TSMC hits record after Taiwan eases fund caps

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. shares reached a new high after Taiwan’s regulator proposed raising the cap on how much local funds can hold in a single stock and after TSMC posted strong quarterly profit.

The Financial Supervisory Commission proposed that domestic equity funds and actively managed ETFs focused on Taiwanese stocks be allowed to allocate up to 25% of assets to any listed company that carries a weighting above 10% on the Taiwan Stock Exchange. The previous rule limited any single company to 10% of a portfolio’s net asset value. The proposal was followed by a roughly 5% jump in TSMC shares on Friday, after the stock had already hit a record on Thursday.

For the quarter ended March, TSMC reported net income of NT$572.48 billion, a 58% increase from a year earlier. The company said orders for advanced chips used in artificial intelligence, high-performance computing and mobile devices kept revenue and margins elevated. The quarter marked TSMC’s fourth straight period of record profits.

TSMC supplies chips to major technology customers, including Apple, and manufactures advanced processors designed by Nvidia. Nvidia has become one of TSMC’s largest customers, driving demand for the company’s most advanced process nodes.

At its 2026 North America Technology Symposium in Santa Clara on April 22, TSMC outlined a technology roadmap focused on next-generation silicon for AI and high-performance workloads. TSMC Chairman and CEO Dr. C.C. Wei commented, “Customers keep looking to their next product cycle and need a reliable stream of new silicon technologies.”

TSMC expanded its partnership with Siemens to integrate the Fuse EDA AI System into electronic design automation workflows. Siemens’ tools will be used for verification, connectivity checks and thermal analysis and to support advanced designs such as 3D IC architectures using TSMC’s 3DFabric. The collaboration covers support for process nodes including 3nm and 2nm as well as future nodes referenced as A16 and A14, and it will apply to work on silicon photonics and TSMC’s Compact Universal Photonic Engine (COUPE).

The company introduced a set of node updates at the symposium. A13, described as a direct shrink of the A14 process announced in 2025, is scheduled for production in 2029 and is expected to provide about 6% area savings while remaining backward compatible with A14 design rules. A12, an enhancement to A14 with a Super Power Rail backside power delivery feature for AI and HPC chips, is also targeted for 2029. For 2nm, TSMC unveiled N2U, an option planned for 2028 that aims to deliver roughly 3% to 4% higher speed or 8% to 10% lower power use, with a small gain in logic density versus the earlier N2P variant.

The regulatory proposal, TSMC’s earnings and the product roadmap were cited by market participants as factors in the recent share gains.