TSMC Weighs Making 3D DRAM Memory Chips at Nvidia's Request

A move into memory would take TSMC beyond the logic processors it builds for Nvidia, Apple and other chip designers and into a business that has long been dominated by Samsung, SK hynix and Micron. It would also give the company a larger share of the money being spent on AI hardware at a time when memory is one of the tightest parts of the supply chain. The shortage has pushed up prices and sent chip designers including Nvidia and Apple looking for extra sources of supply, according to the report. Apple raised prices on its devices earlier this year, citing higher memory costs.

The plans are at an early stage. No timeline, investment figure or production target has been reported, and the reports carried no comment from TSMC or Nvidia.

Investing.com, describing The Information's report, said TSMC is weighing whether to build dedicated fabrication plants or to buy an existing site and convert it. It said the work is being led by Hsu Kuo-chin, a TSMC vice president who oversees advanced packaging and previously ran Micron's operations in the region. That reporting line reflects how closely memory and packaging have become linked in AI hardware: Nvidia's accelerators sit alongside stacks of high-bandwidth memory inside a single advanced package, much of it assembled by TSMC.

The Investing.com account pointed to a precedent for the second option. In March, Micron agreed to buy a Taiwan facility from Powerchip for $1.8 billion and refit it to produce high-end memory. It also said TSMC holds patents related to vertical DRAM designs.

A push into memory could complicate TSMC's existing ties with the memory makers. In 2024 the company agreed to manufacture the base logic dies for SK hynix's next generation of high-bandwidth memory, making it a supplier to one of the companies it would be competing against.

TSMC's US-listed shares rose about 7.7% in early trading on Friday, according to Investing.com. Chip stocks were rising broadly that day as they recovered from Thursday's sell-off, when the Nasdaq had its worst day since April 2025 on fears of tighter AI regulation after the US midterm elections.

The risks are considerable. Memory is a cyclical business with a long record of boom-and-bust swings in supply and prices, and getting new memory designs from the laboratory into high-volume production with low defect rates is difficult, even for established producers. Memory makers have been researching ways to stack DRAM cells vertically, as is already done with NAND flash storage chips, to keep increasing how much data each chip can hold.

It is not clear whether TSMC would build new plants for memory or buy and retool an existing one. Either path would be a large capital commitment for a company whose investment plans have so far been built around logic chips and packaging.