TSMC and Tencent Break Into Fortune Global 500 Top 100 as AI Boom Reshapes Asia's Corporate Landscape

6 min read•Jul 29, 2026•
Carlos Mendez
Carlos Mendez

TSMC and Tencent broke into the top 100 of the Fortune Global 500 for the first time this year, placing at No. 82 and No. 97 respectively. The milestone underscores how surging demand for AI chips and digital platforms is restructuring the global corporate hierarchy, with Asia’s semiconductor and technology giants reaping the biggest benefits.

The AI Chip Boom Lifts TSMC

Close-up of TSMC semiconductor wafers in a cleanroom

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company soared 44 spots to reach No. 82 on this year’s Fortune Global 500, reporting total revenue of $122.3 billion in 2025 — a 35.6% jump from the prior year. The chipmaker, which manufactures processors for Apple and Nvidia, has become the single most critical piece of the global AI infrastructure. Nvidia has reportedly reserved “the majority” of TSMC’s advanced capacity, and the two companies recently partnered to bring advanced chip packaging to Phoenix, Arizona.

According to Fortune, the revenue explosion reflects an unprecedented acceleration in the server market. “In the past, one server generation typically lasted about two and a half to three years,” Simon Lin, Wistron’s chair, told the publication. “With AI, not only are there new products every year, but each generation is a meaningful technological leap.”

Tencent’s AI-Driven Revenue Surge

Tencent jumped 19 spots to just squeeze into the top 100 at No. 97, with $104.6 billion in revenue for 2025, up 14% year over year. The Chinese internet giant — behind WeChat, QQ, and global gaming titles like Honor of Kings and PUBG Mobile — saw strong growth in its advertising business, fueled by new AI-driven ad targeting systems.

Tencent is also investing heavily in artificial intelligence. In March, the company announced plans to double AI-related spending to $5.2 billion (36 billion yuan), earmarked for model training and talent hiring. The move mirrors a broader trend among Chinese Big Tech firms racing to catch up with Western AI leaders. Still, recent concerns about slowing gaming revenue triggered a sell-off that wiped 7.1% off Tencent’s share price last week — the largest single-day drop since April 2025.

Asia’s Hardware Supply Chain Leaps

Workers assembling AI servers on a factory floor in Taiwan

The AI boom is lifting the entire Asian hardware ecosystem. Wistron, a Taiwan-based electronics manufacturer, made the biggest jump of any company on this year’s list — rising 298 spots to No. 198 on revenue of $70.18 billion, a 115% surge. Along with Quanta Computer and Foxconn, Wistron has benefited from a new business assembling servers that use Nvidia’s AI processors.

South Korea’s SK Hynix rose 101 spots to No. 210, posting $68.3 billion in revenue. The company has become the dominant supplier of high-bandwidth memory chips — a key component in Nvidia’s AI processors — and recently completed a $28.5 billion U.S. listing, the largest-ever share sale by a foreign company in American markets.

New Debuts on the Global 500

Several Asia-based companies joined the ranking for the first time this year. Chery Automobile debuts at No. 383 with $41.8 billion in revenue. China’s top car exporter for 23 years, Chery still mainly ships internal combustion engine vehicles to the Middle East, Africa, and Russia, though it is beginning to export electric vehicles as well. Chinese car exports overall are on track to hit 10 million units this year, up from 7.1 million last year.

WT Microelectronics, a Taiwanese semiconductor distributor, debuts at No. 431 with $37.8 billion in revenue. Daikin Industries, the world’s largest HVAC maker, enters at No. 498 with $33.3 billion, riding a surge in cooling demand as Europe experienced one of its most intense heatwaves on record last month. Daikin’s European air conditioning sales grew by almost 10% in the last financial year — faster than in any other region.

Finally, Coupang — often called “South Korea’s Amazon” — debuts at No. 479 with $34.5 billion in revenue. Though incorporated in Delaware and officially headquartered in Seattle, the company generates over 90% of its revenue from South Korea, where it operates one of the country’s largest e-commerce and logistics networks.

What This Means for the Industry

The latest Fortune Global 500 rankings reveal a deeper structural shift: the AI semiconductor boom is creating a new class of super-scaled Asian corporations that rival — and in some cases surpass — traditional Western tech giants. TSMC’s jump to No. 82 puts it within striking distance of companies like Meta and Alibaba, and its revenue growth rate far outpaces most of the top 100.

For investors, the message is clear: companies that sit at the heart of the AI supply chain — chip fabrication, memory, server assembly — are experiencing a level of revenue acceleration not seen since the early days of the smartphone era. SK Hynix’s record-breaking U.S. listing signals that foreign capital is eager to buy into this growth directly.

For competitors, the challenge is twofold. Western chip designers like Intel and AMD are racing to reclaim manufacturing leadership, while Chinese internet firms are pouring billions into AI to narrow the gap with U.S. leaders. The pace of product cycles — as Wistron’s chair noted — has compressed from years to months, raising the bar for every player in the ecosystem.

The list also highlights the growing importance of non-tech Asian companies — from Daikin to Chery — that are levering climate-driven demand and export growth to achieve global scale. Their debuts suggest that the next wave of Fortune 500 entrants may come from industries reshaping the physical world, not just the digital one.

Conclusion

The latest Fortune Global 500 list offers a stark snapshot of how the AI boom is rewriting the corporate map. TSMC and Tencent’s ascent into the top 100, along with the explosive jumps of Wistron and SK Hynix, confirm that Asia’s semiconductor and digital platform giants are now among the most powerful companies in the world. As AI demand continues to accelerate, the next year’s ranking may show even more dramatic shifts.

Arizona appeals court vacates manslaughter sentence after AI video

An Arizona appeals court vacated the 10.5-year sentence of Gabriel Horcasitas while upholding his manslaughter conviction, first reported by Nytimes. The case returns to Maricopa County Superior Court for resentencing without the video, after judges found that it presented scripted statements as if the victim himself were speaking in court.

The three-judge panel said the video generated a likeness of Christopher Pelkey’s voice and appearance but did not reflect actual events. It found that allowing and relying on the video made the sentencing fundamentally unfair, and noted that no prior Arizona case had addressed the admissibility of such a depiction at sentencing.

The judges said a victim’s right to speak cannot override a defendant’s right to be sentenced on accurate, reliable information. They said the video collapsed the distinction between the family’s belief about what Pelkey would have said and Pelkey’s own voice and opinions.

The ruling distinguishes family members speaking about Pelkey from a generated likeness that appeared to speak for him.

Pelkey’s sister, Stacey Wales, presented the video during Horcasitas’s sentencing alongside victim-impact statements from family and friends. Wales wrote the script and said her husband and the couple’s longtime business partner helped create the video using Pelkey’s voice from a YouTube video and his face and torso from a funeral-service poster.

Judge Todd F. Lang praised the video as genuine, then imposed the maximum sentence of 10.5 years, more than the nine years prosecutors had sought.

Wales said nobody intended to make the court believe Pelkey was alive or that he had recorded the video before his death. She said she disagreed with the ruling and argued that families use slide shows, collages, hypothetical conversations and poetry to convey grief.

Wales compared the AI video with photography, saying it took 15 years of landmark cases around the 1860s before photography was widely accepted in courts.

The case returns to Maricopa County Superior Court for a new sentencing hearing without the AI-generated video.