Top 10 Biggest Semiconductor Companies by Market Cap, February 2023

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In February 2023 the most valuable listed semiconductor companies by market capitalisation were led by TSMC and Nvidia, followed by a group of US chip makers including Broadcom, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm and Intel. The list below was first published on 17 February 2023. Several of its figures do not match the market values reported at the time, so this update keeps the original list for the record and adds corrected context alongside it.

Rankings like this change often, because market capitalisation moves with the share price every trading day.

Key takeaways

• Market capitalisation is share price multiplied by shares outstanding. It measures what investors think a company is worth, not how much it sells.
• A ranking by revenue looks very different. Gartner's ranking of 2022 chip revenue put Samsung back at number one, ahead of Intel.
• Several dollar figures in the original February 2023 list are far above the published values for that period, for example for TSMC and Intel. Treat them as unreliable.
• Nvidia's value rose sharply after early 2023 on demand for AI accelerators. It passed $1 trillion in May 2023 and later became the world's most valuable company.

The list as first published (17 February 2023)

The original post said that, based on revenue and market cap, the top 10 semiconductor companies as of 17 February 2023 were:

1. TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company): $1.68 trillion
2. Nvidia: $982.93 billion
3. Intel: $487.33 billion
4. Broadcom: $184.53 billion
5. Texas Instruments: $165.93 billion
6. Qualcomm: $142.53 billion
7. Micron Technology: $88.16 billion
8. NXP Semiconductors: $66.60 billion
9. Analog Devices: $58.13 billion
10. Infineon Technologies: $57.75 billion

What is wrong with these figures

The names in the list are all large chip companies, but several of the numbers cannot be right for February 2023:

• TSMC: Digitimes reported TSMC's market value at about $378 billion in January 2023. A value of $1.68 trillion in US dollars was not reached in early 2023. The figure may have come from a value in New Taiwan dollars or from a later period, but that is not confirmed.
• Intel: Intel's market value in the first half of 2023 was on the order of $100 to $120 billion (SemiWiki listed about $115 billion on 25 May 2023). The $487 billion figure is roughly four times too high.
• Nvidia: Nvidia was worth roughly half a trillion dollars in February 2023 and first passed $1 trillion in late May 2023. A figure near $983 billion fits that later date, not mid-February.
• Missing names: Samsung Electronics, ASML (equipment, sometimes excluded from chip lists) and AMD were all among the most valuable semiconductor-related companies in early 2023 and would normally appear in a top 10.

The other figures in the list were not re-verified for this update and should be read with the same caution. For exact values on a given day, use historical share prices and share counts from the company filings or a market data service.

Market cap versus revenue

The original list mixed two different measures. They answer different questions.

Measure	What it tells you	Who tends to rank high
Market capitalisation	What investors expect future profits to be worth today	Companies with high growth or high margins, for example Nvidia during the AI boom
Revenue	How much the company sold in a year	Large memory and integrated makers such as Samsung, Intel and SK hynix
Foundry revenue	Manufacturing sales for other chip companies	TSMC, which some revenue rankings list separately because it makes chips for others

A worked example

Market cap is simple arithmetic. With illustrative numbers: a company with 2.5 billion shares trading at $200 has a market capitalisation of 2.5 billion x $200 = $500 billion. If the share price rises by 10% in a week, the market cap rises to $550 billion even though nothing about the company's sales has changed. This is why a market-cap ranking from one day can be out of date a month later.

How to read rankings like this

• Check the date and the currency. A figure in Taiwan dollars or Korean won converted wrongly can be off by a factor of 30 or more.
• Check what counts as a semiconductor company. Some lists include equipment makers such as ASML and Applied Materials, others include only chip vendors.
• Check whether it is market cap or revenue. The two orders differ a lot.
• Prefer named sources. Annual revenue rankings from Gartner, Omdia or TechInsights and filings from the companies themselves are more reliable than unsourced lists.

What changed after February 2023

The biggest shift was Nvidia. Demand for its data-centre GPUs for training and running AI models lifted its value past $1 trillion in May 2023, and it went on to become the world's most valuable listed company. Broadcom also grew strongly on custom AI chips and networking. Intel's value, by contrast, fell sharply during 2024 as it worked through its foundry plans. A February 2023 snapshot is therefore best read as a picture of the industry just before the AI boom changed the order.

FAQ

What is market capitalisation?

Market cap is a measure of the total value of a company's outstanding shares and is a widely used way to assess the size and value of a company. It is calculated as share price times shares outstanding.

Is TSMC a semiconductor company?

Yes. TSMC is the largest contract chip manufacturer (foundry). It makes chips designed by Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm and many others.

Why is Samsung often missing from US lists?

Samsung Electronics is listed in Korea and also makes phones, TVs and appliances, so some lists leave it out or count only its chip business.