TSMC is expected to raise prices for its 2nm wafers as it ramps up volume production of the new process, a move that could push NVIDIA and Apple to look more closely at Samsung for future chip orders.
The price pressure is landing now because the next step in leading-edge manufacturing is getting more expensive to build. Rising inflation and material costs are being cited alongside the higher cost of EUV lithography equipment and the growing difficulty of packaging, all of which are feeding into a process that is already more costly than the latest 3nm node in mass production.
That makes the search for alternatives easy to understand. Samsung Electronics’ foundry is being viewed as a viable option because of its competitive pricing and its own GAA-based 2nm and 3nm technologies, while TSMC remains the technical leader with more refined EUV tools and Nanosheets for its 2nm nodes. For customers balancing performance against cost, that difference matters more when wafer prices are moving up.
TSMC has also said there will not be any sudden price changes, and that is the part that keeps the market watching closely. The increases are expected to come in gradual steps based on market conditions, which means buyers are not facing a single shock but a steady climb in cost that can still change sourcing decisions over time.
Even so, TSMC is not in danger of losing its biggest customers in the near term. NVIDIA, Apple and Qualcomm are still expected to keep TSMC as their main semiconductor partner, while orders tied to Automobile, Robotics and Edge AI can be placed at Samsung and could be mass produced in the future. The real question is not whether TSMC stays central, but how much of the next wave of leading-edge demand gets split when 2nm pricing keeps rising in small steps.
