TSMC Founder Morris Chang

**Ben Gilbert** (0:00)
The podcast about great technology companies and the stories and playbooks.

**David Rosenthal** (0:03)
No, no, you said technology. Now we definitely have a cold opening.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:10)
I guess I really want us to be about technology companies again.

**David Rosenthal** (0:14)
Well, this is a technology company.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:15)
It's a sign. All right, here we go. Welcome to the spring 2025 season of Acquired, the podcast about great companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert.

**David Rosenthal** (0:43)
I'm David Rosenthal.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:45)
And we are your hosts. Today, we have something very special to share with you. After becoming obsessed with semiconductors from our TSMC episode four years ago, David and I wound our way through the rest of the industry, studying fabless companies like Nvidia and Qualcomm, architecture companies like Arm, and chip design software companies like Synopsys. And as we were thinking, what's next in the world of chips on Acquired, we threw the Hail Mary. We asked friend of the show Jensen Huang if he would ask Dr. Morris, the 93-year-old founder of TSMC if he would be open to an interview with us.

**David Rosenthal** (1:22)
It is kind of insane and super cool that Jensen made time to help us with this. It's not like he doesn't have a lot of other things going on.

**Ben Gilbert** (1:30)
Yes. Well, listeners, it happened. So today's episode is a conversation that we recorded in Taipei last week at Dr. Chang's office. We flew to Taiwan for a 48-hour whirlwind where we spent some time at TSMC's headquarters in Hsinchu Science Park. Where many of TSMC's fabs are located.

**David Rosenthal** (1:48)
Super cool to see.

**Ben Gilbert** (1:49)
Totally. So conveniently, Dr. Chang just published volume two of his autobiography a couple months ago after a 26-year hiatus from volume one. But inconveniently, it is written in traditional Chinese and not published in the Western world. We managed to get our hands on an unpublished translation of the book to prepare. And what you are about to hear focuses on a few crucial stories from TSMC's history that Dr. Chang shares in his memoir about Apple, Nvidia and the birth of the Fabulous industry.

**David Rosenthal** (2:19)
Yes, and big thank you to Carina Bao, who we were lucky to connect with after we set this up, and who has been translating Morris' memoirs with funding from Tyler Cowen and Emergent Ventures. Right now, the memoirs are not published in English, and we will let you know if and when that happens. Yep.

**Ben Gilbert** (2:34)
All right. Listeners, you can join our email list at acquired.fm slash email. You'll get an email every time a new episode drops once a month. And this is also where we announce past episode corrections, plus a fun little game where we give hints at what the next episode will be.

**David Rosenthal** (2:49)
I always have fun writing those.

**Ben Gilbert** (2:51)
You do. That's a clear David job. This episode is presented by our partners at JP. Morgan Payments.

**David Rosenthal** (2:57)
Yes. Just like how we say every company has a story, every company story is powered by payments, and JP. Morgan Payments is a part of so many of their journeys from seed to IPO and beyond.

**Ben Gilbert** (3:06)
Yep. So with that, this show is not investment advice. David and I may have investments in the companies that we discuss, and this show is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Please enjoy this conversation with Dr. Morris Chang with some of David and my reflections following its conclusion.

**David Rosenthal** (3:22)
We thought as a fun way to start things off, would actually be to talk about the man who introduced us. Could you tell us a little bit in your words about your relationship with Jensen and TSMC's special relationship with Nvidia?

**Morris Chang** (3:37)
Yeah, it started my relationship with Jensen, started with a letter that he sent to me, I think it was 1997, and the letter was sent through the post office, and I received it in Shenzhou.
And the letter said that they were Nvidia, the company that Jensen was the CEO of, was a small company, but they had developed some really promising chips, but they were looking for a foundry, and they had approached TSMC's San Jose office, but they really got no answer from the San Jose office. Would I please contact Jensen? Because Nvidia really wanted to do business with TSMC. So I was going to the US in the next week anyway. So the letter frankly raised my curiosity and also irritated me a little bit because I had always told our salespeople that we should never be negligent in talking to future customers, even if the customer seems to be a very small one.