Historic Moment: TSMC's Employee Count Expected to Surpass Intel for the First Time

Tech Home, February 7 — Technology media Tom’s Hardware published a blog post yesterday (February 6), reporting that the semiconductor industry is about to reach a historic turning point: TSMC’s (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) total employee count is expected to surpass Intel for the first time.

Data shows that after cutting approximately 40,000 jobs over two years, Intel’s total workforce has decreased to 85,100 employees, but its size remains large, with employee numbers even exceeding the combined total of AMD, NVIDIA, and Arm.

According to the blog post, by the relevant financial reporting period ending in 2025, AMD will have about 31,000 full-time employees, NVIDIA approximately 36,000, Qualcomm around 52,000, and Arm only about 8,330.

However, these competitors have benefited from a surge in semiconductor demand between 2024 and 2025 and have expanded aggressively, while Intel has been contracting against the trend.

Based on TSMC’s 2024 annual report, the total number of employees reached 84,512 by the end of 2024. The report notes that with the AI wave, TSMC is currently in an aggressive hiring phase. Coupled with global expansion efforts, the number is projected to exceed 90,000 by the end of 2025, steadily approaching the 100,000 mark.

The media pointed out that due to fundamentally different business models, directly comparing the number of employees at Intel with other companies is not entirely fair. Intel is one of the few remaining giants that坚持“IDM模式”(Vertical Integration Manufacturing), responsible for chip design and operating advanced process fabs internally, which requires a large R&D and manufacturing team.

In contrast, TSMC, as a pure wafer foundry, has more manufacturing facilities than Intel but does not engage in product R&D; while fabless companies like AMD and NVIDIA have highly competitive products but do not handle manufacturing.

Additionally, Intel also takes on the development of industry standards such as DDR, PCIe, and USB, which is one of the reasons for its bloated staff.

Although Intel’s R&D expenditure for fiscal year 2025 has decreased to $13.8 billion (Note from IT Home: approximately 95.859 billion RMB at current exchange rates), it still exceeds the investment of AMD or TSMC on a single-project basis. However, Intel faces a “dual-front” challenge: competing with AMD and NVIDIA on the product side while catching up with TSMC in manufacturing.