TSMC will buy Anthropic shares at the IPO price and OpenAI shares at an expected price of about US$992 each, capped at US$500 million per company

Concept illustration in line-drawing style: on the left, a large building has a sign with red lettering "tsmc" over a round grid of squares beside large black letters "TSMC", and in its open double doorway stands a person in a long light coat with a badge on a lanyard, facing right, with a tall stack of red coins on each side. Farther off to the right, two smaller buildings stand side by side, one lettered "ANTHROPIC" and one lettered "OPENAI", each with a symbol beside the name, and lines on the ground run from the large building over to them. Printed on the image: US$500M TSMC board's cap on each share purchase, one in Anthropic and one in OpenAI.

TSMC filed with the Taiwan Stock Exchange on November 10 that its board approved share purchases in Anthropic and OpenAI by its subsidiary TSMC Partners (Taiwan Stock Exchange, 2026-11-10). Our inference: TSMC's filings attach no capacity or order terms to these small cash stakes. Unlike AMD's purchase in the same placement, which counts toward AMD's commitment under its hardware supply agreement with Anthropic, Anthropic's filing states no such link for TSMC's purchase.

The Anthropic purchase is Class N common stock at Anthropic's IPO price, with the share count set once the offering is priced (Anthropic investment filing, 2026-11-10). Class N shares carry no votes and generally convert into Class A shares when sold to an unaffiliated buyer. The OpenAI purchase is preferred stock convertible into common, at an expected price of about US$992 a share, for a stake expected to stay at or below 0.04%. The filing's pricing-basis field reads "with reference to market conditions" (OpenAI investment filing, 2026-11-10). The filing doesn't say whether other investors in the same round pay the same price.

TSMC's two caps total US$1 billion, about 2.4% of the US$40.9 billion capital budget the same board meeting approved (our calculation, as a sense of scale only; capital budget filing, 2026-11-10). Anthropic's amended IPO registration lists TSMC Partners as one of seven companies buying at the IPO price. The seven total US$26 billion, and TSMC Partners' is the smallest (Anthropic amended IPO registration, 2026-11-10).

TSMC's filings carry no condition tied to capacity, orders or prepayments. The same placement offers a direct comparison. Anthropic's amended registration says Google's purchase exercises its option under an existing note purchase agreement, and that AMD's US$2.5 billion, also cash for Anthropic shares and paid when the placement closes, counts toward the up to US$5 billion of shares AMD committed to buy under its Hardware Supply Agreement. That commitment is drawn in increments as AMD GPU delivery and deployment milestones are met; after the US$2.5 billion, up to US$2.5 billion remains, available only to the extent the amount accrued from those milestones exceeds what AMD paid in the placement, and Anthropic expects the first milestone in 2027 (Anthropic amended IPO registration, Concurrent Private Placement and AMD Agreement sections). The same filing states no supply-agreement link for the TSMC Partners purchase; not stated does not mean none exists. Our inference: the line falls not on which side pays cash for whose shares, but on whether the purchase is attached to a supply agreement.

Four months earlier, TSMC's chairman had been asked a related question. According to The Motley Fool's public transcript, Chairman C.C. Wei was asked on the July 16 earnings call about investing in customers' customers (the questioner: "In the end customers, not your direct customers."; the host restated it as "In customer's customers as well.") and answered: "So far, no, TSMC don't do this kind of financial arrangement because of we think we are working with current customer with the current model smoothly and also successfully." (The Motley Fool, 2026-07-16). Taiwan-based tech reporter Dan Nystedt's transcription words it slightly differently: "So far, no, we don’t do these kinds of arrangements." (Dan Nystedt, 2026-07-16). Both are third-party transcripts, and "So far" limits the answer to that point in time. The filings don't say whether the two purchases are the kind of arrangement Wei meant.

Not proven yet: the OpenAI purchase agreement isn't public, so terms the filing omits can't be ruled out How we checked →

Wei's July remark has two third-party transcripts, from The Motley Fool and Dan Nystedt, worded slightly differently; we have not yet checked TSMC's official transcript. Both include "So far," which limits the answer to that point in time.

Which agreements the Google and AMD purchases are tied to comes from the Concurrent Private Placement and AMD Agreement sections of the same amended registration.

Next to watch: TSMC's follow-up filing once Anthropic prices its offering, and how TSMC explains the two purchases at its January 2027 earnings call. If the purchase agreements or later filings show terms tied to capacity guarantees, prepayments or purchase volumes, the reading that "the filings set no order terms" has to change.

Correction details (Main line 1). The judgment line said TSMC was buying stakes for cash with no order terms attached, "unlike AMD, whose 2025 warrants to OpenAI can be exercised only as OpenAI deploys AMD chips," and the body said "AMD's deal runs the other way" and "AMD gave equity in exchange for orders, while TSMC is paying cash for shares." The Anthropic amended IPO registration this issue cites says that in the same placement AMD is also paying cash for Anthropic shares, and that the money counts toward AMD's commitment under the Hardware Supply Agreement: "AMD’s purchase in the concurrent private placement will satisfy a portion of its commitment to purchase our Class N common stock under the Hardware Supply Agreement." That commitment "becomes available for us to draw on in increments following the achievement of specified AMD GPU delivery and deployment milestones." So which side pays cash for whose shares does not tell an equity-for-orders deal apart. The verification section said "Wei's July remark comes only from Dan Nystedt's transcription," and the body cut the quote to "So far, no" and described the question as whether TSMC would invest in customers. The Motley Fool's public transcript of the same call also carries the answer: "So far, no, TSMC don't do this kind of financial arrangement because of we think we are working with current customer with the current model smoothly and also successfully." Per that transcript, the question was about investing in customers' customers: "In the end customers, not your direct customers." The item now compares within the same filing (Google's and AMD's purchases in this placement are tied to existing agreements, while the filing states no such link for TSMC Partners; not stated does not mean none exists), and the July passage now cites two third-party transcripts, the other being Nystedt's "So far, no, we don’t do these kinds of arrangements." worded slightly differently, with TSMC's official transcript not checked. The writer had read only the filing's cover and offering summary, not its concurrent private placement and AMD agreement sections, and did not check the second transcript already in our database. Newsletters already sent on November 11 are the original version and can't be recalled; the Chinese, English and Japanese issue pages and the main-line item 1 story pages have been rewritten together.

Source and checks

This item ran in the brief of Nov 11, 2026, alongside 15 other items. How we checked it, the quote checks and what was still missing that day are on that issue's How we checked page.

Cite this item

SecondSource (2026). "TSMC will buy Anthropic shares at the IPO price and OpenAI shares at an expected price of about US$992 each, capped at US$500 million per company." https://secondsource.io/en/news/2026-11-11-1/. Accessed access date.