Manufacturing

How Japan's Biggest Toilet Maker Became a 1-Nanometer Semiconductor Powerhouse

How Japan's Biggest Toilet Maker Became a 1-Nanometer Semiconductor Powerhouse

There’s a quiet irony in one of Japan’s most recognizable brand names becoming indispensable to the very apex of computing. TOTO, the company whose heated toilet seats and sleek ceramic basins have graced bathrooms across the world, now earns more profit from holding silicon wafers still during chip fabrication than from everything it sells to consumers. And it’s doubling down.