TSMC Will Ride Out the Jensen Huang Scandal, Analysts Say

By Daniel Okafor

TSMC booked $122 billion in revenue last year and builds over 90% of the world's most advanced microchips — and analysts say that machine will keep running regardless of what happens to Jensen Huang.

The Nvidia CEO admitted an extramarital affair in a memo to employees on Sunday. He did not name the other person. Nvidia's board is now investigating whether Huang was the target of what it calls a "foreign intelligence effort." Even if Huang steps down, analysts told Business Insider the direct hit to TSMC would be minimal.

What do the analysts actually see?

William Li, a senior analyst at Counterpoint Research, put it plainly: "We believe the demand for leading-edge wafers is larger than any one executive, and we see there's no sign of Nvidia slowing down or actually cutting orders from TSMC yet."

Gaurav Gupta, VP analyst and chief of research for emerging market dynamics at Gartner, was equally blunt. "At this point, we don't really see an impact from this Nvidia fiasco on them," he said. He added that tech leaders "shouldn't get distracted" by the investigation, because "demand for AI Infrastructure build-out is strong in a supply constrained environment."

The commercial logic is simple. Nvidia is TSMC's biggest customer and contributes roughly a fifth of the foundry's revenue. But demand for advanced wafers exceeds supply. A CEO change does not cancel data center contracts.

Why is Huang's position delicate?

The New York Times reported that US officials suspected the woman at the center of the affair, Alice Huang, of passing information to Beijing. She was an executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-registered firm that US officials suspected was illegally sending Nvidia chips to China.

The US has spent years cutting China off from Nvidia's best computing hardware. Huang himself chafed against those restrictions. The scrutiny of his relationship now raises hard questions about his judgment on exactly the issue Washington cares most about.

Nvidia is valued at $4.5 trillion. Its spokesperson told Business Insider: "Our partnership with TSMC and the broader supply chain is strong as ever." TSMC did not respond to a comment request sent outside regular business hours.

Where could TSMC actually get hurt?

Li identified the real transmission channel, and it runs through policy, not gossip. "The channels that could actually reach Taiwan are policy-driven, not tied to the scandal itself — mainly tighter export controls and more scrutiny of chips being diverted to China," he said.

Tighter export rules could dent Nvidia's China revenues, and TSMC would feel that indirectly. But Li called it a stretch. Even if Nvidia's China sales fall, US hyperscalers hungry for computing power would likely buy up the freed-up TSMC capacity, he said.

Gupta sees one genuine tail risk: leadership changes or security findings that damage investor confidence and slow dealmaking, which could brake the AI data center buildout. Even then, he noted, that shock would hit the entire semiconductor industry — not TSMC alone.

Does Huang's Taiwan profile matter?

Huang has Taiwanese roots and often visits his hometown, promoting both his company's and TSMC's role in the AI boom. He has become something of a folk hero on the island, photographed with TSMC chairman Mark Liu and CEO Che-Chia Wei.

That goodwill, however, is not a revenue line. TSMC's centrality to the AI supply chain — not its champion's reputation — is what protects it. The next signal to watch is Nvidia's order book and Washington's export-control calendar, not the boardroom in Santa Clara.