TSMC Board Clears $500M Each for Anthropic IPO, OpenAI Stock

TSMC's board approved on November 10 an investment of up to $500 million in Anthropic at its IPO price and up to $500 million in OpenAI preferred stock, Reuters reported. The company's Form 6-K, filed with the SEC, authorizes TSMC to buy "Anthropic's common shares" at the per-share IPO price and, separately, "OpenAI's preferred stock," each capped at US$500 million.

The vote landed the same day Anthropic priced its IPO at $70 to $78 per share, chasing a valuation of up to $1.4 trillion in what Reuters called "one of the largest stock market debuts on record." TSMC's Anthropic allocation sits inside a separate $26 billion private placement from investors including Google, Nvidia, AMD and Microsoft, priced at the same IPO level.

The contract manufacturer "is positioning itself to benefit not only from supplying AI infrastructure, but also from owning stakes in some of the industry's most influential developers," per Reuters. TSMC fabricates the Nvidia accelerators both labs rely on and recently reported a sixth consecutive quarter of record profit on "extremely robust" demand for AI-related chips.

A $1 billion check is small against TSMC's profit base, but it threads the foundry directly into the cap tables of its two largest frontier-model customers.