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

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

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

IT House cited the blog, stating that by the 2025 fiscal cycle, AMD will have approximately 31,000 full-time employees, NVIDIA about 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 rapidly, 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, and with global expansion, the number is expected 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 Intel’s employee count with other companies is not entirely fair. Intel is one of the few remaining giants that坚持“IDM模式” (integrated device manufacturing), responsible for both chip design and operating advanced process fabs internally, requiring 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 (IT House notes: approximately 95.859 billion RMB at current exchange rates), it still exceeds the investment of AMD or TSMC alone. However, Intel faces a “dual-front” challenge: competing with AMD and NVIDIA on the product side while catching up with TSMC in manufacturing.