Sam Altman's $7 trillion chip ambitions are 'too aggressive,' says TSMC chief

• Even for the boss of the world's biggest chipmaker, Sam Altman's chip plans are a lot.
• C.C. Wei of TSMC went as far as calling OpenAI's ambitions "too aggressive" on Tuesday.
• His comments follow reports that Altman has spent months preparing a $7 trillion chip venture.

The leader of the world's largest chipmaker has strong thoughts on Sam Altman's plans to challenge him in the silicon arena: "He's too aggressive."

C.C. Wei, TSMC's veteran CEO who was also elected chairman of the chipmaking giant on Tuesday, apparently made his judgment after holding talks with the OpenAI chief over his ambitions to solve the AI industry's big chip shortage problem.

"He is very aggressive, too aggressive for me to believe," Wei said in remarks after TSMC's annual general meeting, first reported by Reuters.

It's not hard to see why he feels that way.

For months, rumors have swirled around Altman making preparations to give the world a lot more than just ChatGPT amid his reported plans to get in on the business of chips at a staggering scale.

Altman's 'aggressive' plans

First, there's the potential cost. According to a Wall Street Journal report in February, those plans could require up to $7 trillion in financing for everything from manufacturing plants to data centers.

According to Reuters, Altman proposed a partnership with TSMC that would see it build "roughly three dozen factories" to meet its needs — a number that was deemed "too many."

Then, there's the high profile of potential stakeholders: everyone from the UAE's Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al-Nahyan, to SoftBank's billionaire boss Masayoshi Son, have been linked to the chip venture. OpenAI's discussions with TSMC first emerged in January.

Finally, there's the might of the companies Altman would be seeking to rival. A venture that seeks to design chips and be responsible for their fabrication — industry-speak for manufacturing designs — would turn the likes of Nvidia and TSMC into competitors.

Though Altman has not officially confirmed his intentions to pursue chipmaking, his rationale for doing so seems straightforward.

Companies scrambling for AI riches have faced the threat of slowdowns in their pursuit of smarter, more lucrative models thanks to constraints in the supplies of chips needed to power them.

The majority of the companies working on AI models — Altman's OpenAI included — rely on chips designed by a handful of companies such as Nvidia or AMD, and manufactured by the singular TSMC.

One venture doing both at a world-class level would be unprecedented — and a clear threat to the small group that controls the world's chip supply.

But with TSMC's home of Taiwan facing the threat of invasion by China, and chip demand projected to continue growing as the AI boom continues, someone will need to find a way to step up chip supply at a global scale.

While TSMC is boosting production in Phoenix, Arizona, with plans to open a third US factory by 2030, Wei conceded on Tuesday that shifting existing production out of Taiwan would be impossible.

Don't be surprised if Altman tries to solve AI's chip problem himself.