February 21, 2025
TSMC Founder Explains How It Won Apple's Chip Business [Video]

TSMC Founder Explains How It Won Apple's Chip Business [Video]

Posted January 30, 2025 at 5:10pm by iClarified
TSMC founder Morris Chang reveals how the company won Apple's chip business in a new interview with Acquired. The rare in-depth interview with Chang also discusses the company's relationship with Nvidia, the IBM-Qualcomm story, and much more.

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We flew to Taiwan to interview TSMC Founder Morris Chang in a rare English interview. In fact, the last long-form video interview we could find was 17 years ago at the Computer History Museum... conducted by the one-and-only Jensen Huang! This episode came about after asking ourselves a version of the Jeff Bezos "regret minimization" question: what conversations would we most regret not having if the chance passed Acquired by? Dr. Chang was number one on our list, and thanks to a little help from Jensen himself, we're so happy to make it happen.

Dr. Chang shares the stories of a few crucial moments from TSMC's history which have only been written about in his (currently Chinese-only) memoirs, including how TSMC won Apple's iPhone and Mac chip business and a 2009 discrepancy with NVIDIA that almost jeopardized their relationship, and the lessons he took from them. We can't think of a better way to kick off 2025. Please enjoy!
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Here's a short excerpt from the interview...

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Interviewer:
Yeah, so today Intel doesn't make the chips in the iPhone. What happened? And in fact, TSMC makes all of Apple's chips.

Chang:
Yeah, all right. I wasn't too worried, but it still was in my mind.

So a month passed. I think it was about the middle of February when Jeff called to tell me to pause for two months. Almost exactly a month later, in the middle of March, I decided that I would pay them a visit and ask them what's going on, any progress.


I emailed Jeff and asked for an appointment. I said I was coming to Silicon Valley anyway, which was pretty normal, and would stop in at your place on such and such a day. Is that okay?

Jeff replied by saying, yeah, come here, but I won't be here. I have asked Tim Cook to see you.

I mean, this freedom—Jeff's freedom of dedicating his boss to see a visitor—it was a privilege that I seldom had in my career.

Interviewer:
Normally, someone says, "Someone on my team will see you," not, "My boss will see you."

Chang:
I know, I know. It was usually that way. It was usually the other way. Yeah, but in this case, it was Jeff's.

Anyway, I showed up, and Tim was very nice to me and took me to lunch, to the cafeteria, I guess, where there was a lot of food. We each picked our food and carried our tray back to his office.

He told me there's nothing to worry about because Intel just does not know how to be a foundry.

That's a very short but very satisfactory answer to me.

Interviewer:
Yeah, what is your interpretation of the meaning behind that statement?

Chang:
I was explaining to you that we had the technology, the manufacturing.

Subconsciously, I think I interpreted Jeff's explanation to me to be the third one—customer trust.

They were always very superior, Intel, before this Apple thing. Apple and we, before Apple became our customer, I knew a lot of Intel's customers in Taiwan.

All the PC makers are Intel's customers. None of them liked Intel. None of them.

Intel always acted like they were the only guy. They were the only guy for microprocessors.

Interviewer:
Yeah, and that's for their microprocessor business. But here we're talking about the foundry business, where TSMC, at their extreme core, does not compete with customers. And even if Intel is trying to do business in good faith, they do have the conflict where they also design chips, which is competing with Apple's chip designers or NVIDIA's chip designers or any other…

Chang:
Yeah, but I really don't think Tim meant that. I think Tim meant that the customer asks a lot of things. We have learned to respond to every request.

Some of them were crazy. Some of them were irrational. We respond to each request courteously, which we do.

Intel has never done that.

I said I knew a lot of customers of Intel in Taiwan.

None of them… they all wished that there were another supplier.

None of them either trusted Intel or liked Intel.
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Take a look at the full interview below!


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