TSMC responds to rumor that NVIDIA CEO's visit was about revenue sharing with the US

NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Huang recently visited TSMC where he discussed internal company matters, but also delivered a message to the semiconductor manufacturer that TSMC may have to share revenue with the Trump administration.

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That was the rumor, but according to a new report from FocusTaiwan that has cited a response from TSMC, that information wasn't correct at all, and that no such suggestion was made by Huang. The rumor is an extension of the deal President Trump made for American chip manufacturers on exporting chips to China, which was to pay 15% of the revenue made on selling chips to China to the US government. The trade deal focused on companies such as NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel.

That trade deal has yet to be written in stone. Then a report by the Taiwanese outlet CNA was published that claimed NVIDIA's CEO traveled to Taiwan to inform the chip giant it may need to share its revenue from China chips as well, which would essentially bring TSMC in on the deal with the American chip makers. However, according to the recent report from FocusTaiwan, that doesn't seem to be true. TSMC has dismissed the rumor, and said Huang was invited to the headquarters to give a speech and participate in the birthday celebration for TSMC founder Morris Chang.

"They [US government] have already announced that they will not take shares," said TSMC Chairman C. C. Wei in response to a question asking about the US government proposed plan to take an equity stake in TSMC in exchange for subsidies.

It's also likely that Huang traveled to TSMC to take a look at the upcoming new cutting-edge Rubin AI chips, the next-generation of chip architecture that is claimed to be a ground-up redesign. These chips are slated to be rolling off the production lines by the year end, which means fully packaged and complete.