Scandal Spreads, Market Fears Impact on TSMC Partnership
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang's extramarital affair scandal continues to unfold, involving sensitive suspicions of espionage activities and also touching on US chip export control policy. As NVIDIA is TSMC's largest customer, contributing about 15% of TSMC's revenue, the market is watching whether Huang's personal misconduct could affect cooperation between the two companies. According to Business Insider, with the rapid expansion of the artificial intelligence industry, Huang has become one of the world's most high-profile corporate leaders, and NVIDIA's graphics processing units are at the core of the current AI computing race. Huang has a Taiwanese background and frequently visits Taiwan to promote his company's business, drawing large crowds at every public appearance, and has long been seen as one of TSMC's most representative supporters.
Analysts: Advanced-Process Demand Outweighs Personal Factors
William Li, senior industry analyst at technology and market research firm Counterpoint Research, believes Huang's extramarital affair scandal is unlikely to affect TSMC's business, as market demand for advanced-process wafers matters far more than the influence of any single corporate executive, with no signs so far that NVIDIA is slowing business or actually cutting orders to TSMC. He added that even if Huang were to resign as NVIDIA CEO, it would not cause a major direct impact on TSMC. TSMC produces more than 90% of the world's most advanced chips, with revenue last year reaching US$122 billion, holding an irreplaceable position in the global semiconductor supply chain. For the AI industry, which needs large volumes of advanced-process chips, TSMC's technology, capacity and manufacturing scale cannot be replaced by other foundries in the short term.
Real Risk Lies in US Export Policy Toward China
Compared with Huang's personal misconduct, analysts see the real factor that could affect Taiwan's semiconductor industry as changes in US chip export policy toward China. If Washington further tightens export controls and strengthens scrutiny of chips flowing to China, it could squeeze GPU makers' revenue and in turn affect TSMC's orders. William Li, however, sees limited impact in such a scenario, as even if NVIDIA's revenue in the Chinese market declines, other large US hyperscale cloud and AI players still have huge computing demand that can fill the gap and continue purchasing chips from TSMC. Gupta, vice president and head of emerging markets dynamics research at Gartner, also sees no reason to believe the NVIDIA incident will affect TSMC, especially with AI infrastructure buildout demand remaining strong amid constrained supply. Unless NVIDIA sees major leadership changes, or security investigation findings damage investor confidence and further slow business transactions and cooperation, AI data center construction is unlikely to be materially affected, and even if the risks materialize, the impact would spread across the entire semiconductor industry rather than being limited to TSMC. Addressing market concerns, an NVIDIA spokesperson told Business Insider that the company's partnerships with TSMC and the overall supply chain remain solid.