Industrial spending backing AI chips

Air Liquide is putting €200 million into two gas plants in Hiroshima, the latest sign that the AI chip boom is pulling money into the factories behind the fabs. (airliquide.com) The French industrial-gas company said on April 16, 2026 that it will build, own and operate two new units under a long-term agreement with an unnamed “global leader” in semiconductors. The plants are scheduled to start operating by the end of 2028. (airliquide.com) Those Hiroshima units will supply ultra-pure nitrogen, oxygen and argon, gases chip plants use to keep tools clean, control reactions and run steps such as etching and deposition. Air Liquide said those gases are essential to making advanced chips for artificial intelligence. (airliquide.com 1) (airliquide.com 2) (airliquide.com 3) Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. gave the same demand signal from the chipmaker side. In its April 16 earnings materials, TSMC reported first-quarter 2026 revenue of US$35.9 billion and guided second-quarter revenue to US$39.0 billion to US$40.2 billion. (investor.tsmc.com) Chief executive C.C. Wei said customers were still sending “very positive signals” on AI demand, and TSMC raised its 2026 sales growth forecast to above 30 percent. The company also pushed its 2026 capital spending toward the high end of its US$38 billion to US$42 billion range, or about US$56 billion. (taipeitimes.com) (investor.tsmc.com) TSMC said it is adding a new 3-nanometer production line at Tainan Science Park, expanding 3-nanometer capacity at its second Japan fab and at its second Arizona fab, and converting some 5-nanometer lines to 3-nanometer. Wei said that kind of add-on capacity at a mature node is unusual for TSMC. (taipeitimes.com) The spending wave now reaches well beyond the chip plants themselves. Air Liquide said it already has 78 electronics facilities in Japan and an Advanced Materials Center in Tsukuba, while TSMC said advanced technologies of 7 nanometers and below made up the bulk of its wafer revenue in recent quarters. (airliquide.com) (pr.tsmc.com) Air Liquide has been making similar semiconductor bets elsewhere, including a project announced in June 2024 to invest more than US$250 million in a U.S. gas facility for memory-chip production. The new Hiroshima project extends that buildout into Japan as chipmakers add more AI-related capacity across Asia and the United States. (airliquide.com 1) (airliquide.com 2) The result is that the next AI bottleneck is not only wafer starts and packaging lines, but also the pipes, tanks and purification systems that keep a fab running. Air Liquide’s Hiroshima plants and TSMC’s new 3-nanometer lines are two parts of the same expansion plan, just at different layers of the stack. (airliquide.com) (taipeitimes.com)