Chips and Foundry Giant TSMC

Nations all across the world depend critically on semiconductor chips. These are also known as integrated circuits or microprocessors, or simply chips. They are at the core of all advanced electrical devices - TVs, cellphones, computers, medical diagnostic equipment, appliances, robots, autos. And they are essential to our manufacturing operations and to our communication networks.

Most of the worlds chips are produced by chip foundries. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundry_model:

The foundry model is a microelectronics engineering and manufacturing business model consisting of a semiconductor fabrication plant, or foundry, and an integrated circuit design operation, each belonging to separate companies or subsidiaries.^[1][2][3][4]

Integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) design and manufacture integrated circuits. Many companies, known as fabless semiconductor companies, only design devices; merchant or pure play foundries only manufacture devices for other companies, without designing them. Examples of IDMs are Intel, Samsung, and Texas Instruments, examples of fabless companies are AMD, Nvidia, and Qualcomm, and examples of pure play foundries are GlobalFoundries, TSMC, and UMC. 

Only 12% of the world's chips are manufactured in the US.  Nearly all of these are made by integrated device manufacturers (such as Intel) rather than by foundries.  

A handful of foundries in a handful of nations manufacture the majority of the semiconductor chips consumed by the entire world. 

From https://www.eenewsanalog.com/en/foundry-market-jumps-24-percent-in-2020/:

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, TSMC, is the undisputed "king of the hill" of foundries. From https://eias.org/op-ed/a-taiwanese-perspective-on-the-semiconductor-industry-maintaining-the-competitive-edge/:

Taiwan holds a near monopoly in this security-related product. Responsible for 63% of global semiconductor market share, Taiwan lies at the heart of the semiconductor industry, reaching an output value of 3 trillion NTD in 2020 (107.53 billion USD). As a world leader in semiconductor manufacturing, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (臺灣積體電路製造公司,TSMC) accounts for 54% of the global semiconductor market share. The demand for the chips below 10 nm (the most advanced chips available thus far) is towering and is estimated to become the largest portion of monthly installed capacity share in 2024. Currently, in the global market of chips below 10 nanometers, TSMC is the major supplier (accounting for 84% of the pure foundry revenue in 2020). The only competitor producing chips below 10 nm is Samsung of South Korea with a 14% of pure foundry revenue in 2020. So far, the major clients of TSMC, such as China and the US, do not have the capacity to produce their own advanced semiconductors. As a result, Taiwan has become an indispensable link in the global production of semiconductors. 

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TSMC#Sales_and_market_trends:

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Limited (TSMC; also called Taiwan Semiconductor)[4][5] is a Taiwanese multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is the world's most valuable semiconductor company,[6] the world's largest dedicated independent (pure-play) semiconductor foundry,[7] and one of Taiwan's largest companies,[8][9] with its headquarters and main operations located in the Hsinchu Science Park in Hsinchu. It is majority owned by foreign investors.[10]

Founded in Taiwan in 1987 by Morris Chang, TSMC was the world's first dedicated semiconductor foundry and has long been the leading company in its field.[11][12] When Chang retired in 2018, after 31 years of TSMC leadership, Mark Liu became Chairman and C. C. Wei became Chief Executive.[13][14] It has been listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE: 2330) since 1993; in 1997 it became the first Taiwanese company to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: TSM). Since 1994, TSMC has had a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.4% in revenue and a CAGR of 16.1% in earnings.[15]

Most of the leading fabless semiconductor companies such as AMD, Apple, ARM, Broadcom, Marvell, MediaTek, and Nvidia, are customers of TSMC, as are emerging companies such as Allwinner Technology, HiSilicon, Spectra7, and Spreadtrum.[16] Leading programmable logic device companies Xilinx and previously Altera also make or made use of TSMC's foundry services.[17] Some integrated device manufacturers that have their own fabrication facilities, such as Intel, NXP, STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments, outsource some of their production to TSMC.[18][19] At least one semiconductor company, LSI, re-sells TSMC wafers through its ASIC design services and design IP portfolio.

TSMC has a global capacity of about thirteen million 300 mm-equivalent wafers per year as of 2020, and makes chips for customers with process nodes from 2 microns to 5 nanometres. TSMC is the first foundry to provide 7-nanometre and 5-nanometre (used by the 2020 Apple A14 and M1 SoC) production capabilities, and the first to commercialize extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology in high volume.