TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker, will source silicon interposers — a core component of artificial intelligence chips — from the United States. As the Taiwanese company localizes even key component procurement while expanding chip production and advanced packaging investment in the U.S., the shift of the AI chip supply chain toward the United States is expected to accelerate.
U.S. foundry GlobalFoundries has signed a contract to supply silicon interposers to TSMC, according to Yahoo Finance and other outlets on the 9th. The deal is worth $2 billion over five years, or about 2.7 trillion won, with mass production set to begin in the first half of 2028.
"We plan to expand related production facilities at our Malta plant in New York state to produce silicon interposers," GlobalFoundries said. "The Malta plant will be our first U.S. site for silicon interposer production."
A silicon interposer connects multiple semiconductors, such as graphics processing units and high-bandwidth memory, within a single package. It functions as a wiring board that places chips side by side and allows them to exchange data at high speed.
The silicon interposer is a key element of chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, or CoWoS, TSMC's advanced packaging technology used to build Nvidia AI accelerators and similar products. It had been produced in Taiwan until now. CoWoS has been cited as a major supply bottleneck because its capacity falls short of surging demand for AI chips.
The partnership draws attention because TSMC and GlobalFoundries, which once fought a legal battle over semiconductor patents, have joined hands as the AI chip market expands. The two companies filed patent infringement suits against each other in the U.S., Germany and elsewhere in 2019, but settled the dispute about two months later with a cross-licensing agreement.
The contract could also affect South Korean memory makers such as Samsung Electronics and SK hynix. Because the HBM these companies supply is connected to GPUs on top of silicon interposers, a broader shift of AI chip packaging facilities to the United States could increase pressure to localize the memory supply chain as well.
SK hynix is building an advanced packaging plant for HBM in Indiana and plans to start mass production in the second half of 2028.
