First Principles | How the chips fall in the battle for semiconductors
Hindustan Times“Wrap your head around this,” says Pankaj Jain over the phone, “over 80% of chips designers are Indian.” While this good news comes from an informal conversation with the New York-based founder and managing partner of Saka Ventures, it throws up some questions as well. What makes this battle for semiconductors more compelling still is that the world’s semiconductor headquarters is in Taiwan, and leading the pack is the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. While it is one thing to “design” semiconductors, it is another thing altogether to create the “foundries” such as TSMC’s that can manufacture it. Another narrative that doesn’t get spoken about much in the mainstream is that one of the reasons why China has its eyes on mainland Taiwan is that it wants control of TSMC.