TSMC probably got big when Apple started using them for everything. Historically, Nvidia has used TSMC for most Geforce cards (sometimes using another foundry like Samsung), and even the earlier TNT2[0] from 1999. AMD bought ATI, which has been using TSMC for some Radeon chips going back 15[1] if not 20[2] years.

[0] https://www.techspot.com/article/653-history-of-the-gpu-part... "The TNT2 utilized TSMC's 250nm process and managed to deliver the performance Nvidia had hoped for with the original TNT."

[1] https://www.cadence.com/en_US/home/company/newsroom/press-re...

[2] https://www.techspot.com/article/657-history-of-the-gpu-part...

If you look at TSMC's revenue this doesn't seem to be the case: https://companiesmarketcap.com/tsmc/revenue/

Ignoring the 2014 outlier (2013 was the year Apple started using TSMC) the growth curve looks pretty uniform for the last two decades.

Why would you ignore the 2014 number? Isn't that exactly the cash infusion that Apple did to help TSMC become the leading semiconductor manufacturer? They make 20B in 2013, and then a year later suddenly make additional 60B on top of that? 60B can fund a lot of R&D.

Actually that outlier simply was a wrong number it seems, as per [1].

But my reasoning was:

* Most importantly, TSMC's market share grew uniformly, and they already were quite dominant before (market shares: 2013: 49%, 2014: 54%, 2015: 55%, from [1])

* I don't know whether that additional revenue is from Apple. Apple's use of TSMC has to have started in 2013 if they shipped the products in 2014, and to my knowledge didn't end in 2014.

* If Apple could use a node size in 2014, actual development of that has to have started quite a few years before.

[1] https://investor.tsmc.com/english/annual-reports

> Actually that outlier simply was a wrong number it seems, as per [1].

Oh, I see. Makes much more sense than getting $60B out of the blue :)