Japan funds Rapidus; TSMC posts strong Q1

Japan approved another 802.5 billion yen in aid for Rapidus on March 31, while Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. said April 10 that its first-quarter 2026 revenue rose 35.1%. (jiji.com) (tsmc.com) Japan’s new support package covers fiscal 2025, which began on April 1, and follows earlier state backing for the chipmaker. Rapidus said it will start operating a pilot line in Chitose, Hokkaido, in April and still aims for mass production of 2-nanometer chips in 2027. (jiji.com) Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s largest contract chipmaker, reported first-quarter 2026 revenue of 1.134 trillion New Taiwan dollars. The company’s investor site shows that total was up 35.1% from a year earlier. (tsmc.com) A foundry is a factory that makes chips designed by other companies, and the most advanced lines now sit heavily in Taiwan. Japan has been trying to rebuild domestic capacity after decades of losing ground in leading-edge manufacturing. (tsmc.com) (asia.nikkei.com) Rapidus was set up in 2022 by a group that includes Toyota Motor, Sony Group and SoftBank, with backing from the Japanese state. Nikkei Asia reported in 2024 that the project had already received as much as 920 billion yen in cumulative support before this latest round. (asia.nikkei.com) The money reflects how governments now treat chip production as an economic security issue as well as an industrial one. Japan’s industry ministry has tied Rapidus to supply-chain resilience for artificial intelligence systems and autonomous driving technology. (jiji.com) The scale of the challenge is much larger than this year’s subsidy. Jiji reported that Rapidus may need as much as 5 trillion yen to begin mass production, and the government had already planned a separate 100 billion yen equity investment in the company. (jiji.com 1) (jiji.com 2) Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s own guidance points to demand that remains strong even after years of capacity expansion. For the first quarter, the company posted actual revenue above the top end of its January guidance range of $32.2 billion to $33.4 billion, reaching $34.6 billion to $35.8 billion on that measure. (tsmc.com) The next marker comes quickly. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has scheduled its full first-quarter 2026 earnings call for April 16, and Rapidus now has to turn Japan’s latest subsidy into a working pilot line before its 2027 production target. (tsmc.com) (jiji.com)