Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM): Leopold Aschenbrenner Takes Bearish View

We just covered From Fired Researcher to $13.7 Billion King: How Leopold Aschenbrenner Broke the Hedge Fund World and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (NYSE:TSM) ranks 10th on this list.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (NYSE:TSM) is a new addition to the 13F portfolio of Situational Awareness LP. The fund declared a new stake in the company in filings for the first quarter of 2026. This stake consists of PUT bets worth close to 1.5 million shares. Previously, Leopold Aschenbrenner had bought a stake in this chip giant in the third quarter of 2025. This position consisted of PUT bets worth 270,000 shares and was sold off completely by the next quarter. TSM manufactures, packages, tests, and sells integrated circuits and other semiconductor devices. It is a major chip manufacturing partner for NVIDIA, the biggest AI company in the world. Leopold Aschenbrenner has a bearish outlook on both companies, per the latest securities filings.

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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (NYSE:TSM) has been forced to satisfy Western political demands and diversify the supply chain. As part of this, it is building expensive foundries outside of Taiwan, most notably in Arizona, Japan, and Germany. In the Q1 2026 update, TSM management announced they are pushing their full-year 2026 capital expenditures to the absolute high end of their $52 billion to $56 billion range. Building advanced fabrication plants in the United States and Europe is mathematically less efficient. Internal construction and operational costs in Arizona are estimated to be 4x to 5x higher than building identical fabs in Hsinchu or Tainan. TSM management explicitly admitted that overseas fab expansions and the initial ramp-up of next-generation nodes will trigger an immediate 2% to 3% gross margin dilution starting in the latter half of 2026 and extending into 2027.

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