How toilet maker Toto turned its ceramics know-how into an AI play
Semiconductors
Chipmaking materials are now its cash cow, but stock market remains unimpressed
Toto manufactures three core products for chipmaking equipment: electrostatic chucks, upper left, aerosol deposition components, lower left, and durable structural parts used in equipment for producing large LCD panels. (Toto)
TOKYO — Japan’s Toto may be best known for churning out toilets, bathtubs and kitchens, but its earnings are now anchored by a very different kind of product: high-precision ceramic components used in the kind of semiconductor manufacturing equipment crucial to sustaining the artificial intelligence boom.
