidence

A 7.1 earthquake hit TSMC's Kumamoto (JASM) fab — evacuated, resumed same day; TSMC −3.6%. (Focus Taiwan) 2026-07-28 · NEW

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) ⟨daily 2026-07-28⟩

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

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) ⟨crawl 2026-07-28⟩

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) ⟨crawl 2026-07-28⟩
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) ⟨crawl 2026-07-28⟩

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) ⟨crawl 2026-07-28⟩
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) ⟨crawl 2026-07-28⟩
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) ⟨crawl 2026-07-28⟩

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) ⟨crawl 2026-07-28⟩

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) ⟨crawl 2026-07-28⟩

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) ⟨crawl 2026-07-28⟩

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) ⟨crawl 2026-07-28⟩

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) ⟨crawl 2026-07-28⟩