Technology
There’s Big Money to Be Made in Asteroid Mining
Click below to expand to the full version of the infographic
Image courtesy of: Wired
There’s Big Money to Be Made in Asteroid Mining
See the full version of the infographic.
If humans were ever able to get their hands on just one asteroid, it would be a game-changer.
That’s because the value of many asteroids are measured in the quintillions of dollars, which makes the market for Earth’s annual production of raw metals – about $660 billion per year – look paltry in comparison.
The reality is that the Earth’s crust is saddled with uneconomic materials, while certain types of asteroids are almost pure metal. X-type asteroids, for example, are thought to be the remnants of large asteroids that were pulverized in collisions in which their dense, metallic cores got separated from the mantle.
There is one such X-type asteroid near earth that is believed to hold more platinum than ever mined in human history.
Near-Earth Mining Targets
Asteroid mining companies such as Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries are the first-movers in the sector, and they’ve already started to identify prospective targets to boldly mine where no man has mined before.
Both companies are looking specifically at near-Earth asteroids in the near-term, which are the easiest ones to get to. So far, roughly 15,000 such objects have been discovered, and their orbits all come in close proximity to Earth.
Planetary Resources has identified eight of these as potential targets and has listed them publicly, while Deep Space Industries has claimed to have “half a dozen very, very attractive targets”.
While these will be important for verifying the feasibility of asteroid mining, the reality is that near-Earth asteroids are just tiny minnows in an ocean of big fish. Their main advantage is that they are relatively easy to access, but most targets identified so far are less than 1,000 ft (300 m) in diameter – meaning the potential economic payoff of a mission is still unclear.
Where the Money is Made
The exciting part of asteroid mining is the asteroid belt itself, which lies between Mars and Jupiter. It is there that over 1 million asteroids exist, including about 200 that are over 60 miles (100 km) in diameter.
NASA estimates this belt to hold $700 quintillion of bounty. That’s about $100 billion for each person on Earth.
There are obviously many technical challenges that must be overcome to make mining these possible. As it stands, NASA aims to bring back a grab sample from the surface of asteroid Bennu that is 2 and 70 ounces (about 60 to 2,000 grams) in size. The cost of the mission? Approximately $1 billion.
To do anything like that on a large scale will require robots, spacecraft, and other technologies that simply do not exist yet. Further, missions like this could cost trillions of dollars – a huge risk and burden in the case that a mission is unsuccessful.
Until then, the near-Earth asteroids are the fertile testing ground for aspirational asteroid miners – and we look forward to seeing what is possible in the future.
Technology
Ranked: Largest Semiconductor Foundry Companies by Revenue
Most of the 10 largest semiconductor foundries in the world, are headquartered in just three Asian countries, accounting for 90% of the entire industry’s revenue.

Ranked: Largest Semiconductor Foundry Companies by Revenue
They’re in our phones, cars, planes, and even fridges.
Semiconductor chips have become critical for the modern way of life, and the biggest semiconductor foundry companies rake in billions of dollars from widespread demand.
This chart shows the largest semiconductor foundry companies by their percentage of global revenues in Q1 2023, using data sourced from Trendforce.
Semiconductor Foundry Companies by Revenue
At the top of the list and dwarfing every other company by revenue share is TSMC which earned 60% (or nearly $17 billion) of the entire industry’s revenue in Q1 2023.
Founded in 1987, TSMC is a pure-play foundry that has become Taiwan’s largest company and manufactures products for a host of clients including Apple, NVIDIA, and AMD.
Rank | Company | Country | Revenue (Q1 2023, USD) |
---|---|---|---|
1 | TSMC | 🇹🇼 Taiwan | $16,735M |
2 | Samsung | 🇰🇷 South Korea | $3,446M |
3 | GlobalFoundries | 🇺🇸 US | $1,841M |
4 | UMC | 🇹🇼 Taiwan | $1,784M |
5 | SMIC | 🇨🇳 China | $1,462M |
6 | HuaHong Group | 🇨🇳 China | $845M |
7 | Tower Semiconductor | 🇮🇱 Israel | $356M |
8 | PSMC | 🇹🇼 Taiwan | $332M |
9 | VIS | 🇹🇼 Taiwan | $269M |
10 | DB Hitek | 🇰🇷 South Korea | $234M |
Other | $556M | ||
Global Total | $27,860M |
Note: Revenue based on the following conversion rates: USD 1 = WON 1,276; USD 1 = NTD 30.4.
Well behind TSMC in foundry revenues is integrated device manufacturer Samsung, the biggest company in South Korea, which made $3.4 billion (12.4% of the industry’s revenue) from its semiconductor manufacturing business.
GlobalFoundries from the U.S., UMC from Taiwan and SMIC from China round out the top five, with each taking home around 6% of industry’s revenue share in Q1 2023. The former spun out from AMD’s manufacturing arm when the company went fabless in 2009.
Industry concentration is apparent in semiconductors. For example, the top 10 semiconductor foundry companies account for 98% of the entire industry’s revenue. Furthermore, 90% of the market is dominated by companies in just three Asian countries: Taiwan, South Korea, and China.
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