TSMC Chief Executive CC Wei told employees they will, on average, see a greater than 30% increase in profit sharing this year, in response to concerns raised online about the company’s incentive plans.
TSMC, considered a pillar of global AI infrastructure, will expand its employee incentive program amid soaring profits. At an internal meeting on Wednesday, Wei said he was confident that Taiwan-based employees would see, on average, an annual increase of more than 30% in their profit-sharing bonus — a better result than the previous year — according to a person familiar with the matter. This person asked not to be identified because the company meeting was private.
Wei’s statements highlight how the main beneficiaries of the historic boom in AI development and investment are under increasing pressure to share a larger share of their rapidly expanding income. This week, Samsung’s main union reached a deal for the world’s largest memory chip maker to pay out around $27 billion in bonuses to workers, after union leaders threatened to organize a strike. The TSMC CEO’s pledge came after days of online debate over the company’s quarterly bonuses, with anonymous posts questioning the size of the raises.
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TSMC did not comment beyond confirming that the internal meeting with employees took place. In a statement released earlier this week, the company said it is “highly confident” that the annual growth rate of employee profit sharing, based on performance evaluation, will exceed last year’s.
Over more than a decade at the helm of TSMC, Wei has emphasized stability and long-term vision when talking about the company’s strategy. During the pandemic, he repeated several times that TSMC’s pricing policy would be “strategic, not opportunistic”, an approach that proved successful: the company managed to increase its gross margin to an enviable level of 66% this year. Headquartered in Hsinchu, TSMC reported profit of NT572.5 billion ($18.2 billion) in the quarter ended March, more than double that recorded in the same period two years earlier.
The total amount of profit sharing distributed to TSMC employees grew last year, in line with the company’s results. The company allocated around NT$103 billion to the program in 2025, an increase of 46.6% compared to the previous year. In its bylaws, the chipmaker commits to setting aside at least 1% of annual profit for the incentive program.
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TSMC’s internal meeting took place at the same time as an outcome was being drawn up for the months-long confrontation between the South Korean giant Samsung and its largest union. Unlike South Korea’s most valuable company, TSMC does not have an organized union, but its employees have begun to publicly express frustrations in online forums. Samsung and the union reached an agreement this week that provides bonuses of approximately US$340,000 per worker in its semiconductor division.
© 2026 Bloomberg L.P.
