TAIPEI - Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world's leading contract chipmaker, said Thursday it was considering further expansion in the U.S., with Texas as an option and talks continuing over its participation in Elon Musk's massive Terafab chip complex planned in the state.

"We did expand our capacity consideration to places outside Arizona ... and Texas is one [option], and we have sent teams to Texas to do all the evaluation," CEO C.C. Wei told an earnings conference call.

"We are also talking to one of our customers who is trying to build Terafab, and we are discussing with them to see whether we can be utilizing that actual capacity." Wei spoke as TSMC reported record quarterly profit, up 68.7% year on year to reach $763.06 billion New Taiwan dollars ($23.55 billion) in the July to September period, marking its sixth consecutive quarter of record earnings. Revenue surged 50% from a year earlier to a record NT$1.494 trillion.

The CEO said it was racing to build new plants worldwide at an "unprecedented" pace to meet "extremely robust" AI demand for cutting-edge and supporting chips.

Wei did not provide further details on Terafab, citing ongoing discussions, but stressed that the plant would need to be "run by TSMC." Leading U.S. chipmaker Intel previously announced plans to collaborate with Elon Musk's SpaceX and Tesla on the complex.

Any potential TSMC involvement in Terafab would come on top of its already massive $265 billion investment commitment in the U.S.

"We are moving full speed ahead to increase our capacity to meet our excess demand and stepping up our capex investment to support our customers' future growth. TSMC is expanding at an unprecedented pace with nearly 20 plants worldwide in progress," Wei said.

He dismissed concerns about the sustainability of AI demand, saying the company made investment decisions following prudent reviews.

"We have our own judgment, and we look at every angle. We talk to customers, customers' customers," Wei said. "We are now going one step further and asking our own teams of people to check on the data center build-out progress and power supply situation in the U.S." "We have no intention to leave food on the table for others, and we want to capture every piece of business possible," the CEO said.

He added that the company's second advanced chipmaking plant in Arizona was expected to begin production in the third quarter of 2027.

TSMC's bumper earnings come as global tech giants continue to ramp up spending on massive AI infrastructure projects, even as the industry grapples with unprecedented shortages of critical components, including memory chips, printed circuit boards, and lasers.

The foundry said 68% of quarterly revenue came from high-performance computing demand, including all AI-related chips.

However, Wei said that it "continues to observe consumer and price-sensitive market segments being challenged due to the impact of rising component prices and macroeconomic uncertainties." Nikkei Asia earlier reported that even Apple has not been immune to price hikes and has already instructed component suppliers to scale back production of its latest iPhone 18 Pro models amid weaker-than-expected demand.

"Overall, we see strong advanced node demand into next year and believe long-term visibility around orders will support [a] higher capex cycle," Laura Chen of Citi Research said in a note. "We expect TSMC's AI revenue growth to nearly double next year, considering most of its AI semiconductor customers, including Nvidia and Broadcom, are expecting accelerating growth." Mark Li, a veteran semiconductor analyst at Bernstein Research, expects TSMC to further increase its capital spending in 2027, potentially to as much as $75 billion, up from an already record-high $64 billion in 2026.

TSMC Chief Financial Officer Wendell Huang told the conference call, "We continue to expect our capex investment from 2026 to 2028 to be even more significantly higher than the past three years, as we continue to invest heavily to support our customers' demand."