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TSMC's board capped purchases at US$500 million each in Anthropic common shares and OpenAI preferred stock on Nov. 10, alongside US$40.9 billion in capital appropriations for chip capacity.
Chips & Power DeskEdited by Ege Erten
2 min readAI-assisted
TSMC's board capped the Anthropic share purchase and the OpenAI preferred-stock purchase at US$500 million each.
Illustration (AI-generated)
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) said its board approved buying up to US$500 million of Anthropic common shares and up to US$500 million of OpenAI preferred stock on Nov. 10, a combined ceiling of US$1 billion.
The approvals are item 5 of the board's resolutions, which TSMC furnished to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Form 6-K. The Anthropic purchase is priced at the per-share initial public offering price, in an amount "not to exceed" US$500 million. The OpenAI purchase, of preferred stock in OpenAI Group PBC, carries the same cap. Reuters and Nikkei Asia headlined the move as up to US$1 billion; that is the sum of the two caps, not a figure for either company.
The same meeting approved capital appropriations of approximately US$40,926.70 million, which TSMC tied to long-term capacity plans: advanced-technology capacity, advanced packaging and mature or specialty capacity, fab construction and 2027 research and development capital. Measured against that appropriation, the two share caps together equal about 2.4%. That ratio is our arithmetic, not a TSMC figure.
The board also approved a cash dividend of NT$9.0 per share for the third quarter, payable on April 8, 2027, and an investment of no more than US$500 million to set up an investment company for strategic investments in the semiconductor industry and its ecosystem. That company is a separate item from the Anthropic and OpenAI purchases. Third-quarter consolidated revenue was NT$1,494.24 billion, with net income of NT$763.06 billion.
Both companies sit at the far end of TSMC's order book. Anthropic's IPO filing, as Voltgrid reported, shows about US$895.4 billion of compute and infrastructure commitments. Broadcom's capped US$43 billion backstop on Anthropic's rack lease shows how much custom-chip demand now rests on one customer's credit. TSMC's record October revenue of NT$586.89 billion shows how much of that demand it is already booking.
Buying equity ties part of TSMC's balance sheet to the same demand it supplies. If the AI buildout slows, TSMC would face lower orders and a possible mark-down on these stakes at the same time.
Reuters reported on Nov. 10, citing Anthropic's filing, that the company is aiming to raise US$64.4 billion by selling 825 million shares in an indicative price band of US$70 to US$78, for a valuation of up to US$1.02 trillion. Reuters lists TSMC among the cornerstone investors, with Broadcom, Micron Technology and Microsoft, taking the offering to US$90.4 billion with a US$26 billion private placement. At that band, a full US$500 million would buy about 6.4 million to 7.1 million shares, roughly 0.8% to 0.9% of the 825 million-share offering. That, too, is our arithmetic.
TSMC's release gives caps, not completed purchases. It does not say when the shares will be bought, how many, or whether the Anthropic order is the cornerstone commitment Reuters describes; Reuters attributes that cornerstone role to the filing. It gives no price or valuation for the OpenAI preferred stock. The purpose and investment targets of the separate US$500 million investment company are not stated. The Anthropic price will be known only when its IPO prices, and the shares are expected to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker ANT afterward.
