(Bloomberg) — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd.’s second-quarter sales were boosted by an AI boom that is spurring data center investment around the world.
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Nvidia, the sole supplier of Apple’s cutting-edge chips, reported June sales of NT$207.9 billion, meaning June-quarter sales rose 40% to NT$673.5 billion, beating the average forecast of a 35.5% increase.
Wednesday’s sales came days after a wave of investment in artificial intelligence-related data centers and devices sent TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker,’s market capitalization briefly hitting $1 trillion. Companies around the world are racing to buy hardware such as Nvidia’s chips to build infrastructure to support AI. That prompted Wall Street brokerages to raise their price targets for TSMC, citing the company’s potential to raise prices for customers in 2025 to further boost profits.
AI chip orders are helping to offset sluggish smartphone sales, which are just beginning to emerge from a slump. Apple remains Hsinchu-based TSMC’s largest customer.
Valuation concerns have dampened optimism about AI investor darling Nvidia, with analysts at New Street Research downgrading the stock earlier this week, saying it was “becoming fully valued.”
Despite general concerns about geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China in the region, TSMC and other AI-related stocks in Taiwan have helped boost the Taiwanese benchmark index by more than 40% over the past 12 months.
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