C.C. Wei

Companies are rarely so important that they become a foreign policy matter. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.—the world’s largest contract chipmaker, Asia’s most valuable company, and major supplier to clients like Apple and Nvidia—is the exception, as the only company that can make the most-advanced chips at scale. C.C. Wei, TSMC’s chair since June 2024, is leading the chipmaker through the AI boom, sending the company’s consolidated revenue to a record $90.1 billion in 2024, a 30% increase from the year before. As Wei recently told Fortune: “If someone had told me 10 years ago that I’d meet two presidents in one week to discuss hundreds of billions of dollars in investments to expand our global footprint, I would have thought they were joking.” TSMC is also investing in new plants in the U.S., Japan, and Germany, as governments throw money at chipmakers to build a more diverse—and likely more expensive—supply chain. Yet now Wei faces a new challenge: U.S. President Donald Trump, and his wish to use tariffs to bring chip manufacturing home. Earlier this year, Wei agreed to up TSMC’s investment in its Arizona plant by $100 billion.