TSMC will pay a NT$9 per share dividend for Q3, up from NT$7 in the preceding quarter.

  • TSM stock rose 5% in premarket on Wednesday.
  • TSMC will invest $500 million each in Anthropic and OpenAI.
  • The contract chipmaker approved capital expenditure of $40.9 billion.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSM) on Tuesday said its board approved investments of up to $500 million each in Anthropic’s common shares at the IPO price and OpenAI’s preferred stock, and also announced a bump up in quarterly dividend.

U.S.-listed shares of TSM advanced 5% in premarket trading on Wednesday. The chipmaker’s Taipei-listed stock closed 4.8% higher.

Anthropic said Tuesday that it will sell shares at $70 to $78 apiece in its initial public offering, aiming to raise more than $63 billion at the higher end. The Claude maker, whose IPO will open next week, plans to raise $26 billion from big investors including Alphabet, AMD and TSMC, among others, its filing showed.

TSMC’s planned investments in leading AI model makers signal its plan to expand its role in the AI ecosystem beyond chip production and into the infrastructure supporting AI computing.

In Tuesday’s filing, TSMC also announced that it will pay shareholders a dividend of NT$9.0 (about $0.27) for the third quarter, up from NT$7.0 in Q2, and a capital expenditure plan worth $40.9 billion covering advanced chip manufacturing, packaging, plant construction and 2027 research and development investments. 

The company is also setting up a $500 million fund to invest in semiconductor and related companies.

TSMC’s October Update

The world’s largest chipmaker earlier reported that its October sales rose 60% to  NT$586.9 billion ($17.9 billion). That compares to the 51% growth pace in September quarter and 63% growth analysts polled by Bloomberg expect in the current quarter.

To be sure, sentiment across the chip space on Wednesday had bearing from upbeat results from CoreWeave as well as reactions and updates pouring in after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s admission of an affair with a person suspected to be a Chinese spy.

Retail View On TSM

On Stocktwits, the retail sentiment for shifted to ‘bullish’ from ‘neutral’ 

“400 is the line to watch here,” a trader posted. “$TSM closed at 396.48 after tagging 400.21, and after hours it is already pushing above 402. The board backing Anthropic and OpenAI with up to 500 million each is real money chasing AI demand. Watch if 400 holds as support into the open.”

Another wrote: “$TSM Damn, should've picked some up last week.”

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