PALO ALTO, U.S./TAIPEI -- Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has broken ground on a chipmaking facility in Arizona, just over year after announcing the $12 billion project.
The announcement came as a brief comment by CEO C.C. Wei at an online forum on Wednesday, but it marked an important moment for the world's biggest contract chipmaker -- it is the company's first U.S. factory in two decades, and will be one of just a handful of production sites outside of its home market of Taiwan.