The firm’s Arizona operations are already a cornerstone of its $100 billion regional investment spree, which kicked off during the Trump era. But beyond chip fabs and R&D, the next frontier appears to be advanced packaging.

According to Ctee, the Taiwanese chipmaker is aiming to start building a packaging plant next year, with the goal of wrapping up by the end of the decade.

This facility will churn out CoWoS packaging and its cousins SoIC and CoW. These are bleeding-edge systems aimed at power-hungry kit like Nvidia's Rubin or AMD’s Instinct MI400. TSMC is already recruiting service engineers in Arizona, hinting that prep work is well underway.

The packaging plant is expected to be integrated with the existing fab to streamline workflows, particularly since SoIC tech involves integrating chips with interposer layers which benefits from tight physical proximity.

Previously, even American-made chips were being flown back to Taiwan for packaging, which bloated costs and made the whole process a logistical faff. The decision to localise that step stateside comes in response to that inefficiency and ballooning demand for CoWoS packaging.

TSMC’s tilt toward America reflects a broader shift in its strategy. While Taiwan remains its heartland, the company looks increasingly serious about spreading its bets. If the Arizona packaging plant comes together as planned, it marks another major chunk of the semiconductor supply chain being relocated to the US.