Photo credit: Wang Yu Ching | Office of the President
Our AI minions are gobbling up a wide variety of resources, but the one thing they love the most is chips. That makes C.C. Wei one of their favorite people since he leads TSMC, one of the few companies that regularly gives NVIDIA a run for its silicon. As CEO, he oversees the production of some of the most advanced chips on the planet. And not just for AI processing, but everything from your iPhone to that brand new EV in your garage. Whatever cutting-edge device you can think of.
His influence has gotten a big bump this past year because the global race for AI hardware has gone into overdrive. TSMC stands out because it’s capable of reliably producing the most advanced nodes at scale, which means Wei effectively controls the bottleneck for a big slice of the AI boom.
He’s also doing an amazing job navigating the often nasty seas of geopolitics. With the U.S., China, and Europe all competing for chip security, Wei’s decisions on where to build fabs and how to allocate production carry real geopolitical weight.
