Name: TSMC’s New Arizona Fab! Apple Will Finally Make Advanced Chips In The U.S.
Uploaded: 2025-10-30T08:25:13.000Z
Duration: 16 min 26 s
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On 1100 acres in the middle of the Arizona desert, only one set of buildings rises above the horizon as far as the eye can see.

We started construction well before the chips act came along, and that's in April of 21.

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This recently completed 3.5 million square foot building is Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's first Arizona chip fabrication plant, or fab making history not only for its enormous size, but

because it's by far the most advanced chip FAB on US soil.

So pilot production has started in this building.

When we were here three years ago, it was steel beams and dirt.

What kind of investment has it taken to get to this point?

When we first visited, TSMC was far from a household name.

But the chip shortage and AI boom has thrust it into the spotlight.

TSMC manufactures some 92% of the world's most advanced chips in everything from Nvidia GPUs to Apple iPhones.

And now, for the first time in history, TSMC is starting to make those advanced chips here in the US Customers like Apple are starting to make their chips here, with two more fabs planned by the end of the decade.

You can see the steel has been completed, but

bringing advanced chip manufacturing to the US has proven difficult.

Volume production supposed to begin this year, is delayed until 2025.

The Commerce Department recently hit TSMC with new shipping bans after its chips ended up in Huawei devices despite export controls.

And incoming President Donald Trump stirred up fears when he expressed opposition to the Chips act during his campaign.

TSMC is getting 6.6 billion from the bill.

It had huge Republican support when it passed.

Right now, we buy every single AI chip from one company in Taiwan.

And so repealing the CHIPS act would make Americans less safe.

CNBC visited northern Phoenix for an exclusive first look at TSMC's first completed fab and asked its top executives exactly what's in store for US Manufacturing under an incoming Trump administration and ever mounting need for advanced chips.

Inside the huge new fab just completed in Arizona, there's enough concrete to make 10 Empire State Buildings, over 15 million feet of cable and wire that could stretch from New York City to Los Angeles, and

steel that weighs as much as 970Boeing 777s.

Now pilot production is officially underway, running actual product through to make sure that the entire line works end to end.

And then you use those wafers to sample the customer so that they can decide if we've met their standards.

Now chairman of TSMC Arizona, Rick Cassidy has been with the company 27 years.

And how close are we to full production in this?

But according to TSMC's initial timeline, full production should already be happening.

Getting the right talent and of course doing so during a pandemic when there was shortages, you couldn't build a house, let alone build a chip foundry.

It gives you some idea for like what is required to build like massive scale in this industry.

When we came to the U.S. we knew we were going to go through a learning process.

And I want to tell you, no surprise, we had a lot of learning that we went, whether it was permitting, learning how to work with the trades, learning how to work with the unions, local labor laws, lots of learnings that went on.

But maybe the biggest challenge that we had was it was mep.

The FAB is filled with billions of dollars of machinery operating at the very edge of what's scientifically possible.

Like these bus sized EUV machines made by a single company, asml.

The only machines in the world able to perform the extreme ultraviolet lithography necessary for etching minuscule designs on the most advanced chips.

So these are quarter billion dollar tools.

In order to hook one up requires something over 2,000 electrical connections, over 2 kilometers of cabling, 100,000 parts, 40,000 bolts.

So learning how to overcome that challenge was something that was good for tsmc, good for the trades, good for Phoenix, good for the us.

And yes, we're dang near back on the original schedule.

So far, TSMC has 2,000 people working around the clock to run the operation.

Cassidy showed us the gowning building where workers suit up in ultra sterile bunny suits before crossing a skybridge into the new fab.

Dust particles are the bane of wafer fabrication.

If it lands on a wafer, it'll kill a die.

And what kind of yield are you anticipating to get out of Fab one?

You know, yields vary, but we intend to be right on par with our Taiwan compatriots.

The yield, what percentage of chips coming out of the FAB are usable?

Depends on that sterile environment and precision of the machines.

But even with great yields, the biggest volume of chips will still come out of Taiwan for years to come.

It's difficult or impossible for the US or any country to be fully self sufficient in everything that they need to build semiconductors, I think that's a pipe dream.

And although the first fab was originally slated to make 5 nanometer, it's now on track to pump out even more advanced 4 nanometer chips at a rate of at least 20,000 wafers per month.

Wafers that cost upwards of $18,000 and continue to rise in price.

Over the past couple years we've seen TSMC been able to kind of name its price and everyone's going to pay it because right now it's the dependability and the quality that is needed.

Despite being the birthplace of microchips in the 1950s and remaining a top chip design hub, the US now manufactures only 10% of the world's chips and none of the most advanced ones.

When supply chain chaos collided with booming demand for consumer electronics during the pandemic, the resulting chip shortage exposed the big risks of relying on outsiders for such critical technology.

How important is it for supply to come from elsewhere than just Taiwan?

I think the pandemic is probably a good example that highlighted supply chain diversification requirements and customers want us in the us they want us in Japan, they want us in Europe.

Talks with TSMC about bringing advanced production to the US actually began in 2018 under President Trump's first term and his then Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.

Well, it began with select usa, which is an annual event that the Commerce Department puts on to encourage US investment by foreign companies.

TSMC has actually been manufacturing in the US since 1998 at an older generation chip fab in Washington State where Cassidy says TSMC is currently investing to upgrade and expand.

But Ross says some major customers wanted advanced chips made on US soil.

I set up a phone call between the chairman of TSMC and the head of Apple, where Apple would became very strongly supportive of the idea of TSMC coming by 2020.

TSMC announced its Arizona plans, then broke ground there in April 2021.

And now you've got, you know, atrium and building and you'll be seeing all of the fab in the back.

Company veteran Rose Castaneras is the newly appointed president of TSMC Arizona.

It was one of my customers that had first requested that TSMC build a FAB in the United States.

The world's massive reliance on TSMC's fabs in Taiwan has made the global chip supply vulnerable to risks of the region.

We can't be sure that we can make enough chips here in the US in the event of, say, some sort of aggression between China and Taiwan, some sort of even earthquakes and events that take down that particular island for a period of time, the entire market, the entire world could suffer from lack of availability of leading edge nodes.

A deadly 7.4 magnitude earthquake in April briefly halted production and led to a $92 million loss for TSMC.

We've overbuilt this structure because we use the same designs as in Taiwan.

Relying on chips from Asia has also kept the US from full control over its position in the constant race for technological dominance.

Being the global technology leader in AI is the most important thing to preserve over the next two decades for economic prosperity.

That's why President Biden has hit the chip industry with export controls meant to keep China from pulling ahead with advanced tech.

But in October, TSMC alerted the US that some of its chips were spotted in Huawei devices despite bans on selling to the Chinese company.

There's a lot of complex rerouting of goods to different countries that have limited access to leading edge or the most advanced technology.

But of course, tsmc, big successful company, supposed to be a good partner to the US it is seen as extra problematic that that happened.

And of course that's going to be monitored very carefully.

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TSMC’s New Arizona Fab! Apple Will Finally Make Advanced Chips In The U.S.

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