TSMC’s Strong Results is One More Bullish AI Sign

Upbeat signals about the AI business are proliferating. The latest was chipmaking giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s first-quarter report on Thursday, showing revenue growth of 40.6%, above the top end of its projected range. The company raised its full-year growth rate to above 30%. According to TSMC CEO C.C. Wei, “AI-related demand continues to be extremely robust.” 

Wei said he based that assessment both on comments from TSMC’s customers—it makes chips on behalf of various chip designers, led by Nvidia—and on the cloud firms that buy chips from Nvidia. That suggests quarterly earnings coming later this month from the big tech firms will echo his upbeat commentary. It’s little wonder that the big tech stocks have gained a lot of ground since late March—Microsoft, the worst performer so far this year among the big names, is up 18%, for instance, while Nvidia is up 20%. The Nasdaq is up 16% in the same period.