I keep wondering if this is different than when Foxconn announced a $10b investment in Wisconsin but carried through less than 10% of that?

Judging by the pictures, TSMC is building a lot of expensive-looking stuff out in Arizona. I know they're both Taiwanese companies but this project seems a bit different.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Tech/Semiconductors/TSMC-to...

TSMC has had a license to print money for a while now given how huge ASML’s backlog is.

Is ASML even going to be able to meet the demand created by all these fabs opening up across the US (and rest of the world)?

The stories I've heard about what it takes to build a single machine would suggest to me that scaling up would be a huge feat and I could only imagine take years to accomplish.

Then again, perhaps TSMC and their peers had predicted this kind of growth and already placed their orders long ago?

Maybe they will just move a chunk of existing fab?

ASML has now $32+B worth of backlog and they are still able to make only ~40+ EUV per year.

Buffet probably knows little or nothing about the fab industry and probably didn't make this investment decision.

TSMC is upping their investment in the US, but I agree with Morris Chang that the US operation won't be as lucrative -- ie, thye won't be able to maintain 50+% profit margin. Further, TSMC really didn't have any competition in the last 2-3 nodes and Samsung was largely absent in 7/5/4nm, but Samsung is going mass production with 3nm GAA pretty soon and TSMC is going to have to put up a good fight to maintain their dominance.