Taiwan Quake Jolts Production of World’s Most Advanced Chips

Taiwan’s biggest earthquake in 25 years disrupted production at the island’s semiconductor companies, with potential repercussions for the global technology industry. Taiwan plays a critical role in the manufacture of the advanced chips that power cutting-edge technologies such as generative artificial intelligence and the latest smartphones and electric vehicles.

The 7.4-magnitude earthquake off the island’s east coast led to the collapse of dozens of buildings, left at least seven people dead and injured more than 800, with the true extent of the fallout still unknown. TSMC, the main contract chipmaker to Apple Inc. and Nvidia Corp., moved staff out of certain areas and said it’s assessing the impact of the quake. Smaller local rival United Microelectronics Corp. also halted machinery at some plants and evacuated certain facilities at its hubs of Hsinchu and Tainan. TSMC staff later began to return to evacuated sites, though the company said it was still examining the impact. Any halt in chip production risks upsetting a process that can require uninterrupted seclusion in a vacuum for weeks on end, especially for the most sophisticated semiconductors, Barclays analysts wrote in a note.