Immigrant’s Dream: From China to Top 10 Tech Giant

TSMC, a global titan in the semiconductor industry, recently regained its place among the top 10 companies worldwide by market capitalization.
Morris Chang, the founder of TSMC, is a Taiwanese immigrant who moved to the United States during World War II.

TSMC, the world’s leading semiconductor foundry based in Taiwan, has recently reclaimed its place among the top 10 companies by market capitalization.

According to Bloomberg on the 11th, TSMC’s market cap that day was $634 billion (approximately 832 trillion Korean Won), securing its top 10 position.

Industry insiders suggest that the recent surge of investor interest in generative AI has fueled TSMC’s success as it manufactures chips for this emerging technology.

Indeed, the demand for advanced semiconductors driven by AI has caused sales to increase by 9.4% in the first two months of this year.

This success has drawn attention to the man who founded TSMC.

Morris Chang, the founder and chairman of TSMC, was born in 1931 and is now 92 years old.

Born into a middle-class family in China, Chang moved frequently due to his father’s banking job. He fled to Hong Kong in 1937 due to the Sino-Japanese War and moved again to Chongqing, China, in 1941. With no end in sight for World War II and the outbreak of the Chinese Civil War, Chang immigrated to the United States at 18.

With the help of his uncle, Chang enrolled at Harvard University, where he was the only Chinese student. Despite studying Shakespeare and Homer and dreaming of becoming a writer, he noticed that the wealthy Chinese immigrants in the United States were engineers. As a result, he transferred to MIT to major in Mechanical Engineering.

Although Chang wanted to pursue a Ph.D. after earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at MIT, he failed the qualification exam and decided to enter the workforce. Chang later reflected that this was “the luckiest thing that ever happened to me.”

Chang began his semiconductor career in 1955 when he joined Sylvania Electronics in the United States. His tasks at Sylvania involved researching germanium transistors and improving the company’s manufacturing yield.

After three years of honing his skills at Sylvania, Chang moved to Texas Instruments when he received a job offer. The production line yield he managed improved by more than 20%, which helped him establish his position within the company. He eventually rose to the position of Deputy President.

In 1987, Taiwan recognized the need to enter the semiconductor market but faced difficulties. The person who proposed a solution was none other than Morris Chang.

Unlike other semiconductor companies that handled everything from design to manufacturing, Chang identified a foundry business dedicated solely to contract manufacturing as promising. The Taiwanese government requested Chang build a semiconductor industry, and he established TSMC.

TSMC led the industry as a pure foundry that only handles contract manufacturing without doing any semiconductor design.

As of the fourth quarter of 2023, TSMC’s market share rose to 61.2%. Samsung Electronics was at 11.3%, a difference of 49.9 points.

Morris Chang could have been a figure in South Korea’s semiconductor industry.

In 2017, Chang shared an anecdote about receiving a recruitment offer from the late Chairman Lee Kun Hee of Samsung Electronics. At an annual sports event for TSMC employees, Chang revealed that he had received a recruitment offer from Chairman Lee during a breakfast meeting in Taiwan in 1989.

As we can see from the current situation, Chang did not accept Chairman Lee’s offer. He explained, “It seemed that the Chairman did not want Taiwan to develop its chip technology or establish a semiconductor company.”

Meanwhile, TSMC recently completed its first factory in Japan, the Kumamoto Factory.

At the completion ceremony, Chang, who attended in person, said, “This is my hope, and I believe it marks the beginning of a renaissance in Japanese semiconductor manufacturing.” They also plan to establish a second factory by 2027.

As the joint venture between Taiwan and Japan shows signs of revitalizing the Japanese semiconductor industry, the industry is closely watching how South Korea will respond and maintain its position.