[News] MediaTek CEO Reaffirms TSMC as Key Long-Term Partner amid Samsung’s Reported Push for Foundry Orders
Market chatter has been circulating that Samsung Electronics Chairman Jay Y. Lee made a discreet visit to Taiwan last week, reportedly aiming to secure foundry orders for IC design major MediaTek from TSMC. However, at MediaTek’s shareholder meeting on May 29, TechNews and Liberty Times, citing CEO Rick Tsai, reiterated that TSMC remains MediaTek’s “most important and long-term” partner, effectively dispelling speculation over potential shift in foundry orders.
According to TechNews, Samsung is said to have offered an incentive package linking its memory supply with foundry services. Under the proposal, MediaTek would gain priority access to Samsung’s high-value memory chips for its next-generation Dimensity mobile processors, in exchange for shifting part of its wafer orders—an approach similar to Samsung’s earlier efforts to attract Qualcomm, the report suggests.
Commercial Times further reports that after securing the foundry order for Tesla’s AI6 chip, Samsung has been actively marketing its 2nm process to major tech players including AMD, while positioning MediaTek as its next major foundry target.
In response to Samsung’s push, MediaTek CEO Rick Tsai, cited by Liberty Times, reaffirmed that TSMC remains MediaTek’s long-term strategic foundry partner across nodes spanning 12nm, 7nm, 6nm, 5nm, 2nm, and even the not-yet-mass-produced 1.4nm generation. He added that the two companies also maintain close collaboration in advanced packaging, optical packaging, and CPO, underscoring the depth and continuity of their partnership, according to the report.
Notably, back in September 2025, MediaTek announced it is among the first companies to collaborate with TSMC on the enhanced N2P process, successfully taping out its flagship SoC, with volume production expected in late 2026.
TechNews, citing Tsai, adds that MediaTek will continue ramping investments in cutting-edge nodes, packaging technologies, and next-generation IPs such as 400G SerDes and co-packaged optics (CPO) to capitalize on booming data center demand.
MediaTek Comments on Intel Packaging Collaboration
On the other hand, as previously reported by Commercial Times, as MediaTek accelerates its push into AI ASIC and data center markets, the company is deepening cooperation with TSMC on CoWoS and SoIC, while also adopting Intel’s EMIB technology for customer-specific ASIC projects to broaden future packaging options.
Separately, another Commercial Times report noted that MediaTek recently assigned advanced packaging for Google’s eighth-generation inference TPU to Intel, while retaining packaging for training TPUs with TSMC.
Responding to the potential collaboration with Intel on advanced packaging, Rick Tsai, as per TechNews, acknowledged that as a large-scale semiconductor company, MediaTek naturally evaluates the capabilities and capacity of various foundries from time to time to identify the most suitable solutions.
Read more
- [News] Samsung 2nm Yields Reportedly at ~55%, Below Mass Production Threshold; Qualcomm May Opt for TSMC
- [News] MediaTek Reportedly Adopts Dual Packaging Strategy With Intel EMIB, TSMC CoWoS for AI ASIC Push
(Photo credit: NVIDIA’s X— In the front row, MediaTek CEO Rick Tsai (second from right) and TSMC CEO C.C. Wei (third from right) sat side by side in a group photo with NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang.)
