There doesn’t seem to be a single month where rumours about new TSMC plants around the world are popping up and this time around it looks like there might be a joint venture with Sony in Japan. According to the Nikkei, the Japanese government is likely to be involved and might foot as much as half of the US$7 billion bill.
Another much more unknown player, Japanese auto parts maker Denso is also said to be a potential participant in the new fab. Denso is said to supply Toyota among others and with a shift towards more EVs, this might not be such a strange move. The new fab is expected to be located in Kumamoto Prefecture on land owned by Sony. It should be noted that Sony already manufactures image sensors here and the factory was hit badly by a large earthquake back in 2016, which led to a global shortage of certain image sensors.
