For more than a decade, the relationship between the Fruity Cargo Cult Apple and the Taiwanese semiconductor giant has been tight enough to warrant a candlelit dinner. In 2024, the iPhone peddler accounted for a chunky 24 per cent of TSMC’s total revenue.
This meant that Apple was in the position of making demands on TSMC and the chip maker would have to listen. But those days of dominance could be numbered, as TSMC has started seeing other people.
According to a DigiTimes report, Nvidia is snapping up so much advanced packaging and wafer capacity that it might steal the title of TSMC’s biggest customer. High Performance Computing orders blew past smartphone chips in Q2 2025, making up 60 per cent of the firm’s revenue.
Nvidia reportedly owns more than half of TSMC’s CoWoS production line, the bit that handles fancy packaging for AI GPUs and server silicon. If this trend keeps up, Nvidia could account for between 19 and 21 per cent of TSMC’s revenue for the whole of 2025.
By contrast, no one is saying how much revenue Job’s Mob is currently bringing in, which suggests it’s no longer the prize pony in TSMC’s stable.
Still, Cupertino’s finest are not giving up without a fight. Apple is working on at least four 2nm chipsets and has reportedly bagged over half of the initial supply for the next generation node, with full-scale production set to kick off by the end of 2025.
It’s fiddling with its second-gen C2 5G modem for the iPhone 18, plus what sounds like an N2 wireless networking chip. The company is even working with TSMC on its 1.4nm plant, trying to shave time off the production ramp-up to stay in the race.
TSMC’s two 2nm fabs in Taiwan are already sold out for all of 2026, and with each wafer carrying a $30,000 price tag, Apple’s frontloaded order book still gives it a sizeable chunk of leverage.
However, it is clear that for the first time in years, Job’s Mob is no longer the automatic top dog. Nvidia’s AI-fuelled rampage is turning the foundry business into a GPU gold rush, and if current numbers hold, TSMC’s future may be more about data centres than smartphones.