TSMC's Arizona Packaging Plan

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. said it plans to add advanced chip packaging in Arizona by 2029, extending its U.S. buildout beyond wafer fabrication. (reuters.com) Chief executive C.C. Wei disclosed the timing on April 22, 2026, after TSMC had already said in March 2025 that its U.S. expansion would include two advanced packaging facilities. That March plan lifted TSMC’s total announced U.S. investment to $165 billion, with three new fabs, two packaging plants and an R&D center. (reuters.com) (tsmc.com) Packaging is the step after a chip is made: the silicon dies are connected, protected and wired into a usable product. For advanced artificial intelligence processors, that step often means combining multiple compute dies with high-bandwidth memory in one package, using methods such as Chip on Wafer on Substrate, or CoWoS. (tsmc.com) That matters in Arizona because TSMC’s Phoenix site already has front-end fabs, but much of the most advanced back-end work has remained concentrated in Taiwan. TSMC said in March 2025 that U.S. packaging would help “complete the domestic AI supply chain,” and its 2024 Arizona announcement tied local expansion directly to demand from artificial intelligence and high-performance computing customers. (tsmc.com 1) (tsmc.com 2) The state’s chip cluster has been moving in that direction for more than a year. In October 2024, TSMC and Amkor said they would work together on advanced packaging and testing in Peoria, Arizona, with technologies including InFO and CoWoS for customers using TSMC’s Phoenix wafers. (tsmc.com) Amkor then revised its Arizona plan in August 2025 to a 104-acre site in north Peoria, with production expected to start in early 2028. The company said the project would bring a $2 billion investment and 2,000 jobs, while later reports on the groundbreaking said the campus could grow larger. (amkor.com) (datacenterdynamics.com) TSMC’s Arizona footprint has expanded in stages. In April 2024, the company said a third Phoenix fab would bring its site investment above $65 billion, backed by up to $6.6 billion in proposed CHIPS Act direct funding; by March 2025, TSMC said the site had entered volume production in late 2024 and employed more than 3,000 people. (tsmc.com 1) (tsmc.com 2) The packaging plant is aimed at the same problem customers have been flagging for AI servers: not just getting leading-edge wafers, but getting enough packaged chips out the door. By putting more of that work next to its Arizona fabs, TSMC is trying to shorten the trip from silicon to finished accelerator inside the U.S. supply chain. (reuters.com) (tsmc.com)