TSMC September sales rise 54.6% from a year earlier
TSMC reported September 2026 revenue of NT$511.857 billion, up 54.6% from a year earlier and down 0.6% from August. The unaudited figures released on October 8 cover its consolidated business.
Revenue for January through September reached about NT$3.899 trillion, an increase of 41.1% against the same nine months of 2025. That cumulative growth rate measures a different period from September’s annual comparison.
Adding the July, August and September totals produces about NT$1.494 trillion. This is ByteForward’s calculation from the unaudited monthly data, ahead of the full third quarter results.
Earlier results provide the AI context
In its July 16 earnings call, TSMC said high performance computing, or HPC, represented 66% of second quarter revenue and grew 20% from the preceding quarter. Smartphones accounted for 22% of revenue. Those figures describe the quarter ended in June, before the September reporting period.
During that call, chief executive C. C. Wei linked a resurgence in CPUs to agentic AI, saying it was adding silicon demand alongside AI accelerators. That widens the relevant chip mix beyond the accelerators themselves. His comments were a July assessment rather than an explanation of September’s sales.
The company’s 2025 annual report defines HPC broadly, covering personal computers, tablets, game consoles, servers and base stations. A platform that includes all those applications cannot be read as a measure of sales from AI accelerators alone.
This distinction matters when assessing chip supply for AI infrastructure. Growth across a broad computing platform can combine products serving different customers and uses. Its total does not identify the share attributable to a particular workload or the number of accelerators delivered.
Sales and capacity answer different questions
Wei also said in July that tight packaging capacity was limiting customers’ growth. Asked about packaging competition, he said additional options could support TSMC’s front end wafer business. This puts two parts of the production chain in view. Demand for wafers can depend on whether customers have enough packaging capacity to turn chips into usable products.
The monthly release provides no AI sales allocation, wafer shipment count or utilization rate. It therefore cannot establish that factories were operating at full capacity or that AI accounted for nearly all sales growth.
The next reporting date
TSMC’s financial calendar lists third quarter results for October 15. That is the scheduled opportunity to examine a newer platform breakdown and management commentary against the monthly sales figures.
