TSM vs ARM Comparison

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is the world's largest dedicated chip foundry, with about 70% market share in 2025. TSMC was founded in 1987 as a joint venture of Philips, the government of Taiwan, and private investors. It went public in Taiwan in 1994 and as an ADR in the US in 1997. TSMC's scale and high-quality technology allow the firm to generate solid operating margins, even in the highly competitive foundry business. Furthermore, the shift to the fabless business model has created tailwinds for TSMC. The foundry leader has an illustrious base of customers, including Apple, AMD, and Nvidia, that look to apply its cutting-edge process technologies to their semiconductor designs. TSMC employs more than 83,000 people.

Arm Holdings is the IP owner and developer of the Arm architecture, which is used in 99% of the world's smartphone CPU cores. It also has high market share in other battery-powered devices like wearables, tablets, and sensors. Arm licenses its architecture for a fee, offering different types of licenses depending on the flexibility the customer needs. Customers like Apple or Qualcomm buy architectural licenses, which allow them to modify the architecture and add or delete instructions to tailor the chips to their specific needs. Other clients directly buy off-the-shelf designs from Arm. Both off-the-shelf and architectural customers pay a royalty fee per chip shipped. In 2026, Arm announced the launch of its own CPU products on top of its existing royalty business.