GoKawiilCounterpoint Research's full-year Foundry Market Supply Tracker estimated that the global semiconductor foundry market generated a record $320 billion in revenue in 2025, growing 16% year-over-year. TSMC accounted for 38% of that total and grew 36% year-over-year. In comparison, non-TSMC foundries collectively grew 8%.
That lopsided split isn’t a one-quarter anomaly or a function of a single product cycle, but instead reflects three massive advantages held by TSMC that reinforced each other throughout the year: an unmatched concentration of leading-edge node volume, compounding wafer price increases, and vertical integration into the advanced packaging that AI chips require.
TSMC's leading-edge node concentration
TSMC's own earnings data show how heavily its revenue has tilted toward the nodes that AI and high-performance computing demand. Advanced process technologies at 7nm and below accounted for 74% of TSMC's wafer revenue in Q4 2025, with 3nm alone contributing 24% and 5nm responsible for 36%. For the full year, 3nm's share rose from 18% in 2024 to 24%, while 5nm held steady at 36%, rising by just 2%. These are the process nodes at the foundation of Nvidia's Blackwell GPUs, AMD's Zen 5 EPYC processors, and Apple's M-series chips.
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No other foundry has competitive volume at equivalent nodes. Samsung, the second-largest pure-play foundry, saw its market share dip to 7.7% in Q1 2025, down from 8.1% the prior quarter. Samsung's 3nm yields sat in the 30% to 40% range for much of the year, according to TrendForce, a level insufficient to attract large external orders. The company couldn’t even use its own 3nm Exynos 2500 for the Galaxy S25 series and instead sourced Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite from TSMC. Samsung disclosed 2nm GAA performance figures in its Q3 2025 earnings report and listed its first 2nm product, the Exynos 2600, as in mass production by December, but yields remained a work in progress, remaining below 50% as of last month.
Counterpoint Research Director Tom Kang acknowledged Samsung's difficulties but pointed to a potential turning point. "Demand for its 4nm node has been relatively solid, supporting better pricing, and the ramp of 2nm should help it secure higher-value designs, particularly in AI and mobile," Kang said.
SMIC, the largest Chinese foundry, grew 16% YoY and Nexchip expanded 24%, but both companies' growth came from trailing-edge and mature nodes supported by domestic localization efforts, not from competing at 5nm and below. SMIC operates roughly 20,000 wafers per month of 7nm capacity, most of which reportedly goes to Huawei. GlobalFoundries, UMC, and VIS similarly serve mature-node markets.
Compounding wafer price increases
TSMC's revenue growth isn’t solely a function of shipping more wafers; rising average selling prices (ASPs) have compounded the volume gains. TSMC's wafer ASPs increased at a roughly 15.9% annual rate from 2019 through 2025. Gross profit per wafer expanded approximately 3.3 times over the course of 2025 alone, as price increases outpaced production cost growth. Cost of goods sold rose 78% over the same multi-year period, while ASPs more than doubled.
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